Building Computers - Life Out of Sequence - page 6

exactly the sorts of problems computers were good at solving. 16 The use
of computers in OR and systems analysis not only continued to couple
them to the military, but also continued their association with particular
sorts of problems: namely, problems with large numbers of well-defi ned
variables that would yield to numerical and logical calculations. 17
What were the consequences of all this for the application of com-
puters to biology? Despite their touted “universality,” digital computers
were not equally good at solving all problems. The ways in which early
computers were used established standards and practices that infl uenced
later uses. 18 The design of early computers placed certain constraints on
where and how they would and could be applied to biological prob-
lems. The use of computers in biology was successful only where bio-
logical problems could be reduced to problems of data analysis and
management. Bringing computers to the life sciences meant following
specifi c patterns of use that were modeled on approaches in OR and
physics and which reproduced modes of practice and patronage from
those fi elds. 19
In the late 1950s, there were two alternative notions of how comput-
ers might be applied to the life sciences. The fi rst was that biology and
biologists had to mathematize, becoming more like the physical sciences.
The second was that computers could be used for accounting purposes,
creating “a biology oriented toward the collation of statistical analysis
of large volumes of quantitative data.” 20 Both notions involved mak-
ing biological problems amenable to computers' data processing power.
Robert Ledley—one of the strongest advocates of the application of
computers in biology and medicine—envisioned the transformation of
biologists' research and practices along the lines of Big Science. 21
In 1965, Ledley published Use of Computers in Biology and Medi-
cine . The foreword (by Lee Lusted of the National Institutes of Health)
acknowledged that computer use required large-scale funding and co-
operation similar to that seen in physics. 22 Ledley echoed these views in
his preface:
Because of an increased emphasis on quantitative detail, elabo-
rate experimentation and extensive quantitative data analysis
are now required. Concomitant with this change, the view of the
biologist as an individual scientist, personally carrying through
each step of his data-reduction processes—that view is rapidly
being broadened, to include the biologist as part of an intricate
organizational chart that partitions scientifi c technical and ad-
ministrative responsibilities. 23