Over 70 years ago, the Oxford linguist,
writer of fantasy fiction and theologian CS
Lewis wrote:
Man's conquest of nature, if the dreams of
some scientific planners are realized, means
the rule of some hundreds of men over billions
upon billions of men.
Each new power won by men is a power over
man as well.
There neither is nor can be any simple increase
of power on Man's side.
Each increase leaves him weaker as well as
stronger.
Lewis made these observations in a short book
which he published in 1943, called The Abolition
of Man.
The target of his reflections was the agenda
for education being promoted by progressive
thinkers at the time, who aimed to debunk
traditional values, which they saw as dated,
unenlightened and irrational.
But these thinkers, Lewis argued, had no standard
of what was to count as progress.
They thought of it as meaning the increasing
human power over Nature that comes with advancing
scientific knowledge.
However, Lewis pointed out, this power is
exercised over other human beings as much
as the planet.
Using the knowledge science has given them,
governments and corporations alter the planetary
environment to create the world in which future
generations must live.
The conquest of Nature means, in reality,
conquering these future human beings.
Lewis goes on to consider what he describes
as the final stage in this process, which
comes with the attempt to alter the human
species itself.
The scientific planners of Lewis's generation
were dissatisfied with existing humankind.
Using new techniques, they were convinced,
they could design a much improved version
of the species.
Eugenics, pre-natal conditioning and new methods
in education could fashion a type of human
being as good, or better, than any that had
existed before.
But, Lewis asks, what standards will the scientific
planners use in moulding this new humanity?
To begin with, they may use traces of the
traditional values they have been so busy
debunking, but since these values are in many
cases rooted in religion, which they view
as irrational, this won't last long.
Instead the planners may aim to increase human
longevity - not only that of individuals,
but also of the human species.
But why should our species be preserved?
Why not design and create a different species
that is smarter, more powerful and longer
lasting than humans?
After all, if humankind stands in the way
of progress, what is the point of being human?
Lewis concludes: "Man's final conquest has
proved to be the abolition of man."
Lewis's questions are as relevant now as they
were when he asked them in the 1940s - if
not more so.
While the scientific knowledge needed to remould
humanity hardly existed then, it is rapidly
developing at the present time.
When Lewis talked about eugenics and pre-natal
conditioning as the means for making a new
species, he was invoking Aldous Huxley's Brave
New World rather than the science of his time.
Today it is the sciences of bioengineering
and artificial intelligence that promise the
power to remake humankind.
Scientists differ as to how realistic the
prospect may be.
But there are many people who welcome the
possibility of transforming the human species
that actually exists into something that matches
their dreams.
The idea that humans can use science to create
superior versions of themselves is not at
all new.
It was prefigured in the ancient myth of the
Golem - an artificial person created by magic
from dust or mud.
Golems are commonly pictured as shambling,
half-human creatures - a tradition that was
developed further by Mary Shelley in her novel
Frankenstein, published in 1818, where the
artificial human being is a tragic figure.
These myths and fictions carried a warning
- the attempt to create an artificial human
being risked making a monster.
But the idea was revived in the 20th Century,
and not only in the realm of the imagination.
The Nazis dreamt of creating a new type of
human being through what they described as
"scientific breeding" - a process that was
meant to run in parallel with the elimination
of people regarded as "unfit" or "racially
impure".
The belief that humanity could and should
be improved through eugenics - the use of
science to improve the quality of the human
population through selective breeding - wasn't
confined to the Nazis.
Eugenics was promoted by many progressive
writers and thinkers, including - at some
stages in their careers - HG Wells, Bertrand
Russell and Julian Huxley.
In the former Soviet Union, Leon Trotsky in
his pamphlet Literature and Revolution, published
in 1923, looked forward to a time when the
human species would be transformed by scientific
experimentation: "Even the purely physiologic
life will become subject to collective experiments.
The human species, the coagulated Homo Sapiens,
will once more enter into a state of radical
transformation, and, in our own hands, will
become the object of the most complicated
methods of artificial selection and psycho-physical
training."
In future, Trotsky believed: "The average
human type will rise to the heights of an
Aristotle, a Goethe or a Marx."
Today the dream of using science to fashion
a new type of human being is, if anything,
even more ambitious.
There are some, like Trotsky, who see their
goal as that of enhancing human abilities,
so that larger numbers can achieve what only
a few did in the past.
But there are also those who want to bring
about a mutation in the species itself.
The futurologist Ray Kurzweil, now director
of engineering at Google, anticipates a time
when, by merging their minds with the much
greater artificial intelligence that they
have created in computers and uploading the
result into cyberspace, human beings will
cease to be biological organisms.
Eventually, he believes, these post-human
minds may coalesce into a super-mind, godlike
in its powers and potentially immortal.
The question isn't whether this is technologically
possible but instead whether such a transformation
is desirable.
Whatever emerges from it won't be human.
A bodiless mind that doesn't age or die isn't
a human being.
Like the shades who wander through the afterlife
in some religions, it's a fading trace of
what a human being once had been.
Strangely, human beings have often looked
hopefully to surviving death in a form that
would leave them unrecognisably different
from what they were in life.
When Lewis published his prophetic essay,
he'd been a convert to Christianity for more
than a decade.
But you don't need to accept Lewis's theological
beliefs to acknowledge the danger he foresaw.
Humans are not intelligent enough to be capable
of designing superior versions of themselves.
If they acquire the power to remake themselves,
the result will be a proliferation of the
types of human being that are currently fashionable
- today, the super-smart and the preternaturally
thin.
As Lewis predicted, one generation will be
exercising power over future generations by
modelling them according to the dictates of
ephemeral fads.
There may be some who welcome such a world.
And it may have some points in its favour,
such as the elimination of inheritable diseases.
But the risk of programmes of human enhancement
is that they end by flattening out individuality
and diversity - qualities that make us human.
If at some unknown point in the future it
becomes feasible to remould ourselves according
to our dreams, the result can only be an impoverishment
of the human world.
Going further and enhancing human powers to
the point where what results ceases to be
recognisably human is, in effect, a project
that aims for human extinction - as Lewis
put it, the abolition of man.
Those who want to fashion a radically improved
version of the human animal end up wanting
to leave behind our species as it has always
been.
For myself, unregenerate humanity is preferable
- the flawed and conflicted creatures we are
in fact are much more interesting than the
transformed creatures we'd like to be.
But I'm sure we're not done with trying.
For if anything is peculiarly human, it's
the refusal to be what we are.
