Knowing and Controlling the World through Gardenworks and Biorobots: Discussion of Tamborini and Schwarz

history and philosophy of technology
Authors:
Abstract:

The papers by Marco Tamborini „Philosophy of biorobotics: translating and composing biohybrid forms“ and Astrid Schwarz „Composing and combining: Opposing constructive principles?“ outline different positions on mimesis and composition as the fundamental human practices of homo faber. A critical commentary seeks to highlight their differences. Tamborini specifies homo faber as homo translator who moves between different media of presentation and expression. Reproduction in another medium entails a back and forth which defines the work of the translator: a novel is reproduced by a film, the movement of a salamander is reproduced by a machine, an architectural design is reproduced by a physical building. Schwarz promotes homo hortensis who practices gardening, widely understood, in different ways – by composing and imposing a plan, or by combining and incorporating the dynamics of physical and biological processes. She foregrounds a creative and constructive act which is profoundly mundane in that it assimilates the world into the works of technology and art. Engineers, designers, architects, and planners are gardeners of sorts in that they are world-makers, tending to works and worlds. This resonates, of course, with ideas of the anthropocene and the epochal role of humans in planetary affairs. – The authors then respond constructively to the critical commentary, seeking common ground among the three positions.