Introduction
Biology may briefly be defined as the science which studies living organisms, at all levels of their organization; technology (for the purpose of this essay) as techniques for transforming the natural world/environment to meet specific human goals, interests or needs. Biology and technology appear to have nothing to do with each other, as they occupy very different ontological domains – the former is about autopoietic living matter, the latter about artifacts. However, one is not justified to conclude from this that human ingenuity cannot make artifacts out of living organisms. This essay explores and explains precisely such a transformation.1 But, before doing so, one needs first to give a short history of technology.
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