“Split and Slice borrows new perspectives from a broad range of scholarly fields, generating a long list of cited authors who are rarely associated in the same book. Rheinberger moves easily from phenomenology to biology and from science to art, and vice versa. . . . The book is in a way exhaustive, addressing many of the most significant issues discussed in science studies during the last decades, for instance the importance of practice and technologies, the rich source of information represented by notebooks, and in par­ticular the protocols shared by the different members of a laboratory. Only Rheinberger could write such a book, which wanders between phenomenology and sociology of science, while still remaining engaging and attractive.”

Journal of the History of Biology

“What's in an experiment? In this English edition of Split and Splice: A Phenomenology of Experimentation, a leading historian and philosopher of biology returns in fine form to renew his long-standing plea for scholarly attention to the human and material elements shaping experimentation in the life sciences. In this book, Rheinberger again pulls from the primary literature with which he is most familiar, that in molecular biology, to probe how both research materials and researchers' encounters with them, through experiments, shape the emergence of scientific knowledge. . . . There is much of interest to the working biologist in Split and Splice. Rheinberger offers a convincing way of characterizing the biologist's role in her craft: She is the mediator between the real and the written; between the world of the living and the books and papers that, eventually, report new discoveries.”

FASEB Journal

“A highly original, systematically organized, and empirically enriched essay on scientific experimentation. . . . While its first part convinces with a precise and logically ordered analysis, the second part leads through a broad variety of philosophical thoughts and observa­tions. . . . The reader is taken on an impressive journey through the vast territo­ries of experimental knowledge cultures. And it adds to the surprises of the journey that each and every part of it is enriched with examples from the history of molecular biological experimentation.”

Minerva

“This book provides a captivating perspective on an essential area in the development of a comprehensive and cohesive epistemology of experimentation. Until now, this subject has only been approached in an incomplete and piecemeal manner. Therefore, this book is an absolute necessity for scholars seeking a holistic understanding of experimental practices, including those often overlooked aspects that are crucial for a true and impactful comprehension of the vital role that experiments play in shaping modern science.”
 

Metascience

“Rather than functioning along prescribed lines, Rheinberger presents experimenting, in its conditions, apparatus, and thought, as accomplished through making-do and tinkering—termed ‘bricolage’ by the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. . . . The book rewards those who delve further into its extensive bibliography with more evidence and examples of experimentation’s irrepressibly provocative nature.” 

Isis

“The book Split and Splice therefore aims to present a phenomenology of experimentation, which for Rheinberger means that we are looking at the ‘shapes and contours that scientific experimentation has acquired historically.’ Here we see the same focus on the materiality of the whole movement of experimentation, not just the individual experiment. It is particularly important for Rheinberger that experimentation is seen as a knowledge-generating process. The various facets of the shapes of the experience are examined both from an ‘infrascopic’ and from a ‘suprascopic perspective.’ These shapes shape the form of the book, by looking below and beyond the threshold of perception.”

Phenomenological Reviews

“Split and Splice further develops and strengthens an understanding of research as cultural activity over and beyond disciplinary boundaries. In doing so, it moves beyond the ‘practice turn’ into registers of materiality and temporality to suggest a wide connective fabric of epistemic things not to be captured unless articulation is problematized.”

Journal for Artistic Research

“Recommended.”

Choice

“Perched between recursivity and transgression, precision and poetics—just like the research practices it discusses—this eagerly awaited volume is the ultimate exploration of the constellation of technologies, techniques, materials, and ‘savage moments’ that make experiments into a quintessential form of inquiry. Building on three decades of world-leading research in the history and philosophy of biology, Rheinberger shows how, in life as in science, experiments epitomize the human aspiration to intervene in the world with predictable results, and yet their power lies in exposing the limits of attempts to control and foresee the future. An unmissable read for anybody wishing to understand how science thrives by failing to carve nature at its joints.”

Sabina Leonelli, University of Exeter

“In this new book, drawing on his groundbreaking Toward a History of Epistemic Things, Rheinberger explores the logic of a ‘phenomenology of experimentation.’ Attentive to the materiality of science, it brings out the creative, epistemic, and collective dimensions of scientific production in experimental context. Written by a historian and philosopher of science trained in molecular biology, Split and Splice opens up the path to a genuine historical epistemology of the forms of scientific practices for the twenty-first century.”

Pierre-Olivier Méthot, Université Laval