Editing Transhumanism (section)

{{Short description|Philosophical movement}}
{{For|the critique of humanism and related term|Posthumanism}}
{{Distinguish|Transhumance|Transgender}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=October 2016}}
{{Transhumanism|all}}{{Human enhancement sidebar|Advocacy}}{{Utopia}}

'''Transhumanism''' is a philosophical and intellectual movement that advocates the [[human enhancement|enhancement of the human condition]] by developing and making widely available new and future technologies that can greatly enhance longevity, cognition, and well-being.<ref name="Mercer">{{Cite book |title=Religion and Transhumanism: The Unknown Future of Human Enhancement |editor1-last=Mercer |editor1-first=Calvin |editor2-last=Throten |editor2-first=Tracy J. |publisher=Praeger |date=2015 |isbn=978-1-4408-3325-0}}</ref><ref name="Bostrom 2005">{{cite journal| last=Bostrom | first=Nick | author-link = Nick Bostrom |title = A history of transhumanist thought|journal = [[Journal of Evolution and Technology]] |volume=14 |issue=1 |pages=1–25 |year = 2005 |url = http://www.nickbostrom.com/papers/history.pdf| access-date=February 21, 2006}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Hopkins |first1=P. D. |title=Transhumanism |journal=Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics (Second Edition) |date=2012 |pages=414–422 |doi=10.1016/B978-0-12-373932-2.00243-X|isbn=978-0-12-373932-2 }}</ref>

Transhumanist thinkers study the potential benefits and dangers of [[emerging technologies]] that could overcome fundamental human limitations, as well as the [[technoethics|ethics]] of using such technologies.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/fuller20150909|title=We May Look Crazy to Them, But They Look Like Zombies to Us: Transhumanism as a Political Challenge|access-date=January 25, 2016|archive-date=November 6, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161106181953/http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/fuller20150909}}</ref> Some transhumanists speculate that human beings may eventually be able to transform themselves into beings of such vastly greater abilities as to merit the label of [[posthuman#Transhumanism|posthuman]] beings.<ref name="Bostrom 2005"/>

Another topic of transhumanist research is how to protect humanity against [[existential risk]]s from [[Existential risk from artificial general intelligence|artificial general intelligence]], asteroid impact, [[gray goo]], high-energy particle collision experiments, natural or synthetic pandemic, and nuclear warfare.<ref name="Schuster and Woods 2021">{{Cite book|title = Calamity Theory: Three Critiques of Existential Risk|author1-last = Schuster|author1-first = Joshua|author2-last= Woods|author2-first = Derek|publisher = University of Minnesota Press|date=2021|isbn=9781517912918}}</ref>

The biologist [[Julian Huxley]] popularised the term "transhumanism" in a 1957 essay.<ref name="Huxley 1957"/> The contemporary meaning of the term was foreshadowed by one of the first professors of [[Futures studies|futurology]], a man who changed his name to [[FM-2030]]. In the 1960s, he taught "new concepts of the human" at [[The New School]] when he began to identify people who adopt technologies, lifestyles, and worldviews "transitional" to posthumanity as "[[transhuman]]".<ref name="Hughes 2004"/> The assertion laid the intellectual groundwork for the British philosopher [[Max More]] to begin articulating the principles of transhumanism as a [[futurist]] philosophy in 1990, organizing in California a school of thought that has since grown into the worldwide transhumanist movement.<ref name="Hughes 2004"/><ref name="Gelles 2009"/><ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=transhumanism&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Ctranshumanism%3B%2Cc0|title=Google Ngram Viewer |access-date=April 25, 2013}}</ref>

Influenced by seminal works of [[science fiction]], the transhumanist vision of a transformed future humanity has attracted many supporters and detractors from a wide range of perspectives, including philosophy and religion.<ref name="Hughes 2004"/>

In 2017, [[Penn State University Press]], in cooperation with philosopher [[Stefan Lorenz Sorgner]] and sociologist [[James Hughes (sociologist)|James Hughes]], established the ''[[Journal of Posthuman Studies]]''<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.psupress.org/Journals/jnls_JPHS.html | title=Journal of Posthuman Studies: Philosophy, Technology, Media}}</ref> as the first academic journal explicitly dedicated to the posthuman, with the goal of clarifying the notions of [[posthumanism]] and transhumanism, as well as comparing and contrasting both.