title: From bricolage to BioBricks™: Synthetic biology and rational design.
abstract: Synthetic biology is often described as a project that applies rational design methods to the organic world. Although humans have influenced organic lineages in many ways, it is nonetheless reasonable to place synthetic biology towards one end of a continuum between purely 'blind' processes of organic modification at one extreme, and wholly rational, design-led processes at the other. An example from evolutionary electronics illustrates some of the constraints imposed by the rational design methodology itself. These constraints reinforce the limitations of the synthetic biology ideal, limitations that are often freely acknowledged by synthetic biology's own practitioners. The synthetic biology methodology reflects a series of constraints imposed on finite human designers who wish, as far as is practicable, to communicate with each other and to intervene in nature in reasonably targeted and well-understood ways. This is better understood as indicative of an underlying awareness of human limitations, rather than as expressive of an objectionable impulse to mastery over nature.
authors.affiliation: University of Cambridge, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Free School Lane, Cambridge CB2 3RH, UK. Electronic address: tml1000@cam.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Tim
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Lewens
mesh_terms: D005075:Biological Evolution; D001709:Biotechnology; D006801:Humans; D019369:Life; D058615:Synthetic Biology / Q000379:methods
keywords: Directed evolution; Ethics; Evolutionary electronics; Rational design; Synthetic biology