Enhancing Material Nature

Nanotechnologies and the idea of their convergence with other technosciences are rooted in the notion that they are capable of mobilizing nature in order to go beyond nature. At times this notion declares itself with surprising clarity and at others it is merely implied. Often it is rhetorical accompaniment to conventional research, and sometimes it pronounces far-flung possibilities. As a dream (or nightmare) of reason (Dupuy 2007, p.242), this visionary theme deserves close examination. The main purpose of this examination is to appreciate its queerness – in other words, the way in which this notion transgresses traditional categories and expectations, the way it tweaks language and stretches received concepts. The aim is not to question the significance of the notion, but to create a certain critical distance to it. Such distance is needed not only in regard to its technical feasibility, which ought not simply to be assumed by an all too obliging ethical discourse (Nordmann 2007a). Critical questions also need to be raised about the desires and hopes that are brought into focus by nanotechnological aspirations to enhance material nature. This is because quite independently of their fulfillment, these desires and hopes are producing effects even now which are far from insignificant. Especially one of these effects will come to the fore in the following pages: in our thinking about nature we are challenged by nanotechnologies to adopt an unthinking attitude of engineering rather than to reflect and debate, for example, the kind of materialism and reductionism that is associated with genetics. 1