Suscripción a Biblioteca: Guest
Critical Reviews™ in Biomedical Engineering

Publicado 6 números por año

ISSN Imprimir: 0278-940X

ISSN En Línea: 1943-619X

SJR: 0.262 SNIP: 0.372 CiteScore™:: 2.2 H-Index: 56

Indexed in

What Is Life, and What Is a Machine? The Ontology of Bioengineering

Volumen 28, Edición 3&4, 2000, pp. 545-550
DOI: 10.1615/CritRevBiomedEng.v28.i34.340
Get accessGet access

SINOPSIS

In his Keynote address to the First Conference at Clemson University on Ethical Issues in Biomedical Engineering, George Bugliarello suggested that a most important ethical issue for bioengineering "is the positioning of the bio-machine interface." "Where," he asked, "should the biological organism end and the machine begin?" Central to this question of the limits of life and engineering is the more fundamental question of how life differs and how it is similar to a machine. This paper argues that until very recently, science, by its very nature, has treated life as if it were a machine, or has treated the parts of living systems as if they were machines. The distinctive feature of a machine is that its behavior is linear and hence predictable. On the other hand, living organisms may not be linear, but rather nonlinear systems. Thus, the interface between organism and machine may be conceived as the interface between nonlinear and linear systems.

CITADO POR
  1. Vallero Daniel A., Epilogue, in Biomedical Ethics for Engineers, 2007. Crossref

  2. Santos Fernando Pasquini, Mechanization and the Irreducibility of the Biotic Aspect: A Dooyeweerdian View of Bioengineering, Philosophia Reformata, 86, 2, 2021. Crossref

Portal Digitalde Biblioteca Digital eLibros Revistas Referencias y Libros de Ponencias Colecciones Precios y Políticas de Suscripcione Begell House Contáctenos Language English 中文 Русский Português German French Spain