What is Transhumanism? The human desire to acquire posthuman attributes is as ancient as the human species itself. Humans have always sought to expand the boundaries of their existence, be it ecologically, geographically, or mentally. There is a tendency in at least some individuals always to try to find a way around every limitation and obstacle. Ceremonial burial and preserved fragments of religious writings show that prehistoric humans were deeply disturbed by the death of their loved ones and sought to reduce the cognitive dissonance by postulating an afterlife. Yet, despite the idea of an afterlife, people still endeavored to extend life. In the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh (approx. B. C.), a king embarks on a quest to find an herb that can make him immortal. It’s worth noting that it was assumed both that mortality was not inescapable in principle, and that there existed (at least mythological) means of overcoming it. That people really strove to live longer and richer lives can also be seen in the development of systems of magic and alchemy; lacking scientific means of producing an elixir of life, one resorted to magical means. This strategy was adopted, for example, by the various schools of esoteric Taoism in China, which sought physical immortality and control over or harmony with the forces of nature. The Greeks were ambivalent about humans transgressing our natural confines. On the one hand, they were fascinated by the idea. We see it in the myth of Prometheus, who stole the fire from Zeus and gave it to the humans, thereby permanently improving the human condition. And in the myth of Daedalus, the gods are repeatedly challenged, quite successfully, by a clever engineer and artist, who uses non- magical means to extend human capabilities. On the other hand, there is also the concept of hubris: that some ambitions are off- limit and would backfire if pursued. In the end, Daedalus’ enterprise ends in disaster (not, however, because it was punished by the gods but owing entirely to natural causes). Greek philosophers made the first, stumbling attempts to create systems of thought that were based not purely on faith but on logical reasoning. Socrates and the sophists extended the application of critical thinking from metaphysics and cosmology to include the study of ethics and questions about human society and human psychology. Out of this inquiry arose cultural humanism, a very important current throughout the history of Western science, political theory, ethics, and law. In the Renaissance, human thinking was awoken from medieval otherworldliness and the scholastic modes of reasoning that had predominated for a millennium, and the human being and the natural world again became legitimate objects of study. Renaissance humanism encouraged people to rely on their own observations and their own judgment rather than to defer in every matter to religious authorities. Renaissance humanism also created the ideal of the well- rounded personality, one that is highly developed scientifically, morally, culturally, and spiritually. A milestone is Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s Oration on the Dignity of Man (1. And crucially, modern science began to take form then, through the works of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo. The Age of Enlightenment can be said to have started with the publication of Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum, “the new tool” (1. Bacon advocates the project of “effecting all things possible,” by which he meant the achievement of mastery over nature in order to improve the condition of human beings. The heritage from the Renaissance combines with the influences of Isaac Newton, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, Marquis de Condorcet, and others to form the basis for rational humanism, which emphasizes science and critical reasoning – rather than revelation and religious authority – as ways of learning about the natural world and the destiny and nature of man and of providing a grounding for morality. Transhumanism traces its roots to this rational humanism. In the 1. 8th and 1. Benjamin Franklin and Voltaire speculated about extending human life span through medical science. Especially after Darwin’s theory of evolution, atheism or agnosticism came to be seen as increasingly attractive alternatives. However, the optimism of the late 1. When this view collided with reality, some people reacted by turning to irrationalism, concluding that since reason was not sufficient, it was worthless. This resulted in the anti- technological, anti- intellectual sentiments whose sequelae we can still witness today in some postmodernist writers, in the New Age movement, and among the neo- Luddite wing of the anti- globalization agitators. A significant stimulus in the formation of transhumanism was the essay Daedalus: Science and the Future (1. The video shows the chaotic movement of lipid (fat) droplets traveling through different parts of the cell. You might remember that the cell is a factory, where the. In finance, an exchange rate (also known as a foreign-exchange rate, forex rate, ER, FX rate or Agio) between two currencies is the rate at which one currency will be. British biochemist J. Haldane, in which he discusses how scientific and technological findings may come to affect society and improve the human condition. This essay set off a chain reaction of future- oriented discussions, including The World, the Flesh and the Devil by J. Bernal (1. 92. 9), which speculates about space colonization and bionic implants as well as mental improvements through advanced social science and psychology; the works of Olaf Stapledon; and the essay “Icarus: the Future of Science” (1. Bertrand Russell, who took a more pessimistic view, arguing that without more kindliness in the world, technological power will mainly serve to increase men’s ability to inflict harm on one another. Science fiction authors such as H. Wells and Olaf Stapledon also got many people thinking about the future evolution of the human race. One frequently cited work is Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1. Huxley’s novel warns of the dehumanizing potential of technology being used to arrest growth and to diminish the scope of human nature rather than enhance it. The Second World War changed the direction of some of those currents that result in today’s transhumanism. The eugenics movement, which had previously found advocates not only among racists on the extreme right but also among socialists and progressivist social democrats, was thoroughly discredited. The goal of creating a new and better world through a centrally imposed vision became taboo and pass. Mindful of these historical lessons, transhumanists are often deeply suspicious of collectively orchestrated change, arguing instead for the right of individuals to redesign themselves and their own descendants. In the postwar era, optimistic futurists tended to direct their attention more toward technological progress, such as space travel, medicine, and computers. Science began to catch up with speculation. Transhumanist ideas during this period were discussed and analyzed chiefly in the literary genre of science fiction. Authors such as Arthur C. What is Transhumanism? Click HERE to view the entire video! Before Taking Hormones, Address Your Diet. Treating hormone imbalances requires a whole-body approach; the best approaches are. But while medical devices are often old and out of date and therefore more vulnerable to attack, so far there have been no known cases of hackers harming patients by. Have questions about gluten intolerance, a gluten free diet or the foods that help improve brain health? In Grain Brain, Dr. Perlmutter offers suggestions on how to. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Stanislaw Lem, and later Bruce Sterling, Greg Egan, and Vernor Vinge have explored various aspects of transhumanism in their writings and contributed to its proliferation. Robert Ettinger played an important role in giving transhumanism its modern form. The publication of his book The Prospect of Immortality in 1. Ettinger argued that since medical technology seems to be constantly progressing, and since chemical activity comes to a complete halt at low temperatures, it should be possible to freeze a person today and preserve the body until such a time when technology is advanced enough to repair the freezing damage and reverse the original cause of deanimation. In a later work, Man into Superman (1. Haldane and Bernal. Another influential early transhumanist was F. Esfandiary, who later changed his name to FM- 2. One of the first professors of future studies, FM taught at the New School for Social Research in New York in the 1. Up. Wingers. In his book Are you a transhuman? The word “transhumanism” may have been coined by Julian Huxley in New Bottles for New Wine (1. Further, its use is evidenced in T. S. Elliot’s writing around the same time. And it is known that Dante Alighieri referred to the notion of the transhuman in historical writings. In the 1. 97. 0s and 1. They were often isolated from one another, and while they shared similar views and values, they did not yet amount to any unified coherent worldview. One prominent voice from a standpoint with strong transhumanist elements during this era came from Marvin Minsky, an eminent artificial intelligence researcher. In 1. 98. 6, Eric Drexler published Engines of Creation, the first book- length exposition of molecular manufacturing. Drexler’s later writings supplied more technical analyses that confirmed his initial conclusions. To prepare the world for nanotechnology and work towards it safe implementation, he founded the Foresight Institute together with his then wife Christine Peterson in 1. Ed Regis’s Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition (1. Another couple of influential books were roboticist Hans Moravec’s seminal Mind Children (1. Ray Kurzweil’s bestselling Age of Spiritual Machines (1. Moravec’s. Frank Tipler’s Physics of Immortality (1. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (a paleontologist and Jesuit theologian who saw an evolutionary telos in the development of an encompassing noosphere, a global consciousness) argued that advanced civilizations might come to have a shaping influence on the future evolution of the cosmos, although some were put off by Tipler’s attempt to blend science with religion. Many science advocates, such as Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker, and Douglas Hofstadter, have also helped pave the way for public understanding of transhumanist ideas. In 1. 98. 8, the first issue of the Extropy Magazine was published by Max More and Tom Morrow, and in 1. Extropy Institute (the term “extropy” being coined as an informal opposite of “entropy”). The magazine and the institute served as catalysts, bringing together disparate groups of people with futuristic ideas.
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