Controlling Destiny : Julian Huxley's Post-Darwinian Evolutionism and the History of Transhumanism

Sammanfattning: The evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley (1887–1975) attempted to promote a “religion for the future,” which he would come to refer to as Transhumanism. It was Huxley’s firm belief that mankind needed a unifying system of thought that could motivate action and change. Transhumanism was also an attempt to unite a more traditional humanistic view of the human as containing some form of core essence or potential with an evolutionary point of view of humans as a work in progress. Before humans, natural selection had been responsible for the transformation of life. Through its ordering principles and through chance, it had given rise to humankind, which had ushered in a new phase of evolution. It was now time for humans to take charge of the process. Humanity stood on the threshold of yet another critical point in evolution: The consciously purposive phase of evolution. This study explores the history of transhumanism by analyzing how Huxley’s transhumanism develops and why it does at this particular point in time, by placing it firmly within the context of his specific scientific and sociopolitical milieu, starting roughly in the interwar years and stretching over the Second World War to the 1970s. Continuing, the study then focuses on the new transhumanists of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s and investigates continuity in mode of thinking, contributing to a more coherent understanding of transhumanism, its history and of modern projects of human enhancement. By surveying the literature available to the new generation of transhumanists, the study finds and discusses connections between Huxley’s transhumanism and newer versions of it. Huxley—along with likeminded future-oriented thinkers of his generation helped naturalize a way of thinking about a possible future and disseminate ideas about conscious human evolution and human enhancement into a wider sociotechnical imaginary. The dissertation explains Huxley’s transhumanism, as well as his influence on a new generation of futurists and suggests that his narrative about evolution and the future was perpetuated. The study captures how scientific and technological development in relation to society and social order shapes images and expectations of the future and of what future is desirable. The ambition is to historicize transhumanism, by placing it in a precise historical context. Transhumanism uses evolution and biology to imagine the future, which is why it is here put in relation to evolutionary thought developed after Darwin, including ideas that would not be termed Darwinian in the strict scientific sense of the word, as well as evolutionary ideas that tended toward opposition to some of the perceived implications of Darwinism. The study also focuses on developments within the field of experimental biology—as well as Huxley’s own involvement in it—and ideas of controlling life, alongside political events and developments throughout the twentieth century. Additionally, it emphasizes the importance of recognizing that visions of the future no matter how optimistic—often express worries and fears about the social, technological and scientific development. At its core, transhumanism can be viewed as a result of the attempt to solve profoundly existential issues.