Does Schopenhauer's Epistemology Back Up Current Bioengineering and Biotechnology Trends? [Retrospectroscope]

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860), a transcendental German philosopher, is best known for his 1818 work The World as Will and Representation or, in German, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (expanded in 1844), wherein he characterizes the phenomenal world as the product of a blind and insatiable metaphysical will. Such a phenomenal world is the world as it appears to human beings, who are structured by their own understanding. It is the world as experienced, as opposed to the world of things-in-themselves. In turn, the metaphysical will tries to explain the fundamental nature of being and the world of experience. The main objective of this article is to find in Schopenhauer’s momentous opera magna, already more than 150 years old, any element historically and/or epistemologically related to the current concepts of bioengineering or biomedical engineering and/or biotechnology.