Hybrid Systems, Bionics, and the Circulation of Morphological Knowledge in the Second Half of the 20th and Early 21st Centuries

• Applicant: Privatdozent Dr. Marco Tamborini
• Subject Area: History of Science
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 491776489

This research project aims to investigate the history of bionics from the late 1950s to early 21st century. By writing this history, this project seeks to situate and historically trace the different ways through which knowledge, practices, data, and technologies circulated between the biological and technical community to control and design bio-technical well-adapted forms. Indeed, bionics is an excellent case study to examine a) how the concrete merging of technology and biology has changed over time, b) what practices scientists had to adopt to study and produce hybrid artifacts and then use them to gain knowledge about biological systems, and c) how the resulting biotechnical forms or “biohybrid systems” have been produced, visualized, and popularized over time. The broader aim of this project is the examination of the broader dynamics of knowledge circulation. By looking at the transdisciplinary and transnational transit of morphological knowledge between biologists, architects, and engineers in several emblematic case studies from late 1950s up to early 21st century, the goal of the research is to investigate how the practices circulated in different social and political contexts: Under what epistemic and social conditions was the exchange of practices between biologists, architects, and designers during the second half or the 20th century possible? To what extent did the flow of knowledge influence, shape, and constrain the development of bionics in diverse temporal and geographical context? This aim will help go beyond the specificity of the case study, i.e., the history of bionics, towards a more nuanced picture of exchange of practices in the 20th- and 21st-century science.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants