Living-machine analogy: the obscurantism of the techno-industrial age

“Our daily use of terms like “bug”, “plant”, “plant”, “capture”, “capture”, “connect”, “connect”, “program”, “software”, “update”, or “network” to refer to all sorts of things, clearly shows the extent of the influence of high technology on our perception of human life.^[1].”

— Langdon Winner, technology philosopher

The development of industrial capitalism in the 18th and 19th centuries fundamentally transformed the material environment in which industrialized humanity operates. From our materialist perspective, it is obvious that it is the profusion of machines and the increasing artificialization of the environment that have made the mechanistic conception of living beings and of evolution carried out by modern science hegemonic. However, the rigorous study of organisms and machines reveals fundamental differences, on the concept of autonomy for example. If the life-machine analogy is never questioned, it is because it serves the expansion and consolidation of the techno-industrial system, in particular the development of biotechnologies including synthetic biology.

Image in one: an ultra-realistic Chinese robo-fish presented at an exhibition for techno-fanatics.

The conception of the living being as a machine

“There is no doubt that modern science considers the human being to be a machine.^[2].”

— Rodney Brooks, robotic engineer

Each human group develops an imaginary and beliefs in connection with its material environment. Forest peoples worship trees and rivers, mountain peoples attribute sacred value to mountain peaks and lakes, and sea peoples do the same with coral reefs and marine creatures. If we assume, widely accepted by the scientific community, that our species has evolved very little biologically since the Paleolithic era, the way in which human groups develop a belief system has probably remained the same. And this is indeed what we still observe today at Homo technologicus.

Humans in the industrial age believe in scientific and technical progress as an end in itself. It celebrates the perfection, efficiency, and power of machines. He identifies with his creations, as Langdon Winner notes.^[3]. According to Günther Anders, he feels a “Promethean shame”^[4] ” and ends up wanting to emancipate himself from his biological condition by trying to become a machine himself. The very influential biologist Edward O. Wilson regularly makes analogies to the machine and celebrates technological progress in his books — which advances science so much.^[5]. For the no less famous geneticist Richard Dawkins, humans are machines programmed by their genetic code to survive:

“We are survival machines, robots programmed blindly to preserve selfish molecules known as genes.^[6].”

According to molecular biologist and philosopher of science Dan Nicholson, “Analogies with machines are everywhere in biology.^[7] ”. This analogy, especially in its cybernetic form, has also penetrated ecological circles with the Gaia theory of James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis. In the early 1970s, this vision gained further influence with the computer simulation, which was supposed to describe the functioning of the biosphere, designed by Jay Forrester and used in the first report to the Club of Rome.^[8], the famous report The Limits to Growth (1972). Today, Polytechnic engineer Jean-Marc Jancovici continues to present human society as a machine for consuming resources (and therefore mechanically condemned to destroy the planet).^[9]).

In our state and industrialized societies, this irrational belief in the living machine (or even in the machine world) is all the more reinforced as it serves the interests of industry led by the ruling class — Technocracy, which results from the fusion of intellectual, scientific and technical elites with the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy^[10]. As the technocritical author Bertrand Louart aptly put it,

“the conception of the living being as a machine is inseparably linked to the fact that we live in a capitalist and industrial society: it reflects what the authorities that dominate society would like the living to be, in order to be able to do with it what they see fit.^[11].”

Bertrand Louart shows that the metaphor of the machine specific to modern science is a negation of the main attributes of living beings, a new obscurantism essential to the development of techno-capitalism. Many authors, scientists or simple observers, have noticed and described the absurdity of this analogy. For the biologist John Kricher, the machine metaphor has its source in the ancient (and false) belief in the presence of balance in nature. According to him, balance in nature is

“the notion that there is a real, measurable, and “normal” state of nature in which populations are interdependent enough to be accurately described as being in a state of balance. Disrupting this balance should lead to a cascade of effects, most of them negative, because the concept of balance implies that the balance is optimal. This is the analogy with a machine (nature), whose constituent elements (organisms) are arranged in such a way as to ensure the proper functioning of the machine. Disrupting this arrangement will, in all likelihood, reduce the efficiency or power of the machine, or even make it inoperable^[12].”

For the author Jeremy Lent, since the scientific revolution,

“The metaphor of nature as a machine has contaminated Western culture, causing people to think of living Earth as a resource that humans can exploit without considering its intrinsic value.^[13].”

For physician Randolph M. Nesse,

“As the Industrial Revolution transformed society, the metaphor of the body as a machine became more and more hegemonic. At the beginning of the 20th century, this idea began to dominate thought in biology and medicine, probably because of its usefulness.^[14].”

Useful especially to increase the power of industry and the State while destroying the biosphere in the process.

But this strange distortion of reality was also noticed by director Adam Curtis, especially in the documentary series All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace broadcast in 2011 by BBC^[15]. In particular, he dismantles the idea, widespread in techno-utopian circles, according to which computer networks would make it possible to create horizontal and stable societies, without political control and without hierarchy. He is also trying to understand how cybernetics and system theory have been applied to natural ecosystems. According to the director, this had the effect of spreading a mechanistic conception of the natural world.

The work of the historian Jessica Riskin seems to show that machines have obsessed intellectual and religious elites for several centuries now.^[16]. For example, in the 17th century, “the debate about man and machine was less about trying to find out if men were machines than about defining what type of machine they were.^[17] ”.

“At the time, Europe was buzzing with mechanical vitality. Around palaces and rich estates, 16th and 17th century Europeans built theme parks featuring malicious androids. The latter went into hiding, chased after the guests, sprinkled them with water, flour, or ashes, made faces, and sang songs. In churches and cathedrals, automatic angels sang and prayed, horrible devils rolled their eyes and flapped their wings, the Holy Father made gestures of blessing, and mechanical Christs grimaced on the cross while Virgos ascended to heaven.

The model of nature as a complex clockwork mechanism has been at the heart of modern science since the 17th century. It continues to appear regularly in all sciences, from quantum mechanics to evolutionary biology.^[18].”

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Why is a living organism not a machine

The biologist Dan Nicholson has made the organism/machine difference his subject of study. According to him, organisms and machines operate to achieve goals, but “they do it in two very different ways.”

“A machine has an extrinsic purpose in the sense that it works/functions for an end that is external to it, that is, it does not serve its own interests, but those of its manufacturer or user. An organization, on the other hand, is intrinsically intentional in the sense that its activities are oriented towards maintaining its own organization, that is, it acts on its own behalf. The intrinsic purpose of organisms is based on the fact that they are self-organizing, self-produced, self-maintaining, and self-regenerating systems. Conversely, the extrinsic purpose of machines is based on the fact that they are organized, assembled, maintained and repaired by external agents. An organism maintains its integrity and autonomy as a whole by regulating, repairing, and regenerating its parts. But a machine depends on external intervention not only for its construction and assembly, but also for its maintenance and repair. I consider this to be a crucial and very general difference.^[19].”

In other words, a major distinguishing characteristic of living beings is their autonomy. Nicholson adds other differences: the operation of a machine can be stopped and restarted, but this operation is impossible on a living being (once dead, it never “starts up”); the machine is designed from a set of assembled parts (ascending phenomenon), while the organism is formed from an already existing whole, the fertilized egg (descending phenomenon); the machine has no interests of its own (or any agony)), it is possible to make him do anything and everything. But if one opposes the organism's fundamental survival drive, it dies and cannot be successfully exploited.

According to Bertrand Louart, there are “five fundamental phenomena which, taken together, are specific to living beings alone”:

“the assimilation of the elements of the environment through nutrition and respiration, the regeneration and renewal of their tissues, the reproduction and development of the organism; finally, they evolve over time by acquiring diversified organs and more eminent abilities^[20].”

What fundamentally differentiates it from the machine is that living beings have “their own sensitivity” and “autonomous activity”.

Other distinctive elements could be added between machines and living beings. To build powerful modern machines and ensure their operation, it is necessary to develop and maintain a system of industrial infrastructures (factories, energy plants, mines, transport and communication systems, etc.) based on extractivism and gigantic pollution. Obviously, this system, designed for machines, is incompatible with living beings, since it has been eradicating them at an insane speed for at least 200 years now.^[21]. Moreover, industrialization and the multiplication of machines have considerably impoverished the diversity of life forms and cultures on Earth.^[22]. However, the characteristic of natural evolution is to enrich terrestrial diversity, both cultural and biological.^[23]. Again, there is a fundamental incompatibility between the world of machines and the world of the living, a contradiction summed up in these terms by the MIT roboticist Rodney Brooks:

“Technology takes its lessons from nature and then uses them to control the world, to change the way things work. Not only to change how it works, but to upset natural evolution^[24].”

A theoretical basis necessary for synthetic biology

“Synthetic biology has undertaken a vast program of reengineering life and all living processes, which are deemed not to be efficient enough. Not content with creating new microbes, new yeasts and new algae, synthetic biologists are attacking the very heart of living processes, for example by wanting to “improve” photosynthesis or create “augmented” DNA.^[25]”.”

— Hélène Tordjman, economist

If the mechanical and organic worlds are opposed in every way, why does the analogy with the machine remain dominant? As we saw above, the artificialization of our environment, our constant interactions with machines, and the almost divine authority of modern science play a decisive role. Moreover, scientists need this reductionism, this crude simplification as a theoretical basis for developing biotechnologies, in particular synthetic biology. It is even the geneticist François Képès who says it:

“Synthetic biology is the rational engineering of biology. In other words, it aims at the rational design and engineering of complex systems based on living things or inspired by living things, and with functions that are absent in nature.^[26].”

He adds:

“What does that mean? Electronic or mechanical systems engineering requires well-established frameworks to manage complexity, reliable tools to manipulate system states, and test platforms. Biotechnology, on the other hand, is still devoid of such frameworks, tools, and platforms^[27].”

The objective is obviously to destroy the autonomy of living organisms and to increase the power of organizations that will master synthetic biology:

“Synthetic biology must make it possible to develop industrial applications whose economic potential is considerable since they concern health as well as the environment, energy or materials; for example, the production of isoprene, which does not involve the rubber tree or petroleum-based synthesis, for example, can be cited.^[28].”

Among other works and applications of synthetic biology, the economist Hélène Tordjman cites the increase in the efficiency of photosynthesis or nitrogen fixation by plants. It is also about

“transform biomass (that is, everything that lives or has lived on Earth, but not fossilized) into various products that were formerly derived from oil, plastics and fuels in the first place. For now, the main source of biomass is vegetable: agricultural products, crop residues and forests, which will be transformed into bioplastics, biofuels and other “biobased” industrial products, food for animals and human beings, medicines^[29].”

But François Képès says that synthetic biology “is also an excellent way to advance knowledge about the living world.^[30] ”. Knowing how to model and build a “biological system” would be a good way for him to better understand living beings, an argument that often comes up in the propaganda of biotechnologists. This scientist therefore pretends to learn more about life by denying a fundamental characteristic of the living organism — its ability to build and develop without external intervention, independently and spontaneously.

As Bertrand Louart notes, reducing the living organism to a machine is the same as taking away its fundamental characteristics:

“To reduce living things to machines is to make them something we know: something that works “as expected”, that produces the effect we expect; and nothing else. However, what it is a question of understanding living things is precisely their dynamic, unpredictable and capricious nature; in short, what a machine will never be equipped with, namely its autonomous activity^[31].”

That's what the industry does with GMOs, it makes living organisms with a specific function. Scientists reduce life to a set of bricks, a kind of Lego that could be disassembled and reassembled according to the needs of the techno-industrial system. It is a question of applying to life the logic of the engineer who designs a machine in order to carry out a specific task. Living organisms must be used for the development of the techno-industrial system or be eliminated by artificial selection.

With the Xenobot, scientists with the help of an AI have succeeded in manufacturing a machine using stem cells from an African frog species. This biosynthetic machine is, according to one of its designers, a “completely new form of life that is fully programmable.^[32] ”. Our research friends are also working on the development of increasingly efficient synthetic cells, some of which already photosynthesize with 20% more efficiency than natural plants.^[33]. Other goals are being pursued, such as the creation of “superorgans”, such as eyes capable of capturing ultraviolet light outside the visible spectrum, or even “creating entirely new living beings, shaped not by evolution, but by our own designs.^[34] ”. Unsurprisingly, promises — for the most part false — of medical progress are systematically bludgeoned, in order to properly anesthetize the crowds.^[35].

The expansion and stability of the techno-industrial system were once limited by its poor ability to control the development and behavior of living beings, human and non-human. Indeed, their autonomy, their unpredictability, their spontaneity generate instability, and therefore constitute a major threat to the system. In the near future, the development of synthetic biology could break many of these barriers to growth, in particular by taking the domestication of the human race to unimaginable levels.^[36]. To achieve this, scientists must necessarily apply the engineer's vision to living processes, that is, practice a kind of denialism by assimilating organisms to machines. The denial of all that lives is at the source of the power of the techno-industrial system; a death instinct fuels its expansion. That is why no compromise is possible, its demolition is our only way out.