Can’t Any Body Count

Counting as an Epistemic Theme in the History of Human Chromosomes

Bibliographic Data

ID11924787
AuthorsAryn Martins (0000-0003-1516-3219, Cornell University, corresponding author), Aryn Martin (Cornell University’s Department of Science and Technology Studies)
Year2004
Volume34
Issue6
Pages923-948
Publication date2004-12-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial Studies of Science (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0306-3127 • E-ISSN: 1460-3659
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0306312704046843
OpenAlexW2041788159
LanguageEN
Citations received19
References cited47

This paper examines the well-known ‘error’ in the history of human chromosome counting. In the early 1920s, T.S. Painter, supported by a number of independent investigators, placed the count at 48, which was to hold as a fact for more than 30 years. In 1956, Tjio and Levan surprisingly revised the count to 46. The details of the case are used to open up the very practice of counting to theoretical scrutiny. Counting, often taken-for-granted as mundane and transparent, is instead a richly contingent activity entailing categorical judgments and individuation of objects. Inverting the assumption that entities are there in the world waiting to be counted, I propose that particular objects are constituted as such while they are counted. As the chromosome story demonstrates, the techniques, theories, disciplines, and the things themselves co-evolve through practices of counting. Between the 1920s and the 1950s every one of these factors was in flux in the field of human genetics; it should be no surprise that the number of chromosomes changed

Epistemology · Field (mathematics · Genealogy · Individuation · Psychoanalysis · Scrutiny · Sociology · Surprise · Communication · History · Mathematics · Medical History and Research · Philosophy · Philosophy and History of Science · Psychology · Race, Genetics, and Society