Review of Tami I. Spector’s “From the Molecular to the Machine”

摘要

Objectivity can be a shady matter. More so when it supposedly arises from the "shadow images" portrayed by nanoscopy. Starting from a specific molecule, benzene, and the story of its discovery, Tami Spector builds an account that entwines the micro-world of nanomolecular studies with more general philosophical concerns for the representation of non-visible objects: "We had seen the unknowable. Or had we. Can we." (1). Problems with negotiation of meaning between the object and its structure are the underlying leitmotivs of a story that spans from Friedrich August Kekulé's epiphanic discovery of benzene's structure in 1865, to the 2001 STM (Scanning Tunneling Microscope) image of C60 (buckministerfullerene). Spector's article begins by presenting Kekulé's depiction of benzene as an historical marker for molecular representations. She argues that Kekule's idea of portraying benzene's cyclic valence structure in the form of an "uroboros," transformed a chemical formula into an enduring symbol and into a powerful signifier "where structure begets properties and properties recapitulate structure" (3). Images of molecules, like Platonic solids, which synthesise the quintessence of the objects from the tangible world, are but "imperfect simulacra" (5) of a reality that escapes our senses. Spector claims that, very much like those solids, such representations can operate on a metaphorical level stimulating productive connections and generating new understanding. It is within this framework that she presents the case of buckministerfullerene ("buckyball" for brevity), a "carbon-based polyhedral structure" (5) imbued with a "primal Platonic essence" (9). According to Spector, however, the resemblance of this molecule with an everyday object such as a soccer ball, gives it an adjunct value in respect to Platonic solids. Its ball-like nature reflects its function in real life as a potential vehicle for delivering drugs to a specific target in the body: "not only does it look like a real-world object; it theoretically acts like one too" (9). For Spector, Buckyball also marks the passage from molecules to more complex switch-like functioning systems called molecular machines: organised aggregates of molecular components that produce kinetic responses to specific stimuli, mimicking their macroscopic homonyms. These idealised mini-machines represent one part of that "machine" mentioned in the title of Spector's article, the other part being the actual machines, such as the STM or the SPM (Scanning Probe Microscope), used to detect them. The symbolical union of the object of study and the recording device, registered in the title under one single all-encompassing word, hints at Spector's main argument that the real substance of nanotechnology consists of nanomicroscopy images rather than the actual nanoscale objects (17).