This visionary book questions what it means to be human today and in the future. Drawing on the natural, human and life sciences, Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose encourage us to reconsider the human condition and the ways in which humans are affected by their animality, technology and the prospect of their annihilation.
This innovative book questions what it means to be human today and in the future. Drawing on the natural, human and life sciences, Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose encourage us to reconsider the human condition and the ways in which humans are affected by their animality, technology and the prospect of their annihilation.
Questioning Humanity builds on and questions established orthodoxies in the social sciences and humanities. Using arguments from the life sciences it introduces readers to debates surrounding posthumanism, human evolution, the uniqueness of the human mind and human consciousness. The book goes further, into novel territory, to examine relations and distinctions between humans and non-human animals, developments in ‘artificial intelligence’ and its limits, the prospect of human extinction by climate change, and the possibilities of alien civilizations. Osborne and Rose argue that despite calls for a new posthuman ethics, we remain all too human, and the social and human sciences should be imbued with a naturalistic humanism if they are to address the real and immediate challenges of local and global inequity and injustice.
Providing an accessible introduction into both the contemporary challenges and future key questions within the social and human sciences, this book will be a vital read for undergraduate and postgraduate students in these areas. Questioning Humanity will also appeal to scholars from social, cultural, anthropological and biological disciplines interested in human distinctiveness.
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In this thought-provoking book, Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose examine a wide range of issues concerning humans and human uniqueness in comparison to other species in the animal kingdom. The multidisciplinary breadth of their perspective matches the complexity of the problem they tackle. It is an impressive accomplishment! -- Shanyang Zhao, Temple University College of Liberal Arts, US
ContentsAnalytical table of contentsPreface and acknowledgementsIntroduction: questioning humanity1 Humanity2 Minds3 Animals4 Cyborgs5 Aliens6 ExtinctionAfterword: towards an alternative humanism?Bibliography
Thomas Osborne, Professor of Social and Political Theory, School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies, University of Bristol, UK and Nikolas Rose, Distinguished Honorary Professor, Research School of Social Sciences and Department of Sociology, Australian National University, Australia and Honorary Professor, Institute of Advanced Studies, University College London, UK
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