STS vis-à-vis Transhumanism: Friends or Foes?

Abstract

A general long term trend in Science and Technology Studies (STS) has been a drift from normative to empirical issues, which perhaps has been accelerated over the last twenty years by the ‘Science Wars’ of the 1990s. Indeed, when STS veers into normative terrain these days, it tends to presume a broadly ‘precautionary’ approach to risk – as in the EU-driven idea of ‘responsible innovation’. In contrast, over this same period, ‘Transhumanism’ has occupied an increasing part of the normative landscape concerning science and technology. Moreover, this movement unapologetically adopts and extends the ‘proactionary’ mandate that originally motivated the West’s seventeenth century Scientific Revolution – such as Francis Bacon’s proposal for an actively intervening in the conduct of nature to human benefit. How should STS interact with Transhumanism – simply as another actor to follow or as a challenger to its own fundamental understandings of the place of science and technology in society? This panel will explore these matters from multiple perspectives.

Individual Presentations

• Modern Science, Transhumanism, and the Charge of Ableism - Alcibiades Malapi-Nelson, Humber College

• Proactionary and Precautionary Principles and Transhumanism - Francis Remedios, Independent Scholar

• The Dangers of Transhumanism to STS - Raphael Sassower, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs

• Revisiting the Latour-Fuller Debate on the Place of the Human in Scientific Inquiry - Steve Fuller, University of Warwick

Session Organizers

• Francis Remedios, Independent Scholar

• Alcibiades Malapi-Nelson, Humber College