Biotic Artefacts: Mendelian Genetics and Hybridisation

Abstract

The first two chapters have set out the philosophical foundations for the transformation of the natural into the artefactual, as well as addressing the historical and theoretical relationships between modern science and its technology. Chapter 2 has also introduced the notion of degrees of artefacticity, the different levels of human intervention in the creation and maintenance of their artefacts, and the corresponding erosion of nature’s independence of humans. The following two chapters will explore in some detail the scientific/technological transformation of living organisms into biotic artefacts, thereby altering their ontological status of naturally occurring to that of artefactual beings. To demonstrate this, a convenient focus is provided by the history of agriculture and husbandry. The science of classical Mendelian genetics characteristically induces the biogenetic technology of hybridisation of whole organisms (in Phase IIA). However, the even more basic sciences of molecular genetics and biology lead to biotechnology (Phase IIB), which no longer works at the level of whole organisms, but at the molecular and cellular levels.¹