Practicing Dialectics of Technoscience during the Anthropocene

Hub Zwart

doi:10.1007/s10699-020-09738-1

Abstract

This paper develops a dialectical methodology for assessing technoscience during the Anthropocene. How to practice Hegelian dialectics of technoscience today? First of all, dialectics is developed here in close interaction with contemporary technoscientific research endeavours, which are addressed from a position of proximity and from an ‘oblique’ perspective. Contrary to empirical (sociological or ethnographical) research, the focus is on how basic concepts of life, nature and technology are acted out in practice. Notably, this paper zooms in on a synthetic cell project called BaSyC as a concrete instantiation of converging views of life, nature and technology currently at work in technoscience. While dialectics is used to explore the significance of this project (of this ‘experience’ in the dialectical sense), the synthetic cell as a case study also allows us to demonstrate the remarkable relevance of dialectics for understanding contemporary research, notably because it incites us to see the synthetic cell project as a concrete exemplification of life under Anthropocenic conditions. Should we assess the synthetic cell as the ultimate realisation of the technoscientific will to control and optimise life, or rather as an effort to bridge the disruptive collision between technoscience and nature, or both?

Highlights

Rethinking the Philosophical PositionTo practice philosophy under current (Anthropocenic) conditions, philosophers should know their proper place and position vis-à-vis other research fields—or faculties, as Kant (1798/2005) phrased it, such as the exact life sciences and the social sciences
As Kant (1798/2005) convincingly argued, the university is a battle-field where “conflicts between faculties” rage,1 how to situate ourselves on the global campus? For example: should we see ourselves primarily as guardians of lost worlds of thought, or should we rather develop a critical assessment of current developments at other faculties?
If we look at science from an oblique perspective, Hegel argues, what inevitably strikes us is the resolve of science not to rely on the authority of others (1807/1973, p. 73): the desire to produce knowledge yourself and to accept only your own products as valid and convincing, even if this initially entails a dramatic loss of knowledge

Summary

Introduction

To practice philosophy under current (Anthropocenic) conditions, philosophers should know their proper place and position vis-à-vis other (more empirical) research fields—or faculties, as Kant (1798/2005) phrased it—, such as the exact life sciences and the social sciences. Already as a philosophy student I encountered these two positions, like signposts pointing in opposite directions (either towards author studies or towards more applied forms of philosophical analysis) It is a false dichotomy, I will argue, because a philosophical assessment of contemporary technoscience is only possible against the backdrop of an extended temporal horizon and requires a solid embedding in the history of philosophical thinking. There is more philosophy at work in contemporary technoscience than scientists (and philosophers, for that matter) tend to be aware of, and our vocation is to bring This inherent philosophy (these latent philosophemes) to the fore, so as to become conscious of them and question them, from a position of close proximity, in dialogue with the practicing scientists involved. The Anthropocene concept refers precisely to this: the mutual interpenetration of contemporary technoscience and the global lifeworld (Lemmens and Hui 2017)

The Oblique Perspective

Creating a Synthetic Cell In Vitro

The Inherent Negativity of Technoscience

The Synthetic Cell Project

The Synthetic Cell and the Anthropocene