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> It seems that what defines humanity has to be a bit refined Since the discovery of Darwinian evolution, we've understood humanity to be just one more outflow
by crispinb 7y ago
> It seems that what defines humanity has to be a bit refined
Since the discovery of Darwinian evolution, we've understood humanity to be just one more outflow of natural processes (albeit one having its day in the sun). The search for a specific marker of human uniqueness continued for a good century after that, but is fizzling out as we understand more about the nonhuman world, and as the intellectual influence of monotheistic religions wanes. We're a species. We emerged. We'll go away. No essential uniqueness, no destiny.
- perl4ever 7y agoI think humans are obviously unique in the same way as the first social insect, or whatever bacterium caused the Oxygen Catastrophe, or early lignin-producing plants. In fact, you could look at human history as kind of an echo of the evolution of lignin, since (I read somewhere) lignin is basically why we have fossil fuels.
- crispinb 7y agoArguably yes - it's too early to tell as it's such a young species. It's just as likely it will prove to be short (if ecologically consequential) branch of the evolutionary tree that will prove unviable and come to a dead end. But as humans are complex systems that are themselves outcomes of a wider complex system, there's not going to be a marker or essence (or 'definition' as the parent put it) of that uniqueness. Rather there's a one or more characteristically human emergent properties and capacities. No new version of 'tool-using' or 'bipedal' or related substitutes for the discarded Christian soul will win out. No soul, no essence, no destiny. Just one amongst millions of evolutionary branches whose unplanned evolutionary future will play itself out.