Playing God and tampering with nature: popular labels for real concerns in synthetic biology.

Public engagement in science with diverse cross-sections of the community is considered a critical aspect of responsible biotechnological innovation. While the research community shows willingness to engage with both ambivalent and supportive audiences about potentially disruptive technological advances, there is less enthusiasm for engaging with groups who hold deeply opposing views to such advances. 'Playing God' and 'tampering with nature' are popular examples of intrinsic objections often made in opposition to the development or use of novel genetic technologies. Historically appearing in arguments against the pursuit of genetically modified organisms in agriculture and food industries, intrinsic objections have previously been labelled by the science community as inconsistent, non-scientific, and vague. Now found in a range of innovation contexts, the domain of synthetic biology appears to attract such objections consistently. We present the findings from a large Australian study (N = 4593) which suggests 'playing God' objections and their variants can be multilayered and, at times, accompanied by meaningful information about risk perceptions. We use qualitative analysis of open-ended responses from an online survey to show how these objections are articulated in response to selected synthetic biology applications across environmental and health domains. Our research invites a rethink of how the synthetic biology community perceives, and engages with, people who express intrinsic objections. These people may additionally hold extrinsic concerns that may be potentially addressed, or at least reasonably considered, through dialogue. We offer some concluding remarks for engaging with publics who employ these types of arguments to communicate unease with aspects of technology development and use.

Scientific iconoclasm and active imagination: synthetic cells as techno-scientific mandalas.

Metaphors allow us to come to terms with abstract and complex information, by comparing it to something which is structured, familiar and concrete. Although modern science is "iconoclastic", as Gaston Bachelard phrases it (i.e. bent on replacing living entities by symbolic data: e.g. biochemical and mathematical symbols and codes), scientists are at the same time prolific producers of metaphoric images themselves. Synthetic biology is an outstanding example of a technoscientific discourse replete with metaphors, including textual metaphors such as the "Morse code" of life, the "barcode" of life and the "book" of life. This paper focuses on a different type of metaphor, however, namely on the archetypal metaphor of the mandala as a symbol of restored unity and wholeness. Notably, mandala images emerge in textual materials (papers, posters, PowerPoints, etc.) related to one of the new "frontiers" of contemporary technoscience, namely the building of a synthetic cell: a laboratory artefact that functions like a cell and is even able to replicate itself. The mandala symbol suggests that, after living systems have been successfully reduced to the elementary building blocks and barcodes of life, the time has now come to put these fragments together again. We can only claim to understand life, synthetic cell experts argue, if we are able to technically reproduce a fully functioning cell. This holistic turn towards the cell as a meaningful whole (a total work of techno-art) also requires convergence at the "subject pole": the building of a synthetic cell as a practice of the self, representing a turn towards integration, of multiple perspectives and various forms of expertise.