A history of transhumanism: who coined the word, and when (1957 → today)

"Transhumanism" is neither a recent word nor a conspiracy slogan: it is a dated term, with an author, a date, and an organized movement. Knowing this defuses the two symmetrical errors — the fantasy of a "secret plan" and the messianic promise of an already-achieved augmented humanity. Here is the documented history.

The word: Julian Huxley, 1957

The British biologist Julian Huxley — first director-general of UNESCO, brother of the writer Aldous Huxley — popularized the term in a 1957 essay, where he defined transhumanism as "man remaining man, but transcending himself, by realising new possibilities of and for his human nature." The word appears in earlier forms (a 1940 text by the Canadian philosopher W. D. Lighthall is often cited), but it is Huxley who gave it its modern meaning.

The pioneers: FM-2030 and Max More (1980s-1990s)

The contemporary meaning took shape in the late 20th century. Fereidoun M. Esfandiary, known as FM-2030, described the "transhuman" as a transitional being toward a posthuman condition, as one adopts new technologies and ways of life. The philosopher Max More then formulated transhumanism as a genuine philosophy (around the turn of the 1990s, with his text "Transhumanism: Toward a Futurist Philosophy") and founded the Extropy Institute, the movement's first structured home.

The organized movement: 1998, the World Transhumanist Association

In 1998, the philosophers Nick Bostrom and David Pearce founded the World Transhumanist Association (WTA), now called Humanity+ — whose "H+" symbol has become the movement's emblem. According to Bostrom, transhumanism is "a loosely defined movement… an interdisciplinary approach to understanding and evaluating the ethical, social and strategic issues raised by present and anticipated technologies." This is where transhumanism ceased to be one author's intuition and became a current with journals, associations and public debate.

What the history establishes

• The word has an author and a date: Julian Huxley, 1957.
• The organized movement has a date: 1998 (World Transhumanist Association, now Humanity+).
• It is a public philosophical current — with named figures, texts and associations — not a clandestine organization.
• It draws on real technologies (genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, brain-computer interfaces), whose uses it extrapolates.

What the history does NOT say

• That transhumanism is a "secret plan": on the contrary, it is an open intellectual movement, with publications and conferences — the opposite of a conspiracy.
• That its promises (immortality, human-machine fusion) are achieved: they belong to speculation, not deployed reality.
• That it is monolithic: it gathers very diverse currents, from a libertarian wing to "democratic transhumanism," which clash on ethics and the role of the state.
• "Researchers work on human enhancement" (true) does not become "an elite has decided to transform humanity" (unproven).

The honest history fits in one sentence: a philosophical idea named in 1957, structured into a movement in 1998, which raises real ethical questions about very real technologies — to be distinguished as much from the conspiracy fantasy as from the promise of immortality. For its most concrete and best-funded strand, that of the augmented soldier and DARPA programs, the definition and real dangers are detailed in our dedicated dossier.

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