In:
Environmental Values, White Horse Press, Vol. 17, No. 1 ( 2008-02), p. 23-39
Abstract:
Maintaining the coherence of the distinction between nature and artefact has long been central to environmental thinking. By building genomes from scratch out of ‘bio-bricks', synthetic biology promises to create biotic artefacts markedly different from anything created thus far in biotechnology. These new biotic artefacts depart from a core principle of Darwinian natural selection – descent through modification – leaving them with no causal connection to historical evolutionary processes. This departure from the core principle of Darwinism presents a challenge to the normative foundation of a number of leading positions in environmental ethics. As a result, environmental ethicists with a commitment to the normative significance of the historical evolutionary process may see synthetic biology as a moral ‘line in the sand'.
Type of Medium:
Online Resource
ISSN:
0963-2719
,
1752-7015
DOI:
10.3197/096327108X271932
Language:
English
Publisher:
White Horse Press
Publication Date:
2008
detail.hit.zdb_id:
2028055-5
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