What can we gain from co-analyzing experimental cultures, regionalization, and disciplinary phenomena of late twentieth century life sciences under our historiographic looking glass? This essay investigates the potential of such a strategy for the case of cell biology after 1960. By merging perspectives from historical epistemology inspired by the work of Hans-Jörg Rheinberger with a focus on boundary work in the realm of scientific publishing, community building, and disciplinary norms, a set of understudied scientific practices is exposed. These practices, historically subsumed under the label descriptive, have been as central in cell biology as hypothesis-driven research aiming at mechanistic explanations of cellular function. Against the background of an increasing molecular-mechanistic imperative in cell biology since the late 1960s, knowledge from descriptive practices was often judged as having low value but was nonetheless frequently cited and considered essential. Investigating the underlying epistemic practices and their interactions with disciplinary gatekeeping phenomena (as policed by journals and learned societies) provides historiographic access to the plurality of experimental cultures of cell biology, scattered into many interdisciplinary research fields—with some of them only partially engaged with mechanistic questions.

中文翻译：

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“有多少人认为自己是细胞生物学家，但被期刊告知他们的工作不是细胞生物学”**

在我们的史学观察下，共同分析 20 世纪晚期生命科学的实验文化、区域化和学科现象，我们能得到什么？本文探讨了这种策略在 1960 年之后的细胞生物学案例中的潜力。通过融合受 Hans-Jörg Rheinberger 工作启发的历史认识论的观点，重点关注科学出版、社区建设和学科规范，暴露了一组未被充分研究的科学实践。这些做法，历史上归于描述性标签，在细胞生物学中与旨在对细胞功能进行机械解释的假设驱动研究一样重要。自 1960 年代后期以来，在细胞生物学中分子机制的需求日益增加的背景下，来自描述性实践的知识通常被认为价值低，但仍然经常被引用并被认为是必不可少的。调查潜在的认知实践及其与学科把关现象的相互作用（由期刊和学术团体监管）提供了对分散在许多跨学科研究领域中的细胞生物学的多种实验文化的历史学访问——其中一些只是部分参与机械学研究。问题。