Malleable Nature

The pentagon representing Malleable Nature has the familiar image of a molecule in the foreground, a reminder that advances in molecular biology and genetics have opened new frontiers in biotechnology. Yet nature has long been altered by humans in ways that challenge easy distinction between the natural and the artificial; one example is the French garden featured in the background image.

The vision of nature as malleable straddles the sciences and the humanities: it arises in the sciences and engineering from pathbreaking research in genetics and development of new genetic technologies over the last several decades (Keller 2000), and has arisen in the same time period in the humanities in association with poststructural and postmodernist perspectives on the nature of reality and human beings (Robertson et al. 1996; Castree and Braun 2001). The vision of malleable nature challenges the boundaries of nature and the natural, as what lies beyond these boundaries—the unnatural, the artificial—is now less easily distinguishable from the realm of nature. As such, it also challenges the bedrock of biophysical and human nature upon which a great deal of societal and religious values are based (Lustig 2002; Deane-Drummond, Szerszynski, and Grove-White 2003), and has thus engendered serious discussion and debate over its philosophical, theological, and political implications. Yet this debate may lead to new, more subtle understandings of religion and science.

Malleable nature encompasses a wide swath of related topics: examples include human reproduction and enhancement (Paul 1998), genetic discrimination (Carlson 2001), human stem cell research (Holland, Lebacqz, and Zoloth 2001), and food and agriculture in developing countries (Paarlberg 2001). But positions taken on these topics by scientists, religious leaders, industry, and the public have been relatively few, reminiscent of the polar “catastrophist” versus “cornucopian” stances Stephen Cotgrove detected in environmental politics some two decades ago (Cotgrove 1982). On the catastrophist side, a number of religious denominations, environmental organizations, and sectors of society have denounced biotechnology as an immanent threat to humanity and the natural world; on the cornucopian side, advances in genetic research and biotechnology have been heralded by many scientists and industry as a panacea for problems ranging from birth defects to global food supply.

Much of this academic and popular discussion has focused on developments in science and technology, ranging from the Human Genome Project (Sloan 2000) to current government-sponsored biodefense projects. Proponents address public anxieties regarding risk in contemporary nature-society relations (e.g., pesticide-dependent industrial agriculture) and invoke larger values concerning the proper place of humans in the natural world, in casting biotechnology as a safe human improvement upon nature (Levidow 1996). Similarly, opponents (e.g. Rifkin 1998) typically invoke potential environmental risks coupled with societal disempowerment as human and biophysical nature becomes corporatized.

In a broader context, these developments have been examined in terms of implied features of science, and its connections with larger political and economic processes. Peter Dickens, for instance, argues that genetic research and technology treat biophysical and human nature as mechanisms comprised of subsystems comprised of parts that ultimately boil down to bits of information in the genetic code (Dickens 1996, 107ff.). To Dickens, this fragmented idea of nature serves well its commodification in multiple market niches: nature is stuff that can be manipulated to presumably human, and certainly corporate, benefit. Others similarly link genetic research with the increasing emphasis on profitable information in science (Haraway 1997), as witnessed in the rapid rise of molecular biology.

One important issue concerns the appropriate role of public involvement in what is arguably a complex, highly scientific issue: on one side are concerns that religious groups and the public have inappropriately forestalled benefits to be realized from genetic research and technology (e.g., Green 2001), and on the other are concerns that science, industry, and government have not taken seriously some important complexities raised by the lay public (e.g., Grove-White et al. 1997; Grove-White, Macnaghten, and Wynne 2000). In response to public opposition and religious concern, the biotechnology lobby has invested in information campaigns, such as that by the Council for Biotechnology Information designed to convince the public of its benefits. Similarly, government has attempted to provide information and forums for public input on biotechnology in countries such as the United Kingdom, and watchdog organizations such as the Council for Responsible Genetics or the Center for Genetics and Society have provided their own resources on biotechnology.

Yet malleable nature is not wholly restricted to the sciences. In the humanities and popular culture, a related discussion has considered malleable nature from a poststructural and postmodernist perspective. Jean Baudrillard, for instance, has argued that the malleable human genome erases the boundary between natural and the artificial, real and virtual; there is no reality beyond our “Disney World” representations of it (Baudrillard 1996). And though some have warned of the dangers of treating human biology as infinitely malleable (Fukuyama 2002), others have pointed out the historicity of supposedly biological concepts such as “woman” in arguing for an embrace of postmodern difference in biotechnology (Oudshoorn 1996). The upshot of these critiques has been a rejection of appeals to “nature” or “natural” in justifying policy and morality.

The theological response to biotechnology has been varied, and only partially advanced (Chapman 1999); its ambivalence mirrors earlier theological challenges by technology (Brooke 2003). Some, like Ted Peters, have argued for a cautious embrace as humans adopt a future-oriented outlook as responsible partners in God’s creation (Peters 2003). Others have sounded a note of concern over genetic reductionism and depersonalization implicit in a good deal of biotechnology and related evolutionary theories (Rolston 1999; Peacocke 2003). There has been a clear concern expressed about genetic discrimination (World Council of Churches 1989), though genetic research has also introduced conflicts among communities of faith, as biological considerations have made their way into major moral debates such as homosexuality (LeVay 1994). One review suggests that the religious response to biotechnology has largely involved a consequentialist focus on impacts, versus a deeper examination of “the profound challenges to human beings’ self-image, and to their relationships with one another and with the natural world” (Deane-Drummond, Szerszynski, and Grove-White 2003, 34).

In sum, much discussion concerning biotechnology has taken science and religion as givens, rather than provoke a deeper examination of implications of malleable nature for the very science that studies it, and religious bodies that comment on it. Preliminarily, biotechnology paints a mixed picture of contemporary science, and one in which religion has not yet advanced far beyond a simplistic reading of both nature and science. Yet malleable nature is an unsettling notion, in the same way that poststructural and postmodernist notions of malleable reality are unsettling. Malleable nature is hence both sweeping and inconclusive in its implications for science and religion, and must be situated in the context of other visions of nature in order to derive robust indications for progress in religion and science in future.

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