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Synthetic Biology—Playing Games?

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Ambivalences of Creating Life

Part of the book series: Ethics of Science and Technology Assessment ((ETHICSSCI,volume 45))

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Abstract

Engineering principles such as standardization and modularization are important elements of synthetic biology. At the same time, terms like “playing” and “having fun” are commonly used about synthetic biology. In this chapter I analyze the notion of play in the context of synthetic biology. While playfulness is not a novel component in the life sciences, the expressly desired playful component can be seen as a specific characteristic of synthetic biology. There are two different modes of creative scientific findings relevant in the sciences: the first mode is “playing with ideas” and the second mode the so-called “bricolage”, no purposeless game but rather a constructive way to achieve scientific findings. In application-oriented synthetic biology, “bricolage” is the major mode. This reveals that the ambivalent playful character of synthetic biology as mere and/or hazardous play is, among others, a perspective that could make us lose sight of the potential hazards of synthetic biology, as well as of its orientation towards academic and financial profit, and also of the responsibility dimension related to these issues.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In the media, the new quality of synthetic biology seems indisputable (Köchy 2012a, pp. 33–49). However, Potthast (2009, p. 43) deemed it not appreciable whether synthetic biology actually represented a paradigmatic shift. Due to the transitional period in which synthetic biology was at that time and still is at present, it is possible that the alleged paradigmatic shift is just a pretense to awake the public interest and the interest of solvent sponsors, without practicing anything fundamentally new.

  2. 2.

    http://parts.igem.org/Main_Page. Accessed 12 Nov 2014.

  3. 3.

    Orig. “Spielwiese der Visionen”.

  4. 4.

    Additionally, every iGEM-team is accompanied by a supervisor and a parallel overgraduate section developed in recent years.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. International Centre for Ethics in the Sciences and Humanities (IZEW), Wilhelmstraße 19, 72074, Tübingen, Germany

    Leona Litterst

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  1. Leona Litterst
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Correspondence to Leona Litterst .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. EA European Academy of Technology and Innovation Assessment GmbH, Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler, Germany

    Kristin Hagen

  2. EA European Academy of Technology and Innovation Assessment GmbH, Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler, Germany

    Margret Engelhard

  3. Center for Literary and Cultural Research Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Georg Toepfer

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Litterst, L. (2016). Synthetic Biology—Playing Games?. In: Hagen, K., Engelhard, M., Toepfer, G. (eds) Ambivalences of Creating Life. Ethics of Science and Technology Assessment, vol 45. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21088-9_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21088-9_12

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