Testing Rationality in Synthetic Biology

• In Event: Heterogeneity, Humility and Hegemony: Reflections on Engineering Life

Abstract

Synthetic biology has made use of established engineering disciplines as exemplars in its efforts to distinguish, develop and promote itself. Synthetic biologists shape their practices and their discourse in order to emulate engineering work and talk, respectively. The concept of ‘rational design’ has been used by many synthetic biologists to define the field’s ambitions, practices, products and potential. Notions of ‘rationality’ have also encouraged efforts to pursue systematic design, assembly and testing, predictable functionality, quantifiable data, and codifiable procedures.

Because synthetic biologists have accorded rationality a privileged position in their field, it also serves as a hegemonic ideal. Practitioners, their work and their outputs are expected to conform to dominant norms and values based on a shared understanding of rationality. As a hegemonic belief, it also conceals the underlying diversity of the field and its members.

I believe that rationality’s pre-eminence also produces its vulnerability. Testing, the third of four components of synthetic biology’s rational ‘design-build-test-learn cycle,’ is often described as the most trying part of the systematic process. Hindrances like limited metrological tools and the difficulties of quantifying biological phenomena make testing functional biotechnologies very challenging. Testing is also a space in which to assess the effectiveness and validity of hegemonic rationality. Perhaps testing is the hardest part of the design cycle because it can call into question one of synthetic biology’s seemingly inviolable components. Testing hindrances and failures may serve to dispute the restrictive dominance of rationality.

Author

• Pablo Schyfter, Science, Technology and Innovation Studies, The University of Edinburgh