"Engineering" has firmly taken root in the entangled bank of biology
even as proposals to remake the living world have sent tendrils in every
direction, and at every scale. Nature Remade explores these complex
prospects from a resolutely historical approach, tracing cases across
the decades of the long twentieth century. These essays span the many
levels at which life has been engineered: molecule, cell, organism,
population, ecosystem, and planet. From the cloning of agricultural
crops and the artificial feeding of silkworms to biomimicry, genetic
engineering, and terraforming, Nature Remade affirms the centrality of
engineering in its various forms for understanding and imagining modern
life. Organized around three themes--control and reproduction, knowing
as making, and envisioning--the chapters in Nature Remade chart
different means, scales, and consequences of intervening and reimagining
nature.