Making and remaking life | Books, Et Al.

At the turn of the 20th century, American biology underwent a shift from description and exploration to “biological modernism” with a “framework of engineering,” argued historian Phillip Pauly in 1987 (1). This shift, Pauly maintained, required new tools and techniques and brought with it a better understanding of basic organismal functions, from the operation of the lowest enzyme to the emergence of behavioral characteristics.

Nature Remade builds on Pauly’s work, examining how the incorporation of engineering attitudes into modern biology has shaped the academic, political, and cultural work of the life sciences. “Discovery and understanding in the history of the life sciences are inseparable from manipulation, modification, industrial production, control, and maintenance—all activities within the realm of engineering…[and] we seek to understand not just the importance of making use of technologies in biological research, but also the wider historical significance of considering the engineering framework in modern attempts at (re)making life,” write the editors.

The volume, which emerged from two workshops held in 2017 and 2018, includes the writing of 14 scholars from a wide range of fields, including biological and environmental history, sociology of science, and art and design. Focusing on the impacts of engineering on topics as varied as laboratory techniques and geopolitical policy, the collection achieves expansiveness in subject and coherence in argument, a rare accomplishment for an edited volume.

The four essays in the book’s first section, “Control,” examine cases in which biologists sought to engineer organisms for specific outcomes. Focusing on feral pig control in the US South, historian Abraham Gibson highlights how engineering ideas can differ between groups. The release of domestic pigs in the South has resulted in feral swine that are popular with hunters, he writes. For those who value the carefully engineered domestic pig, feral pigs represent a breakdown of engineering and control. However, to hunters, the pigs are still a product of careful engineering and control honed in the wild by evolution to create the perfect game animal. Gibson’s article thus highlights how both the achievement and loss of control in engineering schemes are equally important to knowledge creation.

The book’s next section—“Knowing as Making”—includes five essays that examine how the process of constructing and deconstructing elements of life results in scientific knowledge creation. Two pieces in this section stand out as examples of the volume’s attention to a wide range of topics and the conversations achieved between them.

Historian Dominic J. Berry’s writing on DNA analysis presents a lovely and commonly overlooked case study of two scientists who approached the study of DNA from an engineering perspective. Citing the work of biochemist Erwin Chargaff (1905–2002) and nanotechnologist Nadrian Seeman (1945–), Berry pushes against traditional narratives of the study of DNA, which focus on scientists interested in what DNA does. Researchers such as Chargaff and Seeman are often more interested in how DNA is built and replicated, he writes. Their work has nonetheless contributed to basic knowledge about DNA structure and serves as the foundation for many current genetic engineering efforts. Meanwhile, historian Lisa Onaga’s essay on the development of artificial silkworm food reveals how agricultural scientists in Japan learned about the development and life cycle of the silkworm through the cyclical process of creating artificial food for the insects. Both essays demonstrate how engineering life contributes to recursive cycles of knowing in the life sciences.

The book’s final section examines the cultural perceptions of control in the life sciences and their effects on the science that is practiced. Here, historian Ayah Nuriddin writes about the social and cultural impacts of genetic engineering. She reveals how Black communities embraced and mobilized understandings of hereditary manipulation at the turn of the 20th century during the age of eugenics. Black scholars such as William Montague Cobb, a physical anthropologist, sought to “analyze and locate racial characteristics in the physical body,” she writes. Other Black scholars, such as botanist Thomas Wyatt Turner, argued that many of the social problems that plagued the Black community could be addressed through biological engineering. Engineering metaphors, maintains Nuriddin, “illustrate the ways that African Americans envisioned the social and biological possibilities of racial improvement.” Her work highlights the importance of understanding the use of engineering metaphors in larger social and cultural contexts.

Nature Remade is well written and well edited. The volume’s wide range of topics covered contributes to its broad appeal, while its thoughtful structure binds seemingly disparate essays together nicely. Such histories are timely as the life sciences increasingly approach problems, from genome editing to climate control, from an engineering perspective.

References and Notes:
1. P. J. Pauly, Controlling Life: Jacques Loeb and the Engineering Ideal in Biology (Oxford Univ. Press, 1987).

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