Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
5
Ordering Objects
Of all the structures that computers impose, databases are
the most important. If we wish to understand classifi ca-
tion and its consequences in the late twentieth and early
twenty-fi rst century, we need to understand databases and
their role in the making of scientifi c knowledge. In biol-
ogy, the infl uence of databases on practice and knowledge
is profound: they play a role in data analysis, transmis-
sion, and communication, as well as in the verifi cation and
authentication of knowledge. In their day-to-day work,
many biologists use databases for checking the results of
their experiments, for storing and managing their data,
or for performing simulations and experiments. How are
such databases built, and by whom? How do they work?
What kinds of structures do they contain? How do these
structures infl uence the knowledge that can be made with
them? This chapter explores the role of databases in sci-
entifi c knowledge making using one prominent example:
GenBank.
Biological databases, organized with computers, can-
not be thought of as just
collections
.
1
Instead, biologi-
cal databases are
orderings
of biological materials. They
provide ways of dividing up the biological world; they
are tools that biologists use and interact with. Computer
databases store information within carefully crafted digi-
tal structures. Such tabulations can have profound social,
