Experimenting communities in stem cell biology

exemplars and interdisciplinarity

pp. 195-210

in: Hanne Andersen, Dennis Dieks, Thomas Uebel, Wenceslao J. Gonzalez, Gregory Wheeler (eds), New challenges to philosophy of science, Berlin, Springer, 2013

Abstract

This essay uses three case studies to illustrate the importance of experimenting communities in stem cell biology. An experimenting community is a collection of scientific groups that together produce knowledge using experimental methods. Three such methods, each an exemplar for stem cell biology, reveal the structure and significance of experimenting communities in stem cell research: the spleen colony assay, embryonic stem cell lines, and systems models. Together, these case studies show that (1) stem cell research progresses via multiple, diverse models and comparisons among them; (2) the spleen colony assay and embryonic stem cell lines have a special status in this field, as hubs of experimental networks; (3) hierarchical cell lineage models are a unifying framework for stem cell biology today; and (4) another general model of development, Waddington's landscape, can help merge stem cell and systems biology into a new, expanded, experimenting community.