Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies -- and What It Means to Be Human

by Joel Garreau

  Fernández-Armesto, Felipe. So You Think You’re Human?: A Brief History of Humankind. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. ISBN: 0-192-80417-0.

  Freeman, Derek. Margaret Mead and Samoa: The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983. ISBN: 0-674-54830-2.

  Fromm, Erich, ed. Marx’s Concept of Man: With a Translation from Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts by T.B. Bottomore. New York: F. Ungar, 1961. ISBN: 0804461619.

  Graves, Robert. The Greek Myths, Complete Edition. London: Penguin Books, 1992; reprint edition, 1993. ISBN: 0-140-17199-1.

  My most-consulted work on myth.

  Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature: Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Oxford Philosophical Texts, new edition, 2000. ISBN: 0-198-75172-9.

  The 1740 work basing philosophy on an observationally grounded study of human nature.

  Lewis, Thomas, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon. A General Theory of Love. New York: Random House, 2000. ISBN: 0-375-50389-7.

  Love as a fundamental, hard-wired human need.

  Mead, Margaret. Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilisation. New York: William Morrow, 1928. Perennial Classics edition, 2001. ISBN: 0-688-05033-6.

  The high point in the popular mind of the hypothesis that bad human outcomes are produced far more by the nasty aspects of industrial civilization than by biological nature.

  Pinker, Steven. The Language Instinct: The New Science of Language and Mind. New York: William Morrow, 1994. ISBN: 0-688-12141-1.

  ———. How the Mind Works. New York: Norton, 1997. ISBN: 0-393-04535-8.

  ———. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. New York: Viking, 2002. ISBN: 0-670-03151-8.

  The current era’s best-selling author on human nature.

  Stevenson, Leslie, and David L. Haberman. Ten Theories of Human Nature: Confucianism, Hinduism, The Bible, Plato, Kant, Marx, Freud, Sartre, Skinner, Lorenz. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. ISBN: 0-19-512040-X, hardcover.

  A fascinating and meticulous examination that is somewhat misnamed. Stevenson and Haberman are most interested in the ideologies that have grown up around varying definitions of human nature. Christianity and Marxism, to take two of their examples, come up with background theories about the world, a diagnosis of what is wrong with us and prescriptions for putting it right. They make subordinate to that investigation the actual theories of human nature on which these ideologies are based—the Christian view that mankind is made in the image of God who has a definite purpose for our life, for example, or the Marxist notion that the real nature of man is the totality of social relations.

  ———, ed. The Study of Human Nature: A Reader. New York: Oxford University Press, second edition, 2000. ISBN: 0-19-512715-3, paperback.

  Tiger, Lionel, and Robin Fox. The Imperial Animal. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1971. ISBN: 0-030-86582-4.

  Tooby, John, and Leda Cosmides. “On the Universality of Human Nature and the Uniqueness of the Individual: The Role of Genetics and Adaptation.” In Journal of Personality 1990, 58:1:17-67.

  Wilson, Edward O. Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1975. ISBN: 0-674-81621-8.

  ———. On Human Nature. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1978. ISBN: 0-674-63441-1.

  ———. “Reply to Fukuyama.” In The National Interest, no. 56, Spring 1999.

  From the godfather of sociobiology, which is the scientific study of the biological basis of all forms of social behavior in all kinds of organisms, including man.

  Wright, Robert. The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life. New York: Pantheon Books, 1994. ISBN: 0-679-40773-1.

  Transcendence

  Armstrong, Karen. A History of God: The 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. New York: Ballantine Books, 1994. ISBN: 0-345-38456-3.

  Bateson, Gregory. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. San Francisco: Chandler Pub. Co., 1972. ISBN: 0-810-20447-9.

  Bellah, Robert N., et al. Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. ISBN: 0-520-05388-5.

  Boyer, Pascal. Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought. New York: Basic Books, reprint edition, 2002. ISBN: 0-465-00696-5.

  Durkheim, Émile. “Elementary Forms of Religious Life,” 1912. In Robert N. Bellah, ed., Émile Durkheim: On Morality and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973.

  Dyson, Freeman J. Infinite in All Directions. New York: Harper & Row, 1988. ISBN: 0-060-39081-6.

  Giovannoli, Joseph, et al. The Biology of Belief: How Our Biology Biases Our Beliefs and Perceptions. Rosetta Press, Inc., 2001. ISBN: 0-970-81371-6.

  Havel, Václav. “The Need for Transcendence in the Postmodern World,” delivered at Independence Hall, Philadelphia, July 4, 1994. http://www.worldtrans.org/whole/havelspeech.html

  James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. New York: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1902. New York: Routledge, Centennial edition, 2002. ISBN: 0415278090.

  Morowitz, Harold J. The Emergence of Everything: How the World Became Complex. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. ISBN: 0-19-513513-X.

  With an amazing last chapter on “Science and Religion,” from a leader in the science of complexity and cochair of the science board of the Santa Fe Institute.

  Sartre, Jean-Paul, Hazel E. Barnes, trans. Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology. First published 1943. New York: Washington Square Press, reprint edition, 1993. ISBN: 0-671-86780-6.

  Shermer, Michael. Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time. New York: Owl Books, second revised edition, 2002. ISBN: 0-805-07089-3.

  ———. How We Believe: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God. New York: Owl Books, second edition, 2003. ISBN: 0-805-07479-1.

  ———. The Skeptics Society and Skeptic magazine, “Dedicated to the promotion of science and critical thinking, and to the investigation of extraordinary claims and revolutionary ideas.” http://www.skeptic.com/

  One of the great difficulties humans encounter with rapid change is separating the marvelous from the magical, and myths from madness. Therefore, one of the great challenges for our generation is going to be reconciling belief systems. If we cannot come up with an agreed-upon frame for what constitutes something as basic as reality, it’s hard to see how we will manage to respond to change together. Predictions to the contrary, rationalism has not banished religiosity. Religion is bigger than ever, possibly because it addresses issues that science can’t, possibly because there is something hardwired in the human brain that inclines us to believe. Thus, I have great admiration for those who are attempting to deal with this schism not by rejecting out of hand the validity of various ways of knowing, but by trying to construct this larger frame. Shermer is one of those who, like Boyer and Giovannoli, attempts from the rationalist perspective to respectfully understand what is going on with faith-based systems. Perfection, alas, has not been achieved. These are worthwhile starts, however. We’ve got a long way to go and a short time to get there.

  Stock, Gregory. Metaman: The Merging of Humans and Machines into a Global Superorganism. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993. ISBN: 0-671-70723-X.

  Stock is best known for his work exploring genetically engineered evolution. Metaman, however, is really his take on transcendence.

  Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre; Bernard Wall, trans. The Phenomenon of Man. New York: Harper, 1959. Ursula King, trans., Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999. ISBN: 1570752486.

  ———, Norman Denny, trans. The Future of Man. New York: Harper & Row, 1964. New York: Perennial, 1969. ISBN: 0061303860.

  Remarkably prescient writing that was faith-based speculation when he wrote it. Hardheaded evi
dence that he might be right, however, continues to emerge. If the test of future writing is whether it looks better the older it gets, that explains why De Chardin is getting ever-increasing attention.

  Wright, Robert. NonZero: The Logic of Human Destiny. New York: Pantheon Books, 2000. ISBN: 0-679-44252-9.

  For those firmly embedded in the rationalist tradition, as am I, who nonetheless are persuaded by the evidence that we might be headed toward a transcendence of human nature, Wright has done a cheerful and impressive job of trying to reconcile enormous contradictions.

  On Scenario Planning

  Ringland, Gill. Scenario Planning: Managing for the Future. Chichester, England: John Wiley & Sons, 1998. ISBN: 0-471-97790-X.

  ———. Scenarios in Business. Chichester, England: John Wiley & Sons, 2002. ISBN: 0-470-84382-9.

  ———. Scenarios in Public Policy. Chichester, England: John Wiley & Sons, 2002. ISBN: 0-470-84383-7.

  Schwartz, Peter. The Art of the Long View. New York: Doubleday, 1991. ISBN: 0-385-26731-2.

  This is the most readable and compact work detailing the methods and benefits of scenario planning for hardheaded, bet-the-company decision making, written by the head of the pioneering scenario-planning firm Global Business Network.

  ———. Inevitable Surprises: Thinking Ahead in a Time of Turbulence. New York: Gotham Books, 2003. ISBN: 1-59240-027-2.

  Thinking about what will be regarded as bolts-out-of-the-blue by those who haven’t prepared for them.

  Van der Heijden, Kees. Scenarios: The Art of Strategic Conversation. Chichester, England: John Wiley & Sons, 1996. ISBN: 0-471-96639-8.

  Wack, Pierre. “Scenarios: Shooting the Rapids.” In Harvard Business Review, November/December 1985, 139–150.

  ———. “Scenarios: Uncharted Waters Ahead.” In Harvard Business Review, September/October 1985, 72–79.

  From the godfather of scenario planning.

  DARPA

  DARPA’s home page: http://www.darpa.mil/

  The Defense Sciences Office home page: http://www.darpa.mil/dso/

  Both are worth mining in depth. In the Defense Sciences Office home page, for example, check out “Technology Thrusts” and “Future Areas of Interest.”

  Technology Transition, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, January 1997. http://www.darpa.mil/body/pdf/transition.pdf

  DARPA’s brag list of what it has actually shipped to the troops from its founding in the wake of the Sputnik shock, through the NATO intervention in Bosnia.

  Strategic Plan, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, February 2003. http://www.darpa.mil/body/strategic.html

  A broad overview of DARPA’s direction.

  Bridging the Gap, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, March 2004. http://www.darpa.mil/DARPATech2004/proceedings.html

  The proceedings of the DARPATech symposium, March 9–11, 2004, Anaheim, California, displaying the organization’s thinking.

  Transhumanism

  Bostrom, Nick. “Transhumanist Values.” Department of Philosophy, Yale University, version of April 18, 2001. http://www.nickbostrom.com/tra/values.html

  ———. “The Transhumanist FAQ: A General Introduction.” World Trans- humanist Association, version 2.1, 2003. http://www.transhumanism.org/resources/faq.html

  Interesting and serious documents, worth reading.

  Esfandiary, F.M. Up-Wingers. New York: John Day, 1973. ISBN: 0-381-98243-2.

  Fair warning: The work of many transhumanists, especially the early ones, is so far out-there it has taken the movement decades to begin to be taken seriously. This, a founding document, is a case in point. Fereidoun M. Esfandiary wound up preferring to be known as FM-2030.

  Extropy Institute: http://www.extropy.org

  “Extropy Institute’s ‘Extropian Principles.’” http://www.extropy.org/ideas/principles.html

  Home of the more, but by no means the most, out-there transhumanists.

  Hughes, James J. “The Politics of Transhumanism.” Originally prepared for the 2001 Annual Meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science, Cambridge, MA, November 1–4, 2001. Version 2.0, March 2002. http://www.changesurfer.com/Acad/TranshumPolitics.htm

  ———. “Democratic Transhumanism.” Originally published in Transhumanity, April 28, 2002. Version 2.0 at: http://www.changesurfer.com/Acad/DemocraticTranshumanism.htm

  ———. Citizen Cyborg. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2004. ISBN: 0-813-34198-1.

  Serious and courageous political thinking.

  Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Portable Nietzsche, Walter Kaufmann, ed. New York: Viking, 1954. Penguin Books, new edition, 1977. ISBN: 0-140-15062-5.

  ———. Thus Spake Zarathustra. Originally published 1883–1885. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1999. ISBN: 0-486-40663-6.

  Regis, Ed. Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition: Science Slightly over the Edge. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1990. ISBN: 0-201-09258-1.

  ———. “Meet the Extropians.” In Wired, 2:10, October, 1994. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.10/extropians_pr.html

  Amusing looks at those who, especially at the time these were written, were viewed as “over the edge” of transhumanism.

  Vita-More, Natasha: home page: http://www.extropic-art.com

  ———. Create: Recreate: The Third Millennial Culture. Los Angeles: MoreArt, second ed., 1999.

  “World Transhumanist Association: For the Ethical Use of Technology to Extend Human Capabilities,” home page: http://www.transhumanism.org/index.php/WTA/index/

  ———. “The Transhumanist Declaration.” World Transhumanist Association, 2002. http://www.transhumanism.org/declaration.htm

  The WTA, generally, is that portion of the movement least easily dismissed by the open- but serious-minded.

  Other Future Visions

  Brockman, John, ed. The Next Fifty Years: Science in the First Half of the Twenty-first Century. New York: Vintage Books, 2002. ISBN: 0-375-71342-5.

  Broderick, Damien. The Spike: How Our Lives Are Being Transformed by Rapidly Advancing Technologies. New York: Forge, 2001. ISBN: 0-312-87781-1.

  Broderick, a senior research fellow at the University of Melbourne, is considered the dean of Australian science fiction. People who dislike science fiction and/or who would not dream of describing themselves as “extropian” will probably not find this volume to their taste. However, the first appendix, “Summary: Paths and Time-Lines to the Spike”—Broderick’s term for The Singularity—offers an exhaustive range of scenarios on the subject.

  Denning, Peter J., ed. The Invisible Future: The Seamless Integration of Technology Into Everyday Life. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002. ISBN: 0-071-38224-0.

  Didsbury, Howard F. Jr. Twenty-first Century Opportunities and Challenges: An Age of Destruction or an Age of Transformation. Bethesda, MD: World Future Society, 2003. ISBN: 0-930-24258-0.

  “Global Consciousness Project.” Roger D. Nelson, director. http://noosphere.princeton.edu

  An odd project that would have amazing consequences were it to succeed. It attempts no less than to define and measure, in scientific terms, the mind’s extended reach—global consciousness.

  Kelly, Eamonn, Peter Leyden, and Members of the Global Business Network. What’s Next: Exploring the New Terrain for Business. Cambridge, MA: Perseus, 2002. ISBN: 0-738- 20760-8.

  Sterling, Bruce. Tomorrow Now: Envisioning the Next Fifty Years. New York: Random House, 2002. ISBN: 0-679-46322-4.

  Wells, H.G. Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1902. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1999. ISBN: 0-486-40673-3.

  An astonishing tour de force. In the graduate classes I’ve taught on long-term thinking, I have used this collection of nonfiction essays by Wells—as well as the less-prescient fictions of Jules Verne (Paris in the Twentieth Century, written in 1863) and Edward Bellamy (Looking Backward: 2000–1887)—as existence proof that imagining the distant future is poss
ible and useful. What Wells missed is fascinating and instructive (women’s liberation, e.g.). Yet the innumerable things he figured out correctly are impressive, given that he was thinking one hundred years ahead.

  Notes

  Chapter One PROLOGUE: THE FUTURE OF HUMAN NATURE

  allow warriors to run at Olympic sprint speeds for 15 minutes on one breath of air: Interview, Michael Goldblatt, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), December 17, 2002.

  Call them the GRIN technologies: A variety of acronyms is being used to refer to the idea that several master technologies are intertwining exponentially to drive change. They all boil down to the same idea, although their emphases may vary. Take, for example, Mihail C. Roco and William Sims Bainbridge, eds., Converging Technologies for Improved Human Performance: Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology and Cognitive Science (Arlington, VA: National Science Foundation/Department of Commerce, 2002) and (New York: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003). ISBN: 1-402-01254-3. http://wtec.org/ConvergingTechnologies They refer to the “NBIC” technologies—nanotechnology, biological engineering, information technology, and cognitive engineering. Douglas Mulhall in Our Molecular Future, (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2002), ISBN: 1573929921, refers to them as the GRAIN technologies—genetics, robotics, artificial intelligence and nanotechnology. Bill Joy in “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us,” Wired, April 2000—http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html—refers to them as the GNR technologies: genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics. So does Ray Kurzweil in his work. There are doubtless others.