Rather than just using philosophical context to define and “limit” a field, I find it more interesting to find what drives the scientific society to gave birth to a new field, both political and technological. It is why, to understand more about Systems and Synthetic Biology, we have to take a look back at the history of its root: Molecular Biology.
The two papers: Abir-Am (1997) and Bud (1998) gave a rather different perspective in the history of Molecular Biology, but both agreed that the foundation of recombinant DNA technology in the 60’s will hold an important point to the development of the Biotechnology Age. What interesting though, the two papers (especially Abir-Arn (1997)) gave a view of how the World Wars and the Cold War play an important role to boost the development of life sciences. Abir-Am (1997) proposes the history of molecular biology in three phases, each influenced by the big “wars”, and how transdiciplinary exact-science has transformed biology into the new age of Biotechnology (chemistry, physics, and mathematics/computer science). Meanwhile, I think Bud (1998) is more conservative, referring Biotechnology came from the early fermentation technologies and the development of new genetic techniques bring out the “New Biotechnology”. Nevertheless, the dynamic change of science and technology demands upgrade in the research facility, which leds to the new proposal for a new laboratory, and will always happen in the future.
At the end, what drives the new age of molecular Biology today was not the wars anymore, but the business and industry. I wonder if there are political reasons why the authors wrote the papers? On the last paragraph of Bud (1998), I wonder if he state that the genetics-based biotechnology were inspired by traditional biotechnology so does not need to have extra control and therefore give more flexibility for companies to develop their industries in the field?
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