Inventing mosquitoes: Tracing the topology of vectors for human disease

Abstract

This chapter draws on Aristotelian topoi to explore the topology of a genomic database. To accomplish this task, two complementary topical analyses are performed. The first analysis focuses on the Infectious Disease Ontology for Dengue and Malaria (IDODEN/IDOMAL), which yields a topology for VectorBase. Tracing the special topoi of the ontology reveals what types of arguments the database privileges by its very structure. The second analysis looks for patterns in the IDODEN/IDOMAL onto/topology using Aristotle’s common or universal topoi. This meta-analysis reveals that IDODEN/IDOMAL promotes consensus building over dichotomous, diachronic thinking. In this community, it seems that discovery is conceptualized as only a social activity–a habit that has consequences for problem-solving in this field and in others.