EndeavourPub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1016/j.endeavour.2022.100820
Anna Dumitriu
{"title":"Hypersymbiotics™: An artistic reflection on the ethical and environmental implications of microbiome research and new technologies","authors":"Anna Dumitriu","doi":"10.1016/j.endeavour.2022.100820","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.endeavour.2022.100820","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This essay describes my ongoing series “Hypersymbiotics™,” which began in 2012 and explores the potential ways in which our microbiome, genetics, epigenetics and even our environment could potentially be enhanced to turn us into human ‘super-organisms.’ The series includes performances and installations involving BioArt, as well as photographic documentation of ephemeral artworks and takes the form of a vehicle for public discussion about new healthcare technologies. The essay discusses artworks made using synthetic biology techniques including CRISPR genetic modification in bacteria and yeasts, and gene editing in plants, as well as using artificial intelligence and stem cell research. It critiques the role of the media and advertising in the promotion of complex new biomedical technologies. The “Hypersymbiotics™” series is deeply concerned with promoting public understanding of the ethical implications of new scientific developments and enabling reflection and debate. At its core the artwork is about knowledge, power, and control and where that resides.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51032,"journal":{"name":"Endeavour","volume":"46 1","pages":"Article 100820"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"40399016","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EndeavourPub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1016/j.endeavour.2022.100821
Adam Dickinson
{"title":"Neck of the woods: Microbes, memory, and resistance","authors":"Adam Dickinson","doi":"10.1016/j.endeavour.2022.100821","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.endeavour.2022.100821","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Horizontal Gene Transfer (HGT) is a key mechanism allowing bacteria to enact genetic changes in response to shifting environmental conditions. The swift lateral movement of genes makes possible antibiotic resistance, which is an increasing medical and ultimately cultural problem. There is evidence that HGT also takes place between species. Bacterial DNA appears in the human mitochondrial genome of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) samples. Responding to a recent diagnosis of AML, this creative piece imagines a literary form of HGT. Adjacency is intrinsic to the conceptual and formal concerns of the text. Moving back and forth between essay and poem, between the personal and the planetary, between the real and the imagined, and between the right and left margins of the page, this piece unfolds beside itself, exploring the lateral movement of memory and family history through concerns with antibiotic resistance, illness, writing, and science. While there are no embedded citations or footnotes, a glossary of terms (Appendix 1) follows the main text, and a brief bibliographic essay (Appendix 2) at the end identifies cited sources that correspond to a list of references.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51032,"journal":{"name":"Endeavour","volume":"46 1","pages":"Article 100821"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"40488450","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EndeavourPub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1016/j.endeavour.2022.100814
Laÿna Droz , Romaric Jannel , Christoph D.D. Rupprecht
{"title":"Living through multispecies societies: Approaching the microbiome with Imanishi Kinji","authors":"Laÿna Droz , Romaric Jannel , Christoph D.D. Rupprecht","doi":"10.1016/j.endeavour.2022.100814","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.endeavour.2022.100814","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Recent research about the microbiome points to a picture in which we, humans, are ‘living through’ nature, and nature itself is living in us. Our bodies are hosting—and depend on—the multiple species that constitute human microbiota. This article will discuss current research on the microbiome through the ideas of Japanese ecologist Imanishi Kinji (1902–1992). First, some of Imanishi’s key ideas regarding the world of living beings and multispecies societies are presented. Second, seven types of relationships concerning the human microbiome, human beings, and the environment are explored. Third, inspired by Imanishi’s work, this paper develops the idea of dynamic, porous, and complex multispecies societies in which different living beings or species are codependent on others, including microbiota and human beings.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51032,"journal":{"name":"Endeavour","volume":"46 1","pages":"Article 100814"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47688635","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EndeavourPub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1016/j.endeavour.2022.100817
Davina Höll , Leonie N. Bossert
{"title":"Introducing the microbiome: Interdisciplinary perspectives","authors":"Davina Höll , Leonie N. Bossert","doi":"10.1016/j.endeavour.2022.100817","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.endeavour.2022.100817","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51032,"journal":{"name":"Endeavour","volume":"46 1","pages":"Article 100817"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9412664/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10358121","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EndeavourPub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1016/j.endeavour.2022.100819
Anna Wienhues
{"title":"Looking through the microscope: Microbes as a challenge for theorising biocentrism within environmental ethics","authors":"Anna Wienhues","doi":"10.1016/j.endeavour.2022.100819","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.endeavour.2022.100819","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>While in the humanities and social sciences at large we can observe posthumanist developments that engage with the microbiome, microbes are still not a major topic of discussion within environmental ethics. That the environmental ethics literature has not engaged extensively with this topic is surprising considering the range of theoretical challenges (and opportunities) it poses for environmental theorising. So, this paper is ‘looking through the microscope’ from an environmental ethics angle in order to see how these little beings challenge what we consider to be ethically relevant and how we conduct moral theorising. Especially interesting is how a focus on microbes can simultaneously support and challenge individualist biocentric intuitions and theories, which attribute moral standing to (some) microbes. Accordingly, the main aim of this paper is to lay out crucial aspects of these challenges and present some initial arguments about why not all of them pose a serious threat to biocentric theorising—including biocentric theories of interspecies justice. The three challenges discussed are (1) the moral significance challenge, (2) the self-defence predicament, and (3) undermining individualist biocentric intuitions.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51032,"journal":{"name":"Endeavour","volume":"46 1","pages":"Article 100819"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160932722000199/pdfft?md5=ade61c55d91d8c60d4b0c98e6742fb80&pid=1-s2.0-S0160932722000199-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47412487","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EndeavourPub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1016/j.endeavour.2022.100815
Mathias Grote
{"title":"Microbes before microbiology: Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg and Berlin’s infusoria","authors":"Mathias Grote","doi":"10.1016/j.endeavour.2022.100815","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.endeavour.2022.100815","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Naturalist Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg pioneered research on living and fossil infusoria (including protists and bacteria) since the 1830s by collecting samples from all over the world, thus describing numerous microbes and discussing their effects for the planet and for humankind. This article introduces Ehrenberg as a natural historian of microbes and situates his work in the nineteenth century life sciences with respect to debates about cell theory, evolution, and concepts of disease. I argue that in spite of occurring before these major conceptual innovations of the life sciences, Ehrenberg’s work on the diversity of microbes found in earth or air is more exciting than historiography has made it appear so far, especially in light of today’s ecological microbiology.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51032,"journal":{"name":"Endeavour","volume":"46 1","pages":"Article 100815"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39990058","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EndeavourPub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1016/j.endeavour.2022.100811
Grace Field , Emilie Skulberg
{"title":"A film review of Black Holes: The Edge of All We Know, directed by Peter Galison. Collapsar, Sandbox Films, 2020.","authors":"Grace Field , Emilie Skulberg","doi":"10.1016/j.endeavour.2022.100811","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.endeavour.2022.100811","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51032,"journal":{"name":"Endeavour","volume":"46 1","pages":"Article 100811"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71860155","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EndeavourPub Date : 2021-12-01DOI: 10.1016/j.endeavour.2021.100799
Kate MacCord
{"title":"Editorial: Highlighting Endeavour's In Vivo Section","authors":"Kate MacCord","doi":"10.1016/j.endeavour.2021.100799","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.endeavour.2021.100799","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51032,"journal":{"name":"Endeavour","volume":"45 4","pages":"Article 100799"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160932721000545/pdfft?md5=e480f37def0141b4d1df1ef41956f2df&pid=1-s2.0-S0160932721000545-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39819802","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}