On manufactured life and the biology of the impossible

Arantza Etxeberria, Marila Lázaro

Resumen


This paper aims to discuss and reflect on the possible and desirable limits of natural and manufactured life. Many ideas of how fabricated life could be, as well as many decisions about it, depend upon the notion of life one adopts. We set about from a notion of life as autonomy, in which the main property of organisms is that of autopoiesis: a living being produces itself. Yet, two other forms of poiesis or production that affect life are biotechnology, able to manipulate living organisms within the limits of the possible, and art, which may “create” new living forms, even non-existent in nature. A consideration of the forms of life produced by biotechnology and art poses urgent problems not always solvable by the epistemic or biological approaches to life.

 

Key words: Autonomy, constraints, biotechnology, art, evolution, monsters.

 


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