The earth as our footstool

visions of human enhancement in 19th and 20th century Britain

Christopher Coenen

pp. 183-204

in: Simone Bateman, Sylvie Allouche, Jerome Goffette, Michela Marzano (eds), Inquiring into human enhancement, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015

Abstract

Current visions of human enhancement are rooted in visions of the future that were developed in Great Britain in the late 19th century and in the first third of the 20th century by a number of leading scientists and science-savvy authors, such as John Desmond Bernal and Herbert George Wells. The visions are thereby rooted in a historical situation in Britain which was marked by a conflict between the defenders of Christianity, traditional society and its values on the one hand, and socialist or technocratic, post-Darwinian progressives on the other. The latter group developed a worldview with strong similarities to traditional religious worldviews, in particular with regard to their eschatological elements. This new worldview — which can be termed an ideology of extreme progress — has proved to be remarkably successful, above all in recent years, and is most often known today as "transhumanism". It certainly serves different functions today than in the early 20th century, and its political context has changed significantly. However, the technoscientific imaginaries, which appear to be consistent, have remained more or less the same, with the exception of some updates regarding the relevant technologies and sciences. Visions of human enhancement are still a core element of this persistent ideology of extreme progress and perform an important function within it.