Witt Elke

ArgumentThe question, how organisms obtain their specific complex and functional forms, was widely discussed during the eighteenth century. The theory of preformation, which was the dominant theory of generation, was challenged by different alternative epigenetic theories. By the end of the century it was the vitalist approach most famously advocated by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach that prevailed. Yet the alternative theory of generation brought forward by Caspar Friedrich Wolff was an important contribution to the treatment of this question. He turned his attention from the properties of matter and the forces acting on it towards the level of the processes of generation in order to explain the constitution of organismic forms. By regarding organic structures and forms to be the result of the lawfulness of ongoing processes, he opened up the possibility of a functional but non-teleological explanation of generation, and thereby provided an important complement to materialist and vitalist approaches.

Im Zuge der Entwicklung der Synthetischen Biologie lassen sich zur Zeit in den modernen Lebenswissenschaften Bemühungen erkennen, Leben künstlich herzustellen. Die vorliegende Arbeit befasst sich mit den erkenntnistheoretischen Aspekten der Versuche einer technischen Erzeugung von minimalen Lebensformen. Sie untersucht, auf welchen unterschiedlichen Grundannahmen die aktuellen Projekte zur Herstellung von Proto- und Minimalorganismen beruhen bzw. welche Eigenschaften von Organismen als konstitutiv für die Lebensprozesse angenommen werden.