Ambivalences of Creating Life
Societal and Philosophical Dimensions of Synthetic Biology
[Leben herstellen. Ein ambivalentes Unterfangen]

“Synthetic biology” labels a new technoscientific field with many different facets and agendas. One common aim is to “create life,” primarily through engineering principles to design and modify biological systems for human use. In a broader context, the topic has become one of the prime cases to legitimize processes associated with the political agenda of using (bio)technological innovation to solve global problems. This requires analyses on both a conceptual and a metaphysical level: We should resolve conceptual ambiguities so that we can agree on what we are talking about, and we need to spell out our agendas to see our disagreements more clearly.
This book is based on the interdisciplinary summer school Analyzing the societal dimensions of synthetic biology, which took place in Berlin in September 2014. The contributions address controversial discussions around the philosophical examination, public perception, moral evaluation, and governance of synthetic biology.