Team:Newcastle/Integrated Practices

Human Practices ‘Thought Experiment’

Over the course of the summer, we have invested a lot of time into finding novel uses for synthetic biology. Throughout this process, we have been motivated by the exciting applications for our technology outside of the lab, ranging from self-healing circuitry to new methods of computation. With these in mind throughout our project, we have been trying to understand the societal context for our work. The knowledge we gained from this process has shaped the ultimate design of our system.

In our early discussions with stakeholders, such as our sixth form experience day, it became apparent that there were a lot of ethical and moral implications of our technology that caused people to feel uncomfortable about using it. For instance, concerns were raised over the environmental impact of taking our engineered bacteria out of the lab as we had originally envisaged. Since one of our aims is to ‘kick start’ a whole new research direction in synthetic biology we also talked to researchers in the field. They highlighted to us the clear tension between our educational goals, facilitating open access to data and new science, etc. and our ideas for the commercial implications of this technology.

It became apparent from these discussions alone that we needed some way of exploring these issues, be they social, economic, ethical or otherwise to their logical conclusion. When we discussed this challenge with staff from the Policy, Ethics and Life Sciences (PEALS) Research Centre at our university, we were introduced to the notion of a thought experiment and our human practices ‘simulator’ was born.

Our simulator is a game designed to stimulate discussion on the consequences of using our technology, the interfacing of bacteria and electronics, in real world scenarios. As an educational tool, the simulator aims to guide the user to consider some uses of our technology and to think through the effects of its use. Rather than constrain our stakeholders through the use of surveys, where we question them on what we believe is important. We hope to establish a dialogue between our users and us so that together we can fully explore the implications of our work, adapt our designs appropriately, and thereby meet the iGEM aim of ‘building a safe and sustainable project that serves the public interest’.

We suggest that you read through the rest of this page, which outlines the background to using thought experiments for this purpose before giving the simulator a try for yourself.

What is a thought experiment anyway?

Thought experiments are ‘devices of the imagination used to investigate the nature of things’ (Brown and Fehige, 2016) and can be found throughout the sciences. Some, like Schrödinger's cat, have become famous in their own right, but they can be found in many fields related to iGEM: The infinite monkey theorem (mathematics), Levinthal’s paradox (biology) and the two Generals’ problem (computer science) to name but a few. You’ll see from considering the experiments above, that a thought experiment is set apart from any other type of research due to the impracticability, even impossibility, of performing a physical experiment to explore the same hypothesis. As we are a long way from beginning to see the potential technologies resulting from our project, thought experiments serve as an excellent medium for exploring them ‘before their time’. This sentiment was a major reason as to why we chose to pursue this approach in our human practices. We must also differentiate the thought experiment from simply logically reasoning about our hypothesised technologies. It is said that ‘something is experienced in a thought experiment’ (Brown and Fehige, 2016). Indeed from a philosophical standpoint, it is reasoned that we can use thought experiments to gain new knowledge about our world because of ‘instinctive knowledge’ (Sorensen, 1992). That is to say, that we must draw on the experience of our participants in constructing the experiment. We are only guides, the results their own.

It is precisely this ability of a thought experiment to allow participants to come to their own conclusions; that makes the thought experiment a useful tool for fully exploring the issues surrounding our project. Thus, extreme care was required during the experimental design phase to ensure that we allow participants to reach their own conclusions, and not merely guide them to what we think the answer should be. To do this, we set out to explore what makes a good thought experiment as well as existing interactive experiences that facilitate them.

References

Brown, James Robert and Fehige, Yiftach, "Thought Experiments", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)

Sorensen, Roy A., 1992, Thought Experiments, Oxford: Oxford University Press.