Homemade and Artificial Life

I often teeter between a teleological view of my own life and a more scientific outlook, which I believe to be more agnostic rather than coldly atheistic. However, teleology is winning me over for a few reasons ever since I became a sleep-deprived mother. I see that there is a specific direction that my life is running its course and if I look hard enough, everything else seems to correspond to it somehow.

Let me start with the pattern. Ever see the t.v. show Fringe? Well, you should see it. I consider it to be comic-book science fiction with parallel universe drama. The amazing thing is that it is on network television. How they sold it next to all of the reality shows and crime story procedural schlock is beyond me and I am still grateful. However, I am getting off topic. The main character, Walter Bishop found his record player, it happened to be the same night that my husband got his his working. Coincidence? Maybe. How about the fact that it debuted on my husband's birthday and got renewed on my birthday? Interesting. What about the fact that I happen to be from another universe and have to type backwards in order for it read correctly? Ha! Gotcha.

Okay, so enjoying a television show and finding connections to my real life is a very silly thing to do with my not-so-free time. But it is enjoyable. I can find connections and patterns anywhere I choose to look. Our minds may just work this way. But who is to say that I'm not just finding what has been created for me? The question continues to baffle us semi-spiritual types. And it can be entertaining as well, as evidenced by the popularity of horoscopes.

Now this is a more interesting connection...the year I gave birth to my daughter, synthetic life was created in a laboratory by Craig Venter and his group, Synthetic Genomics. They created a bacterium starting with the DNA, then sort of placing it into another bacterium's empty shell, and then watched it reproduce according to their instructions. Their next goal, working with ExxonMobil, is to created their own algae which can remove CO₂ from the atmosphere and turn it into fuel. (You can read the abstract here.) My first reaction was to imagine a work of fiction where Venter and his team lose control of the bacterium they created and they take over the world. My second reaction was to imagine he and his team losing control over the algae as it removes every trace of Carbon Dioxide from the atmosphere, leaving us with an uninhabitable planet. Then there was the third reaction, utter awe.

How did humans go from producing fire to creating life? I don't know that this is progress in that Victorian sense, except that we are working to right the wrongs of our ancestors who went a little too far with the Earth-polluting fires. While my feat may be more common, I like to think that we were both working on a miraculous creation. Not miraculous? That's what some people think. In fact, in an analysis in the Financial Times, I read a quote from Arthur Caplan, bioethics professor at the University of Pennsylvania who said, "Venter's achievement would seem to extinguish the argument that life requires a special force or power to exist." I disagree. You could believe what he believes or you could say that the years of planning, researching, and the special conditions that were required for this life to begin proves that a special force is required for life to exist.

Of course, leaning toward science again, I'd say that nothing was proven either way. Proof takes a lot more than that. But I enjoy the idea that although we didn't see it in the case of the "synthia" or artificial life form and just because no one has documented it in the moment when I created my own (whenever the fetus became truly alive in our understanding), that doesn't mean that it didn't take a little bit of magic. Although maybe that just depends on your point of view.