Synthetic biology and its alternatives. Descartes, Kant and the idea of engineering biological machines

• Synthetic Biology expects to create biological systems with properties of life.
• Engineering by Design (EbD) does not match the expectations of Synthetic Biology.
• EbD relies on the realization of symbolically manifested principles.
• Descartes’ and Kant’s differing views on principles & organisms are eye-opening.
• Bio-chemical approaches beyond the paradigm of the cartesian machine are promising.

The engineering-based approach of synthetic biology is characterized by an assumption that ‘engineering by design’ enables the construction of ‘living machines’. These ‘machines’, as biological machines, are expected to display certain properties of life, such as adapting to changing environments and acting in a situated way. This paper proposes that a tension exists between the expectations placed on biological artefacts and the notion of producing such systems by means of engineering; this tension makes it seem implausible that biological systems, especially those with properties characteristic of living beings, can in fact be produced using the specific methods of engineering. We do not claim that engineering techniques have nothing to contribute to the biotechnological construction of biological artefacts. However, drawing on Descartes’s and Kant’s thinking on the relationship between the organism and the machine, we show that it is considerably more plausible to assume that distinctively biological artefacts emerge within a paradigm different from the paradigm of the Cartesian machine that underlies the engineering approach. We close by calling for increased attention to be paid to approaches within molecular biology and chemistry that rest on conceptions different from those of synthetic biology’s engineering paradigm.