What Is Artificial about Life?
The announcement of “Artificial Life” by the Craig Venter group, and the media stir that arose from the news, provoked thoughts about the current technologies in contemporary science and the cultural tension of such projections on the media. The increasingly blurred boundaries between specialist and...
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| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Wiley
2011-01-01
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| Series: | The Scientific World Journal |
| Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1100/tsw.2011.73 |
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| _version_ | 1832558545002823680 |
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| author | Alessandro Giuliani Ignazio Licata Carlo M. Modonesi Paolo Crosignani |
| author_facet | Alessandro Giuliani Ignazio Licata Carlo M. Modonesi Paolo Crosignani |
| author_sort | Alessandro Giuliani |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | The announcement of “Artificial Life” by the Craig Venter group, and the media stir that arose from the news, provoked thoughts about the current technologies in contemporary science and the cultural tension of such projections on the media. The increasingly blurred boundaries between specialist and generalist media, while promising a wider appreciation of scientific discovery, potentially allow unrealistic, ideological claims to dictate scientific research. This is particularly evident in biology, where the pervading paradigm is still dominated by a physically naïve reductionism in which the only relevant causative layer is the molecular one. The reductionist hypothesis is that everything one observes is the result of an underlying molecular mechanism almost independent of the context in which it operates. Molecular mechanisms are often necessarily studied in isolation and therefore operate in unnatural conditions. The mechanistic view of biological regulation implies that we think of genes as intelligent agents. Here we try to critically analyze the motivations behind the spread of such unrealistic simplifications. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-9afd309643b84eeab4b883d6346be417 |
| institution | Kabale University |
| issn | 1537-744X |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2011-01-01 |
| publisher | Wiley |
| record_format | Article |
| series | The Scientific World Journal |
| spelling | doaj-art-9afd309643b84eeab4b883d6346be4172025-02-03T01:32:10ZengWileyThe Scientific World Journal1537-744X2011-01-011165165410.1100/tsw.2011.73What Is Artificial about Life?Alessandro Giuliani0Ignazio Licata1Carlo M. Modonesi2Paolo Crosignani3Environment and Health Department, Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Roma, ItalyInstitute for Scientific Methodology, Palermo, ItalyMuseum of Natural History, Evolutionary and Functional Biology Department, University of Parma, ItalyCancer Registry and Environmental Epidemiology Unit, National Cancer Institute (INT), Milano, ItalyThe announcement of “Artificial Life” by the Craig Venter group, and the media stir that arose from the news, provoked thoughts about the current technologies in contemporary science and the cultural tension of such projections on the media. The increasingly blurred boundaries between specialist and generalist media, while promising a wider appreciation of scientific discovery, potentially allow unrealistic, ideological claims to dictate scientific research. This is particularly evident in biology, where the pervading paradigm is still dominated by a physically naïve reductionism in which the only relevant causative layer is the molecular one. The reductionist hypothesis is that everything one observes is the result of an underlying molecular mechanism almost independent of the context in which it operates. Molecular mechanisms are often necessarily studied in isolation and therefore operate in unnatural conditions. The mechanistic view of biological regulation implies that we think of genes as intelligent agents. Here we try to critically analyze the motivations behind the spread of such unrealistic simplifications.http://dx.doi.org/10.1100/tsw.2011.73 |
| spellingShingle | Alessandro Giuliani Ignazio Licata Carlo M. Modonesi Paolo Crosignani What Is Artificial about Life? The Scientific World Journal |
| title | What Is Artificial about Life? |
| title_full | What Is Artificial about Life? |
| title_fullStr | What Is Artificial about Life? |
| title_full_unstemmed | What Is Artificial about Life? |
| title_short | What Is Artificial about Life? |
| title_sort | what is artificial about life |
| url | http://dx.doi.org/10.1100/tsw.2011.73 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT alessandrogiuliani whatisartificialaboutlife AT ignaziolicata whatisartificialaboutlife AT carlommodonesi whatisartificialaboutlife AT paolocrosignani whatisartificialaboutlife |