PROFESSOR JEAN-PIERRE DUPUY

It is often asserted that the starting point of nanotechnology was the classic talk given by Feynman (1959), in which he said: "The principles of physics, as far as I can see, do not speak against the possibility of maneuvering things atom by atom ... It would be, in principle, possible (I think) for a physicist to synthesize any chemical substance that the chemist writes down. Give the orders and the physicist synthesizes it. How? Put the atoms down where the chemist says, and so you make the substance." Today's champions of nanotech add: "We need to apply at the molecular scale the concept that has demonstrated its effectiveness at the macroscopic scale: making parts go where we want by putting them where we want!" (Merkle 2003)
 
This cannot be the whole story. If the essence of nanotechnology were that it manipulates matter on the atomic scale, no new philosophical attitude different from the one to other scientific disciplines would be necessary. Indeed, chemistry has been manipulating matter on the atomic scale for at least the past two centuries. We believe there is indeed some kind of unity behind the nanotech enterprise and the NBIC convergence (Roco et al. 2002); but that this unity lies at the level of the "metaphysical research program" that underpins such convergence. It is at this level that nanoethics must address novel issues.