10 September 2015

Ambivalences of Creating Life: Societal and Philosophical Dimensions of Synthetic Biology

New synbio book

with contribution by PhD student Britt Wray on Public Engagement in Synthetic Biology

Book: Ambivalences of Creating LifeAbout the book:
"Synthetic biology" is the label of a new technoscientific field with many different facets and agendas. One common aim is to "create life", primarily by using engineering principles to design and modify biological systems for human use. In a wider context, the topic has become one of the big cases in the legitimization processes associated with the political agenda to solve global problems with the aid of (bio-)technological innovation. Conceptual-level and meta-level analyses are needed: we should sort out conceptual ambiguities to agree on what we talk about, and we need to spell out agendas to see the disagreements clearly. The contributions address controversial discussions around the philosophical examination, public perception, moral evaluation and governance of synthetic biology.

Ambivalences of Creating Life: Societal and Philosophical Dimensions of Synthetic Biology. Editors: Hagen, Kristin, Engelhard, Margret, Toepfer, Georg (Eds.) 2015

Britt WrayCenter for Synbio PhD student Britt Wray authored chapter 8 entitled: Public Engagement in Synthetic Biology: “Experts”, “Diplomats” and the Creativity of “Idiots” on pages 177-197

https://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319210872