Remembering the Future: Science, Law, and the Legacy of Asilomar

Global Observatory Co-Director Ben Hurlbut discusses the ways in which Asilomar crystallizes an imaginary of “governable emergence.” This imaginary posits the relationship between science and the law, where science and technology drive social change while the law lags behind and merely reacts. It also positions the scientific community as gatekeepers by giving precedence to expert assessments of technological possibility and the characterization of technological novelty. Institutionalized bioethics serves an ancillary role, focusing on the downstream consequences of novel technologies. Further, the imaginary of “governable emergence” tends to naturalize the benefits of science and technology, as well as the laboratory-to-market pipeline. Further, Hurlbut argues that Asilomar is invoked in moments of scientific controversy to settle uncertainty, but that this process often elides the uncertainty that surrounded and followed Asilomar. “Thus,” Hurlbut writes, “Asilomar-in-memory implicitly delegates to science the authority to construct—and constrain—the public imagination of what counts as legitimate and valuable progress” (2015:129).