Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T07:17:31.425Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Man: Natural or Self-Fabricated?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Dominique Bourg*
Affiliation:
CREIDD/UTT
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

What is humanity? I do not claim to answer this question; more simply, I will seek to bring to light the now-problematic character of the very concept of humanity. I will start from a basic established fact: today we cannot conceive the notion of humanity without starting from a dual tension, between a distant past and a future which is either more or less near or very remote. In whatever direction one turns, the concept of humanity is confused. It is still more confused if we seek to embrace past and future together.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2002

References

Bacon, F. (c.1989) New Atlantis; and, The Great Instauration, ed. Weinberger, J. (Arlington Heights, Ill., Harlan Davidson, Inc.).Google Scholar
Bourg, D. (1996) L'Homme-artifice. Le sens de la technique (Paris, Gallimard).Google Scholar
Bourg, D. (1997) Nature et technique. Essai sur l'idée de progrès (Paris, Hatier).Google Scholar
Bourg, D., and J.-L. Schlegel (2001) Parer aux risques de demain. Le Principe de précaution (Paris, Éditions du Seuil).Google Scholar
Bourg, D., and Besnier, J.-M. (2000) Peut-on encore croire au progrès? (Paris, PUF).Google Scholar
Cauvin, J. (1994) Naissance des divinités. Naissance de l'agriculture. La révolution des symboles au néolithique (Paris, CNRS Éditions) [English translation: The Birth of the Gods and the Origins of Agriculture, trans. Trevor Watkins, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000].Google Scholar
De Waal, F. (1997) Le Bon singe. Les bases naturelles de la morale (Paris, Bayard Éditions) [originally published as: Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Human and Other Animals, Cambridge, Mass. and London, Harvard University Press, 1996].Google Scholar
Diamond, J.M. (2000) Le Troisième chimpanzé (Paris, Gallimard) [originally published as: The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee, London, Radius, 1991].Google Scholar
Drexler, K. Eric, and Peterson, Chris, with Gayle Pergamit (1991) Unbounding the Future: The Nanotechnology Revolution (New York, Quill William Morrow).Google Scholar
Joy, B. (2000) Why the future doesn't need us, Wired, April.Google Scholar
Kurzweil, R. (1999) The Age of Spiritual Machines: How We Will Live, Work and Think in the New Age of Machines (Harmondsworth, Penguin).Google Scholar
Moravec, H. (1999) Robot: Mere Machines to Transcendent Mind (Oxford, Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Paul, G.S., and Cox, E. (1996) Beyond Humanity: Cyberevolution and Future Minds (Rockland, Mass., Charles River Media).Google Scholar
Pellegrini, B. (1995) L'Éve imaginaire. Les origines de l'homme, de la biologie à la paléontologie (Paris, Payot).Google Scholar
Ruhlen, M. (1997) L'Origine des langues (Paris, Belin) [originally published as: On the Origin of Lanugages: Studies in Linguistic Taxonomy, Stanford, Cal., Stanford University Press, 1994].Google Scholar
Ruhlen, M. (1998) Toutes parentes, toutes différentes. Pourquoi l'idée de remonter à une langue ancestrale originelle n'est pas absurde, La Recherche, 306, February, pp. 6875.Google Scholar
Silver, L. (1997) Remaking Eden: Cloning and Beyond in a Brave New World (New York, Avon Books).Google Scholar