This book tells the story of how a molecular-mechanical vision of life has become omnipresent in the sciences, biomedicine, and bio- and nanotechnologies of the late twentieth century. Thereby, it adds a novel historical chapter to the longstanding scientific and philosophical problem of the relationship between organisms and machines, now at the level of machine-like molecules. Investigating the history of research on proteins and cell membranes (an essential feature of life just as genes are), this book explores how life’s molecular machinery has been shaped by experimental investigation of ... More

This book tells the story of how a molecular-mechanical vision of life has become omnipresent in the sciences, biomedicine, and bio- and nanotechnologies of the late twentieth century. Thereby, it adds a novel historical chapter to the longstanding scientific and philosophical problem of the relationship between organisms and machines, now at the level of machine-like molecules. Investigating the history of research on proteins and cell membranes (an essential feature of life just as genes are), this book explores how life’s molecular machinery has been shaped by experimental investigation of active biological materials. It argues that the early 1970s saw a veritable “membrane moment,” in which fields such as bioenergetics, neurobiology, and synthetic biologies avant la lettre moved center stage, significantly reshaping the landscape of the molecular life sciences and highlighting the relevance of chemistry to this field’s recent development. Following the materialization of a “molecular pump” through research by key figures and institutions in America, the UK, and West Germany until c. 1990, this book draws a novel map of the molecular life sciences beyond genetics at the level of concepts, technique, and scope. By studying attempts to develop “biochips” in the 1980s, it also relates an early and surprising episode of bio- and nanotechnologies. Altogether, this book proposes novel historiographical and epistemological perspectives: to scrutinize changes to the materiality of life, to understand the relevance of chemistry for the late twentieth-century molecular life sciences, and to question their places and scientific persona.