A New Definition of “Artificial” for Two Artificial Sciences

In this article, I deal with a conceptual issue concerning the framework of two special sciences: artifcial intelligence and synthetic biology, i.e. the distinction between the natural and the artifcial (a long-lasting topic of history of scientifc though since the ancient philosophy). My claim is that the standard defnition of the “artifcial” is no longer useful to describe some present-day artifcial sciences, as the boundary between the natural and the artifcial is not so sharp and clear-cut as it was in the past. Artifcial intelligence and synthetic biology, two disciplines with new technologies, new experimental methods, and new theoretical frameworks, all need a new, more specifc, and refned defnition of (the) “artifcial”, which is also related to the use of the synthetic method to build real world entities and in open-ended (real or virtual) environments. The necessity of a new defnition of the artifcial is due to the close relationship of AI and synthetic biology with biology itself. They both are engineering sciences that are moving closer and closer, at least apparently, towards (natural) biology, although from diferent and opposite directions. I show how the new concept of the artifcial is, therefore, the result of a new view on biology from an engineering and synthetic point of view, where the boundary between the natural and the artifcial is far more blurred. From this, I try to formulate a brand-new, more useful defnition for future understanding, practical, and epistemological purposes of these two artifcial sciences.