From 2012.igem.org

• 1 Overview
  • 1.1 1.PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS
  • 1.2 2.EDUCATIONAL OUTREACH
  • 1.3 3.PUBLIC OUTREACH

Overview

The human practices project of our team did not concentrate on inquiring the ethical, social and legal implications of the synthetic biology, but on analysing what the actual sources of these diverse problems are. We believe that there is a necessary step before ethical, social and legal deliberations of synthetic biology can be fruitful. Firstly, we need to examine if these problems are actual problems at all, and not taking them as real facts. With these considerations we tried to leaved aside all ‘small-talk-philosophy’ and futuristic ethical ‘just-so-stories’ in order to conduct a detailed philosophical analysis of the epistemology of synthetic biology and the ontology of its products. For this, we combined state-of the-art-approaches of three fields of analytic philosophy (philosophy of technology, philosophy of biology and philosophy of language) to deliver consistent judgements. The results of this philosophical analysis reveal a number of epistemological deficits of the synthetic biology, but also offer the possibility of a consistent epistemological foundation of it. In addition to the philosophical analysis we also tried to didactically inform people of different ages about the nascent field of synthetic biology, in order to facilitate the acceptance and to avoid pre-judgements among the broad public. We worked with small children extracting DNA, visited high schools, hold lectures for undergraduates and opened our doors to visitors and school students. Moreover, we presented our project in a congress in Berlin and gave three interviews in order reach a broader public. In summary, we can divide our human practices project in three main categories:

1.PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS

2.EDUCATIONAL OUTREACH

3.PUBLIC OUTREACH