Abstract

This study examines the relationship between technology and nature, the artificial and the natural, with the help of the conceptual pair of that which is ‘grown’ and that which is ‘made’. The first part discusses basic questions concerning man's relationship to nature and technology. The second part shows the increasing repercussions in the shifts between what is ‘grown’ and what is ‘made’ on human beings themselves, their relation to the self and the world as well as their sociality. Questions relating to nanotechnology, the claims of synthetic biology, the overcoming of species boundaries, the recreation of extinct species in a laboratory as well as different facets of the recreation and overcoming of man are discussed here.