Models as Mediators: Perspectives on Natural and Social Science ed. by Mary S. Morgan, Margaret Morrison (review)

322 letters in canada 1999 on the page and on a black background, has a curiously homogenizing effect. (It would be safe to say that most books on Northwest Coast art over the last thirty-odd years announce themselves with just such a single, hieratic image on the cover B usually a mask B on a black ground. Before that it was a white ground.) This meticulous presentation allows for scrutiny without distraction, reassuringly separate from messy reality B of land claims for example. The strength of this book is that it includes the views of the artists themselves. In much of the aforementioned discourse, the voice of the artist has been deafeningly absent. Here, alongside their work, are statements by the artists on their role today, their relationship with the past and some details about the piece itself and its making, a story about the being represented, their rights to represent it. Significantly this includes the right to find new meanings and reach new audiences. This is valuable knowledge and all too rare. It is a better-organized sequel to Wyatt's earlier Spirit Faces, although it does not dispel the suspicion that the words may have been coaxed into the kind of accompaniment to a purchase that enhances its value. It would anyway have been more accurate to say that Wyatt was the editor rather than author. A third accomplishment of this book is that, intentionally or not, it serves to neutralize some of the points of greatest tension. A mask that has been danced and a blanket that has been worn in a ceremony have enhanced market value. This is a point of anxiety for some First Nations, while others accept modifications to the concept of ownership. The very fact of a cash transaction can enable new kinds of arrangements in which cash plays no part, whereby one party holds or displays and another can access and wear or perform. Another anxious subtext concerns rights to use or display certain designs and crests; accordingly, the artists specify their rights to and inherited reasons for representing the beings that they do. Despite the claims on the book's cover, not all of the artists included are First Nations. Here, for example, is Cheryl Samuel, noted authority on Chilkat and Raven's Tail weaving, telling how honorific names and titles have been given to her by some Tlingit weaving families which not only honour her contribution to its revival but also serve to legitimate what she does against any detractors. (CHARLOTTE TOWNSEND-GAULT) Mary S. Morgan and Margaret Morrison, editors. Models as Mediators: Perspectives on Natural and Social Science Cambridge University Press. xii, 404. $97.50 The traditional view of scientific practice regards it as consisting in developing theories and doing experiments to collect data. On this view, we formulate theories as something like pictures of the basic workings of the world; where such pictures have not yet been designed or are not yet humanities 323 detailed enough, the scientists build models of the phenomena B preparatory , imperfect stages in the development of a full-blown theory. Experiments are performed in order to confirm or disconfirm theories and models. During the 1980s, owing to the work of Ian Hacking, Peter Galison, and others, our view of experiments gradually emancipated itself from the domination by theory that is explicit in the traditional picture of scientific practice. Experiments became recognized as having `a life of their own,' that is, significance and interesting features that are not exhausted by their role in establishing and testing theories. The authors of the essays collected in Models as Mediators try to initiate a similar process of emancipation for models in scientific practice. Traditionally viewed as mere stopgaps or preliminary stages in theory construction (expressed in phrases like `this is only a model, not yet a theory'), models are now characterized as `partially autonomous agents' of research, no longer exclusively in the service of theories. On this account there are our theories, the data, and the world, and there are models `mediating' between theories and data. In order to discharge their mediating function, the models have to have some kind of autonomy from both sides, data...