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Cultural History of the Science and Technology of Human Enhancement

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Cultural History of the Science and Technology of Human Enhancement ORBIT-OnlineRepository ofBirkbeckInstitutionalTheses Enabling Open Access to Birkbeck’s Research Degree output Engineering humans : cultural history of the science and technology of human enhancement https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/40210/ Version: Full Version Citation: Haug, Knut Hallvard Sverre (2016) Engineering humans : cul- tural history of the science and technology of human enhancement. [Thesis] (Unpublished) c 2020 The Author(s) All material available through ORBIT is protected by intellectual property law, including copy- right law. Any use made of the contents should comply with the relevant law. Deposit Guide Contact: email 1 Engineering Humans a cultural history of the science and technology of human enhancement Knut Hallvard Sverre Haug Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English and Humanities School of Arts Birkbeck, University of London 2015 2 I declare that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Hallvard Haug 3 Abstract This thesis investigates the technological imaginary of human enhancement: how it has been conceived historically and the scientific understanding that has shaped it. Human enhancement technologies have been prominent in popular culture narratives for a long time, but in the past twenty years they have moved out of science fiction to being an issue for serious discussion, in academic disciplines, political debate and the mass media.. Even so, the bioethical debate on enhancement, whether it is pharmacological means of improving cognition and morality or genetic engineering to create smarter people or other possibilities, is consistently centred on technologies that do not yet exist. The investigation is divided into three main areas: a chapter on eugenics, two chapters on cybernetics and the cyborg, and two chapters on transhumanism. All three areas of enhancement thinking have a corresponding understanding of and reference to evolutionary theory and the human as a category. Insofar as ‘enhancement’ is a vague and relative turn, the chapters show how each approach wrestles with how to formulate what is good and desirable. When this has inevitably proven difficult, the technologies themselves dictate what and how ‘enhancement’ comes about. Eugenics treats the human in terms of populations – as a species, but also in abstract categories such as nation and race. I follow the establishment of eugenics from the development of a statistical understanding of measuring human aptitude, with emphasis on the work of Francis Galton and the formulation of the regression to the mean. The following two chapters on cybernetics and the cyborg analyses how the metaphor of the body as machine has changed relative to what is meant by ‘machine’: associated with Cartesian dualism, cybernetics marked a shift in how we understand the term. Through a reading of the original formulation of the cyborg, I connect it to evolutionary adaptationism and a cybernetic ‘black box’ approach. The last two chapters look at a more recent approach to enhancement as a moral imperative, transhumanism. Since some transhumanists seek to ground themselves philosophically as the inheritors to Enlightenment humanism, the concept of ‘morphological freedom’ is central, representing an extension of humanistic principles of liberty brought into an age which privileges information over matter. The final chapter looks at how the privileging of information leads to a universal computational ontology, and I specifically look at the work of Ray Kurzweil, a prominent transhumanist, and how the computationalist narrative creates a teleological understanding of both human worth and evolution. 4 Acknowledgements I would not have managed to see this thesis to the end without the help of numerous people. My supervisor Roger Luckhurst has been essential to me finally making it through. Carol Watts helped me when I was in dire straits. The members of the Cybernetics Reading Group, Grace Halden, Sophie Jones and Irina Chkhaidze, were essential to shape my understanding of this complex topic. Sherryl Vint and Rob Park at Science Fiction Studies gave me space in print to muse about my ideas under the guise of writing book reviews. During the years spent writing this my friends have listened to me drone on about my topic, ridiculing my ideas when it has been necessary: thanks must go to Matt H., Rob, Bianca, James, Tony, Matt S. and Xavier for feigning interest along the way. Special thanks go to my family: My mother and father, Eldbjørg and Magne, have shown support throughout. My sister Karen has always been enthusiastic about my work. The greatest thanks must go to Helena, who has showed the utmost patience these past years. 5 Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 4 CONTENTS 5 INTRODUCTION LIBERTY, PROGRESS, AND THE NEED FOR ENHANCEMENT 8 CONTEMPORARY ENHANCEMENT TECHNOLOGIES 8 PROGRESS, TECHNOLOGY AND ENHANCEMENT 16 THE SHACKLES OF EPHEMERAL LIFE 24 THREE AGES OF ENHANCEMENT TECHNOLOGY: EUGENICS, CYBORGS, TRANSHUMANISM 29 CHAPTER ONE: EUGENICS THE STATISTICAL IMPROVEMENT OF THE HUMAN SPECIES 31 INTRODUCTION 31 WELL-BORN SCIENCE OR ILL-FORMED IDEA? 33 EUGENICS: DEFINITIONS OF A SCIENCE AND PRACTICE 38 GALTON AND DARWIN: HEREDITY AND EVOLUTION 46 SPECIES AND POPULATIONS 52 HEREDITARY MECHANISMS 60 INDIVIDUALS AND POPULATION THINKING 68 EUGENICS COMES TO THE FORE 78 POPULATION TECHNOLOGY 83 CONCLUSION 94 CHAPTER TWO: MECHANICAL BODIES THE SOLIPSISM OF THE CARTESIAN MACHINE 96 THE ARTIFICIAL MAN AND THE EVOLUTION OF THE HUMAN/INSECT 96 CYBORG LANGUAGE 105 6 THE CYBORG RAT 108 DESCARTES, MECHANIC(IST) 113 MECHANICS AND TECHNICAL DISCOURSE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 118 PHILOSOPHY AND TECHNICAL SYSTEMS 122 BÊTE-MACHINE 127 THE SOLIPSIST DUCK 133 CONCLUSION 138 CHAPTER THREE: CYBERNETIC ORGANISMS 141 FREEDOM IN ISOLATION 141 INTRODUCTION: FICTIONAL, CRITICAL AND MILITARY CYBORGS 141 FIRST DAYS OF THE CYBORG: PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGY OF SPACE FLIGHT 143 THE PROLIFERATION OF CYBORGS 151 WHAT IS A CYBORG? 156 FROM CYBERNETICS TO EVOLUTION: PURPOSE AND ADAPTATION 163 CYBORG TECHNIQUE 174 CONCLUSION 183 CHAPTER FOUR: TRANSHUMANISM AFTER AND BETWEEN HUMANISMS 185 INTRODUCTION 185 POSTHUMAN TRANSHUMANISTS 186 LINGUISTIC AND EUGENIC ORIGINS OF TRANSHUMANISM 190 TRANSHUMAN GOALS 195 ORGANISING UNDER THE TRANSHUMAN BANNER 200 THE EUGENIC CONNECTION 206 THE FRINGES OF SCIENTIFIC SPECULATION: CRYONICS AND UPLOADING 212 FORM, INFORMATION, UPLOADING 218 CONCLUSION 226 7 CHAPTER FIVE THE GHOST IN THE MACHINA MUNDI 228 RAY KURZWEIL’S COMPUTATIONAL TRANSHUMANISM 228 THE SINGULARITY 230 VINGE’S SINGULARITY 232 MOORE’S LAW 236 TRANSHUMAN TECHNOLOGIES: CONVERGENCE AND COMPUTATION 240 MOORE’S LAW UNMOORED 245 TECHNOLOGICAL EVOLUTION 249 GENES, GENETIC ENGINEERING, AND THE CONTROL OF MATTER 255 NANOTECHNOLOGY: PROGRAMMABLE MATTER 260 INFORMATION IN NANOTECHNOLOGY 265 THE FACT AND FICTION OF NANOTECHNOLOGY 269 KURZWEIL’S NANOTECHNOLOGY 271 CONCLUSION: TIPLER’S ESCHATOLOGY 272 BIBLIOGRAPHY 280 8 Introduction Liberty, Progress, and the need for enhancement Contemporary enhancement technologies Designer babies. An old debate has recently flared up regarding the uses of a new enzymatic technology. The so-called CRISPR/Cas9 technique can edit the base pairs of the DNA molecule with a previously unmatched efficiency and precision, and promises not only a more efficient way to study the function of genetic development in model organisms such as E. coli, D. melanogaster or C. Elegans, but also a more viable approach to gene therapy, which has been on the horizon for decades but with limited success.1 Gene therapy is the alteration of DNA in somatic cells, particularly for the correction of simple genetic disorders, such as phenylketonuria, which typically manifest as missing or faulty protein coding sequences in the DNA of somatic cells. While such therapy does not necessarily cure genetic disorders, it nevertheless promises relief from diseases which can be debilitating if a patient receives regular treatment. But CRISPR/Cas9 can also be used to alter germline DNA. In such a case, the genetic sequences in spermatocytes or ovae is altered, which means that if these gametes are used for reproductive purposes, all of the cells in the body will contain the altered DNA sequence. Though the term ‘genetic engineering’ is older, ethical worries over it arrived once the first technique for altering DNA arrived in 1972.2 Yet following the 1 Prashant Mali, Kevin M. Esvelt and George M. Church, ‘Cas9 as a Versatile Tool for Engineering Biology’, Nature Methods, 10 (2013), 957–63. 2 The warning actually arrived slightly before the technique was published: Theodore Friedmann and Richard Roblin, ‘Gene Therapy for Human Genetic Disease?’, Science, New Series, 175 (1972), 949–55, was published in March. David A. Jackson, Robert H. Symons and Paul Berg, ‘Biochemical Method for Inserting New Genetic Information into DNA of Simian Virus 40: Circular SV40 DNA Molecules Containing Lambda Phage Genes and the Galactose Operon of Escherichia Coli’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 69 (1972), 2904–9, was published in October. The first 9 early warnings, genetic engineering remained elusive despite repeated assurances that new techniques would finally make it possible. In recent years, however, the early promise has come to look increasingly viable. Already, gene therapies for a handful of genetic diseases have become available. CRISPR/Cas9 appears to be the technique which finally spurs the promise into action, and the ethical debate on genetic engineering,
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