Synthetic Anthropos
Synthetic Anthropos is a project of the Berkeley Human Practices Lab, lead by Paul Rabinow.
Synthesis: design and composition of objects
Anthropos: the human thing
Synthetic Anthropos: artful design and composition of the human thing
Human Practices
Human Practices is a project to compose new equipmental platforms appropriate to the emergent figure of synthetic anthropos. Such compositional work requires diagnostics: analysis and synthesis.
Ontology:
The issues of what things are, which new things are significant, how they are significant, and how one knows they are new and significant, are of prime importance pragmatically, culturally, and philosophically. Whatever else they do, the post-genomic science will bring new things into the world.
The term that Western philosophy has used to describe reflection on the essence of objects is ontology. Constructing a general ontology is not the task proposed here. Rather, we propose an anthropology of the contemporary world; one which designs techniques to change philosophic discussions into topics of inquiry.
How things come into existence, are named, sustained, distributed, and modified is an issue of primary importance. What stakes are introduced or modulated by such new objects, and how ethical and political equipment can or should be adapted to them is a question of critical importance.
Ethics:
We hold that bio-ethics, as frequently positioned in official settings, undervalues the extent to which ethics and science can play a mutually formative role.
Although such work remains valuable for work on the problems it was constructed to deal with. Emergent things require new equipment. Such equipment is designed to contribute to a “flourishing existence” (eudaemonia). Eudaemonia should not be confused with technical optimization, as capacities are not already known.
The question of what constitutes a good life today, and the contribution of the bio-sciences to that form of life must be posed and re-posed. We are persuaded that within collaborative structures biology, ethics and anthropology can orient practice to the flourishing as both telos and mode of operation.
Synthetic Biology:
Synthetic biology is a maturing scientific discipline that combines science and engineering in order to design and build novel biological functions and systems. This includes the design and construction of new biological parts, devices, and systems (e.g., tumor-seeking microbes for cancer treatment), as well as the re-design of existing, natural biological systems for useful purposes (e.g., photosynthetic systems to produce energy).
SynBERC:
The Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center (SynBERC) is a multi-institution research effort to lay the foundation for the emerging field of synthetic biology. SynBERC’s vision is to catalyze biology as an engineering discipline by developing the foundational understanding and technologies to allow researchers to design and build standardized, integrated biological systems to accomplish many particular tasks.
SynBERC is a National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center. SynBERC is a program of the California Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Research (QB3).
CASES
Diagnostics
CONCEPTUAL INVENTORY
Diagnostics
http://anthropos-lab.net/collaborations/synthetic-anthropos/
