Is there still room at the bottom? The question providing the theme for the present issue of Philosophia Scientiæ is, of course, adapted from Richard Feynman’s well-known speech at the 1959 meeting of the American Physical Society. On this occasion he attracted physicists’ attention to the vast potential of working at the scale of the nanometre if not the ångström, using the catchy title: “Plenty of Room at the Bottom” [Feynman 1959]. This hookline from a famous Nobel laureate physicist serve...

While self-organization has been an integral part of academic discussions about the distinctive features of living organisms, at least since Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgement, the term ‘self-assembly’ has only been used for a few decades as it became a hot research topic with the emergence of nanotechnology. Could it be considered as an attempt at reducing vital organization to a sort of assembly line of molecules? Considering the context of research on self-assembly I argue that the shift of attention (...) from self-organization to self-assembly does not really challenge the boundary between chemistry and biology. Self-assembly was first and foremost investigated in an engineering context as a strategy for manufacturing without human intervention and did not raise new perspectives on the emergence of vital organization itself. However self-assembly implies metaphysical assumptions that this paper tries to disentangle. It first describes the emergence of self-assembly as a research field in the context of materials science and nanotechnology. The second section outlines the metaphysical implications and will emphasize a sharp contrast between the ontology underlying two practices of self-assembly developed under the umbrella of synthetic biology. And unexpectedly, we shall see that chemists are less on the reductionist side than most synthetic biologists. Finally, the third section ventures some reflections on the kind of design involved in self-assembly practices. (shrink)

Cet article étudie l’étendue de la convergence réelle entre les nanotechnologies et la biologie de synthèse, symbole des technosciences biologiques. Pour traiter la question de la dichotomie entre le niveau des objets auquel on observe un processus de pluralisation plutôt qu’une convergence, et le niveau des discours, où le scénario de la convergence semble rester l’explication dominante, nous développons une analyse des disciplines comme dispositifs au sens de Foucault. Cela permet de décrire précisément les différentes strates composant les dispositifs et (...) leurs dynamiques. La convergence des Nanotechnologies, des Biotechnologies, des technologies de l’Information et des sciences Cognitives apparaît alors comme l’interprétation réductrice d’un contexte scientifique et technologique complexe. (shrink)

Cet article étudie l’étendue de la convergence réelle entre les nanotechnologies et la biologie de synthèse, symbole des technosciences biologiques. Pour traiter la question de la dichotomie entre le niveau des objets auquel on observe un processus de pluralisation plutôt qu’une convergence, et le niveau des discours, où le scénario de la convergence semble rester l’explication dominante, nous développons une analyse des disciplines comme dispositifs au sens de Foucault. Cela permet de décrire précisément les différentes strates composant les dispositifs et (...) leurs dynamiques. La convergence des Nanotechnologies, des Biotechnologies, des technologies de l’Information et des sciences Cognitives (convergence NBIC) apparaît alors comme l’interprétation réductrice d’un contexte scientifique et technologique complexe. (shrink)

A recurrent theme in the characterization of synthetic biology is the role of engineering. This theme is widespread in the accounts of scholars studying this field and the biologists working in it, in those of the biologists themselves, as well as in policy documents. The aim of this article is to open this black-box of engineering that is supposed to influence and change contemporary life sciences. Too often, both synthetic biologists and their critics assume a very narrow understanding of what (...) engineering is about, resulting in an unfruitful debate about whether synthetic biology possesses genuine engineering methodologies or not. By looking in more detail to the diversity of engineering conceptions in debates concerning synthetic biology, a richer perspective can be developed. In this article, I will examine five influential ways in which engineering is understood in these debates, namely engineering as applied science, as rational methodology, context-sensitive practice, cunning activity or design. The claim is first of all thus to argue that engineering must not be seen as something stable or characterized by a fixed essence. It rather has multiple meanings and interpretations. Secondly, the claim is that most of the debates on synthetic biology cannot be indifferent towards the question which conception of engineering is at play, since the specific questions and concerns that pop up depend to a great extent on the precise conception of engineering one has in account. Many of the existing debates around synthetic biology can thus be reinterpreted and readdressed once one is aware of which conception of engineering is at play. (shrink)

This article examines how minimal genome research mobilizes philosophical concepts such as minimality and essentiality. Following a historical approach the article aims to uncover what function this terminology plays and which problems are raised by them. Specifically, four historical moments are examined, linked to the work of Harold J. Morowitz, Mitsuhiro Itaya, Eugene Koonin and Arcady Mushegian, and J. Craig Venter. What this survey shows is a historical shift away from historical questions about life or descriptive questions about specific organisms (...) towards questions that explore biological possibilities: what are possible forms of minimal genomes, regardless of whether they exist in nature? Moreover, it highlights a fundamental ambiguity at work in minimal genome research between a universality claim and a standardization claim: does a minimal genome refer to the minimal gene set for any organism whatsoever? Or does it refer rather to a gene set that will provide stable, robust and predictable behaviour, suited for biotechnological applications? Two diagnoses are proposed for this ambiguity: a philosophical diagnosis of how minimal genome research either misunderstands the ontology of biological entities or philosophically misarticulates scientific practice. Secondly, a historical diagnosis that suggests that this ambiguity is part of a broader shift towards technoscience. (shrink)

Review of: Sophia Roosth, Synthetic: How Life Got Made (University of Chicago Press, 2017); and Andrew S. Balmer, Katie Bulpin, and Susan Molyneux-Hodgson, Synthetic Biology: A Sociology of Changing Practices (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).

This paper presents a collaboration between social scientists and a chemist exploring the promises for new therapy development at the intersection between synthetic biology and nanotechnology. Drawing from ethnographic studies of laboratories and a recorded discussion between the three authors, we interrogate the metaphors that underpin what Mackenzie has identified as a recursive relationship in the iconography of the life sciences and its infrastructure. Focusing specifically on the use of gene editing techniques in synthetic biology and bio-nanotechnology, we focus our (...) analysis on the key metaphors of ‘evolutionary life as hodge-podge’ within which ‘cutting’ of DNA and the ‘sticking’ and ‘binding’ of engineered particles to proteins can be performed by researchers in laboratory settings. Taken together, we argue that these metaphors are consequential for understanding metaphors of life-as-machine and the prevalence of notions of ‘engineering life’. Exploring the ways in which notions of cutting, targeting and life as an evolutionary hodgepodge prefigure a more contingent notion of engineering and synthesis we close by considering the interpretive implications for ethnomethodological approaches to contemporary life science research. (shrink)

La biología de sistemas y la biología sintética pueden ser consideradas como ejemplos de tecnociencias emergentes. Están esencialmente marcadas por promesas de futuro y por visiones, por una cierta lógica y uso de términos, por determinadas formas de organización social, por la integración en un régimen específico de fomento e innovación, así como por una matriz característica de orientaciones para la praxis de investigación. Esta constitución específica de la biología de sistemas y de la biología sintética tiene, por su parte, (...) consecuencias fundamentales para la práctica científica, su análisis y su gobierno. (shrink)

-/- The aim of this paper is to grasp the relevant distinctions between various ways in which models and simulations in Artificial Intelligence (AI) relate to cognitive phenomena. In order to get a systematic picture, a taxonomy is developed that is based on the coordinates of formal versus material analogies and theory-guided versus pre-theoretic models in science. These distinctions have parallels in the computational versus mimetic aspects and in analytic versus exploratory types of computer simulation. The proposed taxonomy cuts across (...) the traditional dichotomies between symbolic and embodied AI, general intelligence and symbol and intelligence and cognitive simulation and human/non-human-like AI. -/- According to the taxonomy proposed here, one can distinguish between four distinct general approaches that figured prominently in early and classical AI, and that have partly developed into distinct research programs: first, phenomenal simulations (e.g., Turing’s “imitation game”); second, simulations that explore general-level formal isomorphisms in pursuit of a general theory of intelligence (e.g., logic-based AI); third, simulations as exploratory material models that serve to develop theoretical accounts of cognitive processes (e.g., Marr’s stages of visual processing and classical connectionism); and fourth, simulations as strictly formal models of a theory of computation that postulates cognitive processes to be isomorphic with computational processes (strong symbolic AI). -/- In continuation of pragmatic views of the modes of modeling and simulating world affairs, this taxonomy of approaches to modeling in AI helps to elucidate how available computational concepts and simulational resources contribute to the modes of representation and theory development in AI research—and what made that research program uniquely dependent on them. (shrink)

Morphological engineering is an emerging research area in synthetic biology. In 2008 “synthetic morphology” was proposed as a prospective approach to engineering self-constructing anatomies by Jamie A. Davies of the University of Edinburgh. Synthetic morphology can establish a new paradigm, according to Davies, insofar as “cells can be programmed to organize themselves into specific, designed arrangements, structures and tissues.” It is obvious that this new approach will extrapolate morphology into a new realm beyond the traditional logic of morphological research. However, (...) synthetic morphology is a highly idealized vision of morphology which derives its visionary ideas from morphological engineering and mathematical idealizations in order to understand the principles of molecular morphology. Thus, the question is, if this approach will help to understand morphogenesis better or if it will just enable biologists to engineer morphogenesis. The paper investigates the development of synthetic morphology and its relation to synthetic biology as well as its epistemic gains. (shrink)

Inspired by the success of synthesising organic substances by Friedrich Wöhler in 1828, the vision of creating life in the laboratory synthetically has become increasingly accessible for today’s synthetic biology and synthetic genomics, respectively. The engineering of biology – a contemporary version of the liaison of technology and organic form – creates cellular machines, biobricks, biomolecular ‘borgs’, and entire synthetic genomes of artificial organisms. Besides major ethical concerns, the shift in scientific epistemology is of interest. Unlike classical analytical science, synthetic (...) science understands by a process of generation, through which myriads of new things are created, dramatically changing the living environment. (shrink)

In this article, two different claims about nature are discussed. On the one hand, environmental philosophy has forced us to reflect on our position within nature. We are not the masters of nature as was claimed before. On the other hand there are the recent developments within synthetic biology. It claims that, now at last, we can be the masters of nature we have never been before. The question is then raised how these two claims must be related to one (...) another. Rather than stating that they are completely irreconcilable, I will argue for a dialogue aimed to discuss the differences and similarities. The claim is that we should not see it as two successive temporal phases of our relation to nature, but two tendencies that can coexist. (shrink)

Synthetic biology aims to synthesize novel biological systems or redesign existing ones. The field has raised numerous philosophical questions, but most especially what is novel to this field. In this article I argue for a novel take, since the dominant ways to understand synthetic biology’s specificity each face problems. Inspired by the examination of the work of a number of chemists, I argue that synthetic biology differentiates itself by a new regime of articulation, i.e. a new way of articulating the (...) questions and phenomena it wants to address. Instead of describing actual existing biological systems, the field aims to describe biological possibilities. In the second part I corroborate this hypothesis through a comparison between early research in the field of the origins of life and contemporary synthetic biologists, who are not so much interested in the historical origin of life on Earth, but rather in a universal biology of the possible origins of any life whatsoever. (shrink)