Systematics as Cyberscience: Computers, Change, and Continuity in Science (review)

I was drawn to Christine Hine’s Systematics as Cyberscience: Computers, Change, and Continuity in Science because the synopsis of the book suggested it was a study of the ways that biologists working in this field have engaged with new technologies as the field sustained its heritage and changed to accommodate new possibilities. While some information about research techniques and practices was included, I was disappointed to find that the book’s concern was not with the practices that advance the field but, rather, the dynamics of the community as its tools change. More to the point, as Hine acknowledges in the final pages, the project paid “less attention to the detail of scientific practice and more to the varied sites in which the discipline [systematics] was manifested” (p. 260). As a result, in my view, Hine missed a real opportunity to educate the public in a meaningful sense about a field that is increasingly a part of the current ecological debates. In focusing on the discipline as a community, rather than on the change and continuity within the scientific practices employed, the book seemed more interested in the field’s veneer than the substance of what the people who drive the field’s accomplishments do.

For those who are not familiar with the term, systematics is a discipline that focuses on the classification and naming of organisms and the exploration of evolutionary relationships. Interest in this discipline, which we can trace back to ancient thinkers such as Aristotle, has recently re-surfaced as ecological analysis has raised concerns about threats to the diversity of life on the planet Earth, which has in turn renewed our interest in relationships among living things over time. Simultaneously, as is the case in all fields today, systematics is integrating its long-established practices with the new field of information and communication technologies (ICTs). How this integration is coming about sociologically is Hine’s concern as she explores the parameters of ICTs as discussed with biologists working in systematics. This discussion expands on her earlier book Virtual Ethnography, wherein she looked at the social dynamics surrounding the Internet in the late 1990s. In investigating how systematics has become a cyberscience, the author employs what she defines as an ethnographically informed style both to question some of the assumptions in current science policy as it relates to systematics and to offer a study that contributes (more broadly) to the sociology of science.

Researchers in systematics will no doubt relate to her narrative of the field’s efforts to integrate the new ICT options more than the general reader will. As someone who came to the book with only a vague notion of what systematics is and what systematicists do, I found myself wishing the author had paid more attention to the fact-finding side of the discipline each time she offered nuggets of information that drew on research and the study of specimens. This is not to say that the sociological study is not interesting. Some topics captured my imagination. I was intrigued by her discussion of the idea that virtual settings are both cultural sites in their own right and cultural artifacts subject to ongoing processes of interpretation. I also was fascinated by her discussions on how balancing historical approaches with the introduction of cyberspace created a need to seek a balance between automation and expertise. I was quite taken with the sections that detailed the difference between material and virtual samples, although I would have liked more information on this topic. The paragraphs where she mentioned what sytematicists do and/or compared their goals with those of other branches of science (e.g. genetics) were particularly informative. Indeed, these comparative sections convinced me that the writing would have communicated better to generalists had Hine introduced the field initially and stressed scientific practices more than the sociological aspects of the field. Similarly, a different...