Scientific iconoclasm and active imagination: synthetic cells as techno-scientific mandalas

Life Sciences, Society and Policy
Hub Zwart

Abstract

Metaphors allow us to come to terms with abstract and complex information, by comparing it to something which is structured, familiar and concrete. Although modern science is "iconoclastic", as Gaston Bachelard phrases it (i.e. bent on replacing living entities by symbolic data: e.g. biochemical and mathematical symbols and codes), scientists are at the same time prolific producers of metaphoric images themselves. Synthetic biology is an outstanding example of a technoscientific discourse replete with metaphors, including textual metaphors such as the "Morse code" of life, the "barcode" of life and the "book" of life. This paper focuses on a different type of metaphor, however, namely on the archetypal metaphor of the mandala as a symbol of restored unity and wholeness. Notably, mandala images emerge in textual materials (papers, posters, PowerPoints, etc.) related to one of the new "frontiers" of contemporary technoscience, namely the building of a synthetic cell: a laboratory artefact that functions like a cell and is even able to replicate itself. The mandala symbol suggests that, after living systems have been successfully reduced to the elementary building blocks and barcodes of life, the time has now come to put these fra...Continue Reading

References

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Nov 13, 2008·Systems and Synthetic Biology·Filippo ContiAlessandro Giuliani
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Sep 29, 2011·Systems and Synthetic Biology·Manuel PorcarAndrés Moya
Oct 5, 2011·Medicine, Health Care, and Philosophy·Hub Zwart
Nov 24, 2011·The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters·Neha P KamatDaniel A Hammer
Oct 17, 2015·Trends in Cell Biology·Javier Carrera, Markus W Covert
Nov 7, 2016·Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution·Masami Hasegawa
Aug 30, 2017·Life Sciences, Society and Policy·Carmen McLeod, Brigitte Nerlich

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