*Maureen O'Malley* (Sydney) will be presenting at the UOW Philosophy Seminar series Wednesday, April 20th. All are welcome to attend.
*Title*: Rational design, kludging and noise in systems and synthetic biology *Where and when*: 4:30pm, Wednesday April 20th in room 19.1003. *Abstract*: Philosophers have long recognized the need to account for the untidy and highly variable nature of scientific inquiry, as well as the messy complexity of evolved biological systems. My presentation will suggest that the concept of kludging could play a fruitful role in that endeavour, especially in an era of massive genome sequence databases and attempts to integrate them into systems-based modelling and the synthetic construction of biological devices. Kludging is the construction of makeshift and often inelegant solutions to practical problems. It can also be seen from epistemic perspectives, as in Bill Wimsatt’s discussion in his book, Re-engineering Philosophy, of how error-prone humans understand complex systems. In biology, kludging is predominantly discussed as an outcome of evolution. My focus will be on kludging in synthetic biology, a recent incarnation of molecular biology, which aims to rationally engineer biological systems in the process of reconstructing them. I will discuss the issue of noise in constructed and evolved biological systems in relation to kludging. I hope to suggest new lines of inquiry for philosophers of biology, engineering and scientific practice. -- Dr. Patrick McGivern Lecturer in Philosophy University of Wollongong
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