Biology and Philosophy 27 (1):29-48 (2012)
Abstract |
Social scientific and humanistic research on synthetic biology has focused quite narrowly on questions of epistemology and ELSI. I suggest that to understand this discipline in its full scope, researchers must turn to the objects of the field—synthetic biological artifacts—and study them as the objects in the making of a science yet to be made. I consider one fundamentally important question: how should we understand the material products of synthetic biology? Practitioners in the field, employing a consistent technological optic in the study and construction of biological systems, routinely employ the mantra ‘biology is technology’. I explore this categorization. By employing an established definition of technological artifects drawn from the philosophy of technology, I explore the appropriateness of attributing to synthetic biological artifacts the four criteria of materiality, intentional design, functionality, and normativity. I then explore a variety of accounts of natural kinds. I demonstrate that synthetic biological artifacts fit each kind imperfectly, and display a concomitant ontological ‘messiness’. I argue that this classificatory ambivalence is a product of the field’s own nascence, and posit that further work on kinds might help synthetic biology evaluate its existing commitments and practices
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DOI | 10.1007/s10539-011-9288-9 |
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References found in this work BETA
Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories: New Foundations for Realism.Ruth Garrett Millikan - 1984 - MIT Press.
The Disorder of Things: Metaphysical Foundations of the Disunity of Science.John Dupré - 1993 - Harvard University Press.
Realism, Anti-Foundationalism and the Enthusiasm for Natural Kinds.Richard Boyd - 1991 - Philosophical Studies 61 (1):127-148.
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Citations of this work BETA
Reengineering Metaphysics: Modularity, Parthood, and Evolvability in Metabolic Engineering.Catherine Kendig & Todd T. Eckdahl - 2017 - Philosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology 9 (8).
Synthetic Biology Between Technoscience and Thing Knowledge.Axel Gelfert - 2013 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 44 (2):141-149.
Synthetic Biology and Genetic Causation.Gry Oftedal & Veli-Pekka Parkkinen - 2013 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 44 (2):208-216.
Rational Engineering Principles in Synthetic Biology: A Framework for Quantitative Analysis and an Initial Assessment.Bernd Giese, Stefan Koenigstein, Henning Wigger, Jan C. Schmidt & Arnim von Gleich - 2013 - Biological Theory 8 (4):324-333.
Metabolism Instead of Machine: Towards an Ontology of Hybrids.Julia Rijssenbeek, Vincent Blok & Zoë Robaey - 2022 - Philosophy and Technology 35 (3):1-23.
View all 8 citations / Add more citations
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