New Encounters Between Life and Technology: Simondon and the Case of Synthetic Biology

Abstract

How to understand new encounters between the living and the technological? Exemplary of such new encounters are the biotechnological creations of synthetic biology, where life and technology are increasingly intertwined in complex and intimate ways. This developing biotechnological field frames its novel entities as ‘artificial life’, ‘living technology’, and ‘biohybrid systems’. While synthetic biology too easily uses machine metaphors and technological frames for living entities, traditional philosophical frameworks also risk ontological reductionism in their efforts to understand life and technology in relation to each other. In contrast, Gilbert Simondon’s theory of individuation helps to understand the similarities between life and technology without reducing life forms to machines and without conflating technological objects with living systems. The aim of this article is twofold: first, to shed light on the relationship between life and technology, and second, to examine the emergence of new borderline cases resulting from synthetic biology, all with the help of the theory of individuation. Our hypothesis is that individuation facilitates our understanding of these new encounters between living beings and technologies, and provides conceptual clarity to prevailing dualisms such as life and technology, artificial and natural. We will develop Simondon’s theory into a framework and apply it to the case of synthetic biology, thus opening up the possibility that individuation can also help us to think about future encounters between life and technology.