Structuralism, Vitalism, and Bioengineering

Abstract

Genetic manipulation (bioengineering) is implicit to the current paradigm of modern biology. Concerns raised about the technology have focused largely on potential consequences (beneficial vs. harmful), rather than its underlying premises. Ethical grounds for genetic manipulation in the non-human sphere have remained largely unquestioned. While the technology was first developed in the 1970s, it was promoted earlier with the rise of molecular biology and its central dogma: DNA makes RNA makes protein. The rejection of an organic or life/inorganic boundary by current biological discourse is at the base of bioengineering aspirations, presented as potential solutions to a variety of agricultural, medical, and environmental problems. Opponents are labelled as vitalists, but alternatives are presented that reject this conclusion. Formalist ideas developed in French biology in the early nineteenth century returned with modernism at the turn of the twentieth century, at about the same time as the reconfiguration of language as a system. Structuralist biology has taken up general principles applied to other disciplines, including linguistics. Structuralist principles raise questions about the assumptions underpinning the discourse that drives current practices, including genetic manipulation. Emphasis is placed on organisational relations, rather than an external, metaphysical element. Metaphysical vitalism (e.g. elan vital) should be distinguished from functional vitalism, which simply holds that life cannot be reduced to inorganic principles. Advocates of structuralism are themselves critical of metaphysical vitalism. The boundary between life and non-life becomes blurred with proposals of either panvitalism (hylozoism) or molecular reductionism. Vitalism re-emerges in postmodern models driving the paradigm of genetic manipulation.