Philosophy and Synthetic Biology: the BrisSynBio Experiment

Excerpt

The affinity or attraction of philosophy to “synthetic biology” starts already with the difficulty in defining synthetic biology or identifying clearly its origins (see [1] for a discussion of this from a molecular biology standpoint). While “synthetic biology” in its current incarnation is generally understood to have coalesced as an umbrella term around the beginning of the current century, usage of the term in the same sense that it is used today dates back to the beginning of the twentieth century—in 1912, Stephane Leduc published a book titled La Biologie Synthétique crediting Moritz Traube with the creation of the first artificial cell.¹ This definitional problem, including the sub-question of what techniques and applications do or do not fall under the umbrella of synthetic biology, takes on historical, epistemological and even ontological significance. However, adding to the philosophical intrigue of synthetic biology is that historical and epistemological questions in the field are closely intertwined not only with ethical and even ontological issues but also with the perceived economic and subsequent political potentials of synthetic biology. For example, the “8 great technologies” programme, through which the BrisSynBio Synthetic Biology Research Centre² was funded,³ was explicitly conceived to “accelerate commercialisation of technologies where the UK is set to be a global leader”.⁴ The definition and scope of synthetic biology thus acquires a political, economic and ethical significance as well as an epistemological one. This is also clear in how the European Commission has defined the term. In the EC’s 2005 report on “Synthetic Biology Applying Engineering to Biology”: …