Scientists Don't Need No Stinking Philosophy

It seems we're on a roll, and not a very good one, at that:

I’m Creating Artificial Life . . .: "

I read an article earlier today about a scientist, Craig Venter, who believes that the artificial chromosome he has created from lab chemicals will be able to take over a donor bacterium cell in order to replicate and metabolize. While the construction of an artificial 381 gene, 580K base pair chromosome has not been done before, I wonder why this announcement comes prior to verifying that this chromosome will in fact work as he plans.

While it appears to me that at this point the concerns here are more over safety than morality, what does cause me pause is the attitude he seems to display in the comments attributed to him. Venter told the reporter that this is:

‘a very important philosophical step in the history of our species. We are going from reading our genetic code to the ability to write it. That gives us the hypothetical ability to do things never contemplated before’.

The phrase ‘philosophical step in the history of our species’ seems quite misplaced for a scientist. What does he mean by this? At most here, as I understand it, is that if he is successful he may coax a cell of one bacterium species to replicate according to the genome of an artificially assembled chromosome that was based upon another bacterium’s genetic sequence which had been pared down to the minimum they think necessary to support life. I suppose that this could mean that he thinks that this project in some way brings man more to the level of creation ex nihilo? If this is what he is getting at, it seems that he ought to keep his day job or go back and take some classical philosophy.

The final quotation is just as vexing. He states:

‘We are not afraid to take on things that are important just because they stimulate thinking,’ he said. ‘We are dealing in big ideas. We are trying to create a new value system for life. When dealing at this scale, you can’t expect everybody to be happy.’

Well, again, it seems that his purpose is not so much for improving life and healing disease, but in dealing with’big issues’ and ‘trying to create new value systems for life.’ Perhaps this might be the reason for his early announcement. A failure might dampen or even put the breaks on his ability to deal with big issues and create new value systems. For that he needs media attention. If his primary interest for the sake of the science and medicine, the artificial chromosome construction would probably be sufficient even if he cannot get the last phase to work.

I dunno. This sounds to me more like the ‘science’ of Richard Dawkins than Louis Pasteur. That is, the abuse of science to promote an ideology. I don’t want to say megalomaniacal ideology but does this not smell like an attempt to wangle an apparently significant biotechnical achievement into a bully pulpit for promoting what seems to be a Nietzschean world view in which Venter is the ubermensch? I wouldn’t mind being wrong here.

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(Via COSMOS-LITURGY-SEX.)