Synthetic

Archival Summary & Scope

In *Synthetic: How Life Got Made*, cultural anthropologist Sophia Roosth delivers the first book-length ethnographic study of synthetic biology. This emerging field, rooted in engineering principles, posits that making new life forms offers deeper biological understanding than traditional experimentation. Roosth traces synthetic biology from its origins at MIT to start-ups, labs, and hacker spaces across the United States, examining how scientists design and build novel biological systems. She reveals how these practitioners' own experimental methods paradoxically shape and constrain the biological theories and limits they discover. *Synthetic* illuminates the social, cultural, and imaginative transformations within post-genomic biology, exploring the astonishing claim that "biological making fosters biological knowing."