Technological biology? Things and kinds in synthetic biology

Schyfter, Pablo

doi:10.1007/s10539-011-9288-9

Cited by 15 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 51 publications

(38 reference statements)

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“…Referring to a series of recent studies, we investigated the methods of assembly used and the evolu-11 Schyfter (2012) considers and evaluates the appropriateness of conceiving the products of synthetic biological research as kinds of technological objects. Our discussion differs from his insofar as we take a practice-based account of kinds that focuses on kinds of modules.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Synthetic biological research, as well as the products and processes that it creates, sits in a liminal position between engineered technological kinds and natural biological kinds (see Schyfter 2012). This has been seen as a difficult or messy position to be in with regard to kindhood and discipline-building insofar as that to which a discipline focuses its research and questions on is delimited by the kinds that define it.…”

Section: Is Semisynthetic Evolvability Still Evolvability?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…and, What kinds of kinds are the kinds within the discipline of synthetic biology? Schyfter (2012) suggests what he calls an initial "exploration into things and kinds" offering a "first look analysis" of kindhood for the products of synthetic biology and suggests that they fit imperfectly within both technological kinds and natural biological kinds.…”

Section: Modulehood As a Property Of Agent-centered Artifactsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Reengineering Metaphysics: Modularity, Parthood, and Evolvability in Metabolic Engineering

Kendig¹,

Eckdahl²

2017

Philosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology

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The premise of biological modularity is an ontological claim that appears to come out of practice. We understand that the biological world is modular because we can manipulate different parts of organisms in ways that would only work if there were discrete parts that were interchangeable. This is the foundation of the BioBrick assembly method widely used in synthetic biology. It is one of a number of methods that allows practitioners to construct and reconstruct biological pathways and devices using DNA libraries of standardized parts with known functions. In this paper, we investigate how the practice of synthetic biology reconfigures biological understanding of the key concepts of modularity and evolvability. We illustrate how this practice approach takes engineering knowledge and uses it to try to understand biological organization by showing how the construction of functional parts and processes can be used in synthetic experimental evolution. We introduce a new approach within synthetic biology that uses the premise of a parts-based ontology together with that of organismal self-organization to optimize orthogonal metabolic pathways in E. coli. We then use this and other examples to help characterize semisynthetic categories of modularity, parthood, and evolvability within the discipline. Keywords modularity • BioBrick assembly • evolvability • parts-based ontology • self-organization Part of a special issue, Ontologies of Living Beings, guest-edited by A. M. Ferner and Thomas PradeuEditorial introduction: Catherine Kendig and Todd Eckdahl defend and illustrate a practice-based view of metaphysics of science. The target of their paper is the emerging and fascinating field of synthetic biology-a bioengineering domain that focuses on designing and assembling biological entities. The challenge they discuss is the following: What happens, ontologically-speaking, when as well as describing biological entities we start manufacturing new ones?

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Is Semisynthetic Evolvability Still Evolvability?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Modulehood As a Property Of Agent-centered Artifactsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Reengineering Metaphysics: Modularity, Parthood, and Evolvability in Metabolic Engineering

Kendig¹,

Eckdahl²

2017

Philosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology

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show abstract

“…Synthetic biology (SB) is primarily an application-focused field attempting to develop and apply a systematic engineering approach to the design and construction of new biological systems and cells at the genetic level [1,2]. It is a new area of biological research that integrates science and engineering with an aim to design and construct novel and useful biological systems which are not found in nature.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Synthetic Biology: A Good Choice for Medicinal Advances

Reddy¹

2015

Curr Synthetic Sys Biol

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“…Schyfter (2012) considers and evaluates the appropriateness of conceiving the products of synthetic biological research as kinds of technological objects. The discussion here differs from his insofar as I take a practice-based account of kinds that focuses on kinds of modules (see alsoSprinzak and Elowitz 2005;Keller 2009).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Grounding Knowledge and Normative Valuation in Agent-Based Action and Scientific Commitment

Kendig

2018

Philosophies and Sociologies of Bioethics

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If the goal of scientists is the acquisition of knowledge, then knowledge in general and scientific explanation in particular can surely be understood to be the product of that pursuit articulated as a unified set of observation statements. However, those focusing on scientific practice, disagree. They claim that knowledge is always understood with reference to a particular context and in light of the actions of an epistemic agent. Knowledge-making activities are not the result of universal rules for deriving explanation from facts but the result of critical intersubjective modes of investigation. A science-in-practice approach turns our attention to the activities of and communication between scientists in order to understand and characterize the nature of scientific inquiry. As such, it is part of what has been referred to as the practice turn. 1 This refocusing of science on scientific practices highlights the activities that are revealed when we look at the processes and doings of science by scientists and scientific communities (e.g. hypothesizing, testing, experimenting, theorizing, measuring) rather than exclusively on the products of science (e.g. knowledge, equations, devices, theories). The practice turn in philosophy of science is not an apologetic for an andpractice-too approach to the metaphysics of science. A focus on practice provides a route to understanding the nature of the world in ways that have been, until recently, marginalized by aggressive demarcationist interests within traditional philosophy of science. This form of aggressive demarcationism held that research seeking to investigate scientific activity and the work of scientists was not really philosophy but just

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Technological biology? Things and kinds in synthetic biology

Cited by 15 publications

References 51 publications

Reengineering Metaphysics: Modularity, Parthood, and Evolvability in Metabolic Engineering

Reengineering Metaphysics: Modularity, Parthood, and Evolvability in Metabolic Engineering

Synthetic Biology: A Good Choice for Medicinal Advances

Grounding Knowledge and Normative Valuation in Agent-Based Action and Scientific Commitment

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