Abstract
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 (Futures 48:5-12 2013) 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.
Highlights
In their history of genetic research – and the more recent development of genomic and postgenomic paradigms across the contemporary life sciences – Barnes and Dupré (2008) – contend that “chromosomes and their DNA need to be understood as material things all the time, even when they are transferring information” (p. 66)
Rather than the truth of metaphorical representations of synthetic biology and gene editing (Nelson et al, 2015), we argue that metaphorical formulations – that speak of the capabilities and capacities afforded by gene editing – offer a ‘navigational resource’ in charting the cultural meanings of bioscientific research in a cultural context increasingly defined by both the proliferation of promissory narratives and the emergence of a more ambivalent and reflexive attitude toward promises of technological breakthroughs and progress (Kearnes and Wynne 2007, Kerr and Cunningham-Burley 2000, Pickersgill 2013)
Analyses of metaphors and analogies have constituted a critical method in the development of interpretive and ethnomethodological approaches in the field of science and technology studies
Summary
In their history of genetic research – and the more recent development of genomic and postgenomic paradigms across the contemporary life sciences – Barnes and Dupré (2008) – contend that “chromosomes and their DNA need to be understood as material things all the time, even when they are transferring information” (p. 66).
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