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  1. The symbolic order and the noosphere: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Jacques Lacan on technoscience and the future of the planet.Hub Zwart - 2022 - International Journal of Philosophy and Theology 1 (1):117-145.
    This paper presents a mutual confrontation of the oeuvres of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) and Jacques Lacan (1901–1980), highlighting their relevance for the planetary challenges we are facing today. I will present their views on technoscience, environmental pollution and religious faith, focussing on human genomics as a case study. Both authors claim that technoscience reflects a tendency towards symbolisation: incorporating the biosphere (liv- ing nature) into the “symbolic order’ (Lacan) or ‘noosphere’ (Teilhard). On various occasions, Lacan refers to Teilhard’s (...)
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  • What is Mimicked by Biomimicry? Synthetic Cells as Exemplifications of the Threefold Biomimicry Paradox.Hub Zwart - 2019 - Environmental Values 28 (5):527-549.
    This article addresses three paradoxes of biomimicry. First of all: how can biomimicry be as old as technology as such and at the same time decidedly innovative and new? Secondly: how can biomimicry both entail a ‘naturalisation’ of technology and a ‘technification’ of nature? And finally: how can biomimicry be perceived as nature-friendly but at the same time (potentially at least) as a pervasive biotechnological assault on nature? Contemporary (technoscientific) biomimicry, I will argue, aims to mimic nature at the level (...)
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  • “Extimate” Technologies and Techno-Cultural Discontent.Hub Zwart - 2017 - Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 21 (1):24-54.
    According to a chorus of authors, the human life-world is currently invaded by an avalanche of high-tech devices referred to as “emerging,” ”intimate,” or ”NBIC” technologies: a new type of contrivances or gadgets designed to optimize cognitive or sensory performance and / or to enable mood management. Rather than manipulating objects in the outside world, they are designed to influence human bodies and brains more directly, and on a molecular scale. In this paper, these devices will be framed as ‘extimate’ (...)
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  • From playfulness and self-centredness via grand expectations to normalisation: a psychoanalytical rereading of the history of molecular genetics. [REVIEW]H. A. E. Zwart - 2013 - Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 16 (4):775-788.
    In this paper, I will reread the history of molecular genetics from a psychoanalytical angle, analysing it as a case history. Building on the developmental theories of Freud and his followers, I will distinguish four stages, namely: (1) oedipal childhood, notably the epoch of model building (1943–1953); (2) the latency period, with a focus on the development of basic skills (1953–1989); (3) adolescence, exemplified by the Human Genome Project, with its fierce conflicts, great expectations and grandiose claims (1989–2003) and (4) (...)
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  • Purloined organs: psychoanalysis of transplant organs as objects of desire.Hub Zwart - 2019 - New York City, New York, Verenigde Staten: Palgrave.
    Bioethical discourse on organ donation and transplantation medicine covers a wide range of topics, from informed consent procedures and scarcity issues up to transplant tourism and organ trade. Over the past decades, this discourse evolved into a stream of documents of bewildering proportions, encompassing thousands of books, papers, conferences, blogs, consensus meetings, policy reports, media debates and other outlets. Beneath the manifest level of discourse, however, a more latent dimension can be discerned, revolving around issues of embodiment, the moral status (...)
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  • The Synthetic Cell as a Techno-scientific Mandala.H. A. E. Zwart - 2018 - International Journal of Jungian Studies 10.
    This paper analyses the technoscientific objective of building a synthetic cell from a Jungian perspective. After decades of fragmentation and specialisation, the synthetic cell symbolises a turn towards restored wholeness, both at the object pole and at the subject pole. From a Jungian perspective, it is no coincidence that visual representations of synthetic cells often reflect an archetypal, mandala-like structure. As a symbol of restored unity, the synthetic cell mandala compensates for technoscientific fragmentation via active imagination, providing a visual aid (...)
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  • Continental philosophical perspectives on life sciences and emerging technologies.Hub Zwart, Laurens Landeweerd & Pieter Lemmens - 2016 - Life Sciences, Society and Policy 12 (1):1-4.
    Life sciences and emerging technologies raise a plethora of issues. Besides practical, bioethical and policy issues, they have broader, cultural implications as well, affecting and reflecting our zeitgeist and world-view, challenging our understanding of life, nature and ourselves as human beings, and reframing the human condition on a planetary scale. In accordance with the aims and scope of the journal, LSSP aims to foster engaged scholarship into the societal dimensions of emerging life sciences (Chadwick and Zwart 2013) and via this (...)
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  • Scientific iconoclasm and active imagination: synthetic cells as techo-schientific mandalas.Hub Zwart - 2018 - Life Sciences, Society and Policy 14 (1):1-17.
    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, 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 (...)
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  • Lacan’s Dialectics of Knowledge Production: The Four Discourses as a Detour to Hegel.Hub Zwart - 2022 - Foundations of Science 27 (4):1347-1370.
    In Seminar XVII, entitled The reverse side of psychoanalysis, Jacques Lacan presents his famous theorem of the four discourses. In this rereading I propose to demonstrate that Lacan’s theorem entails a transferable dialectical method for studying processes of knowledge production, enabling contemporary scholars to develop a diagnostic of the present, notably scholars interested in issues such as the vicissitudes of knowledge production under capitalism, the crisis of the university and the proliferation of electronic gadgets. In short, I will argue that (...)
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  • (1 other version)Practicing Dialectics of Technoscience during the Anthropocene.Hub Zwart - 2022 - Foundations of Science 27 (1):1-20.
    This paper develops a dialectical methodology for assessing technoscience during the Anthropocene. How to practice Hegelian dialectics of technoscience today? First of all, dialectics is developed here in close interaction with contemporary technoscientific research endeavours, which are addressed from a position of proximity and from an ‘oblique’ perspective. Contrary to empirical research, the focus is on how basic concepts of life, nature and technology are acted out in practice. Notably, this paper zooms in on a synthetic cell project called BaSyC (...)
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  • (1 other version)Practicing Dialectics of Technoscience during the Anthropocene.Hub Zwart - 2021 - Foundations of Science 27 (1):205-224.
    This paper develops a dialectical methodology for assessing technoscience during the Anthropocene. How to practice Hegelian dialectics of technoscience today? First of all, dialectics is developed here in close interaction with contemporary technoscientific research endeavours, which are addressed from a position of proximity and from an ‘oblique’ perspective. Contrary to empirical research, the focus is on how basic concepts of life, nature and technology are acted out in practice. Notably, this paper zooms in on a synthetic cell project called BaSyC (...)
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  • In risk we trust/Editing embryos and mirroring future risks and uncertainties.Eva Šlesingerová - 2019 - Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 22 (2):191-200.
    Tendencies and efforts have shifted from genome description, DNA mapping, and DNA sequencing to active and profound re-programming, repairing life on genetic and molecular levels in some parts of contemporary life science research. Mirroring and materializing this atmosphere, various life engineering technologies have been used and established in many areas of life sciences in the last decades. A contemporary progressive example of one such technology is DNA editing. Novel developments related to reproductive technologies, particularly embryo editing, prenatal human life engineering, (...)
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  • Gut Health in the era of the Human Gut Microbiota: from metaphor to biovalue.Vincent Baty, Bruno Mougin, Catherine Dekeuwer & Gérard Carret - 2014 - Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 17 (4):579-597.
    The human intestinal ecosystem, previously called the gut microflora is now known as the Human Gut Microbiota. Microbiome research has emphasized the potential role of this ecosystem in human homeostasis, offering unexpected opportunities in therapeutics, far beyond digestive diseases. It has also highlighted ethical, social and commercial concerns related to the gut microbiota. As diet factors are accepted to be the major regulator of the gut microbiota, the modulation of its composition, either by antibiotics or by food intake, should be (...)
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