Biohackers by Alessandro Delfanti

Author:Alessandro Delfanti [Delfanti, Alessandro]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pluto Press

BEYOND DARWIN

The Sorcerer II mission is placed explicitly in a long tradition of scientific research voyages, which include the expedition of the Beagle of Charles Darwin and of the Challenger (Gross 2007; JCVI 2004b), an oceanographic expedition that circumnavigated the globe between 1872 and 1876, stopping every 200 miles to examine the marine waters and search for unknown organisms, precisely as the Sorcerer II did. Venter himself stated, when talking about the Sorcerer II in his autobiography, that ‘I found myself in a new yacht, sailing new seas, and seizing new scientific opportunities’ (Venter 2007, p. 331).

Thus, one of the images of science put forward by the Sorcerer II is the one of the ‘savant’ explorers, scientists who carries out research away from laboratories and academia. Their enterprises take place within nature in an effort to discover the mightiness and the spectacular features of the universe, which coincides with an exploration of the world and the shift in the frontiers of human knowledge. Their dedication to research is all-encompassing, and their groundbreaking goals are not only economic but scientific too. The participation of the Discovery Channel fell within its ‘Discovery Quest’ programme, an initiative to fund a ‘new generation of scientific discoveries’, as the website of the TV channel maintains. It is about funding ‘researchers and explorers’ (and in the case of Venter the two figures overlap) at the forefront. Their feats should be told so that they can capture the ‘genius, obstacles and happiness’ of moments of revelation so strong that they can ‘change science’ (Discovery Channel 2005). The voyage is not only one through nature’s secrets, but also a personal adventure, a voyage of discovery and ‘self-discovery’ that changes human understanding of the world as well as the scientist’s life and understanding of himself (Venter 2007, p. 345).

On 4 March 2004, the JCVI held a press conference to present the study published in the Science issue of that week, describing the first set of data on the samples collected in the Sargasso Sea. The day after, it was in newspapers all over the world. During the press conference Venter announced that at that very moment his Sorcerer II, converted into a research vessel, was at the Galapagos islands, spurring journalists to underline the link between his voyage and Darwin’s one. The Wired headline on the cover explicitly mentioned the most important work by Charles Darwin: ‘Craig Venter’s epic voyage to redefine the origin of the species’ (Shreeve 2004b). Also Science and PLoS Biology highlighted the similarities between the voyage of the Sorcerer II and the Beagle. One of the images published by PLoS Biology shows Craig Venter at the Galapagos, posing next to the Estación Cientifica Charles Darwin. The exploration was associated with the discovery of unknown worlds and the achievement of wonderful scientific objectives:

there was obviously an unknown and unseen world in the oceans that could be vital to better understanding diversity on the planet, as well as potentially solving some of the planet’s growing environmental issues, such as climate change.

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