Self-assembly, Self-organization, Nanotechnology and vitalism

Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent (1)

1 CETCOPRA - Centre d'étude des techniques, des connaissances et des pratiques

Over the past decades, self-assembly has attracted a lot of research attention and transformed the relations between chemistry, materials science and biology. The paper explores the impact of the current interest in self-assembly techniques on the traditional debate over the nature of life. The first section describes three different research programs of self-assembly in nanotechnology in order to characterize their metaphysical implications: -1- Hybridization ( using the building blocks of living systems for making devices and machines) ; -2- Biomimetics (making artifacts mimicking nature); -3- Integration (a composite of the two previous strategies). The second section focused on the elusive boundary between selfassembly and self-organization tries to map out the various positions adopted by the promoters of self-assembly on the issue of vitalism?

Keywords: hybridization; bionanotechnology; nature and artifact; chemistry; biomimetics; nature and artefact; cybernetics

Domains: Humanities and Social Sciences; History, Philosophy and Sociology of Sciences

Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent. Self-assembly, Self-organization, Nanotechnology and vitalism. NanoEthics, 2009, 3 (1), pp.31-43. ⟨hal-00937209⟩