11 How metaphors shape biotechnology. An introduction

This volume is based on a scoping workshop funded by Technische Universität Braunschweig's Seed Funding Programme "Interdisciplinary Collaboration".During this workshop, Stefan Dübel and Stefan Heuser brought together leading experts in metaphor research and early career scientists to examine and collaboratively explore metaphors in scientific language.The participants, drawn from various academic fields -including biology, biotechnology, philosophy, theology, ethics, education, and social sciences -discussed the use of conceptual metaphors in biotechnological research (for instance, "genetic scissors" for CRISPR/Cas-9 or "patch" for mRNA therapies).They also examined "absolute" metaphors (such as "life" and "world") and "hidden" metaphors, exemplified by the imagery of "reading" and "writing" in molecular structures.This workshop started from the insight that scientific research uses metaphors a. to describe previously unknown biological phenomena, processes and interventions as essential part of adequate hypotheses, b. to facilitate the identification of novel problems, topics and uncharted fields or aims of research and c. to convey fundamental aspects of research to a wider public.In a) or b), metaphors are essential to grasp and map molecular life processes as they lend themselves to scientific exploration and to understanding, both in research and in academic education.In c), the use of metaphors in science communication is a very important factor that shapes the public perception of such technologies, and may yield their acceptance or repudiation.All aspects of the use of metaphors in scientific language -their epistemological power to guide the perception of research itself and their discursive power to frame public science communication -call for interdisciplinary approaches to collaborative work on metaphors.This leads to the following set of research questions: -What is the epistemic contribution of metaphors to the genesis und shape of scientific knowledge in the fields of molecular biology and biotechnology?-How do metaphors in molecular biology and biotechnology guide and direct the perception of the contours of human life?Which (set of) metaphors may promote a richer understanding of the conditio humana, and of related questions such as the understanding of health, of disease, and of therapy?