"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 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 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.
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.
The idea precedes the word. As early as 1793, Condorcet speculated, in the "Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind", on an indefinite extension of the human lifespan. In 1923, the British geneticist J. B. S. Haldane published "Daedalus; or, Science and the Future", imagining the application of biological engineering to the human species, up to ectogenesis. In 1929, the crystallographer John Desmond Bernal extended the speculation to prosthetics and space life in "The World, the Flesh and the Devil". [DOCUMENTED FACT] These texts exist, are dated and can be consulted; they form the soil in which Huxley would plant his word.
[DOCUMENTED FACT] Julian Huxley's essay "Transhumanism" opens his collection "New Bottles for New Wine" (Chatto & Windus, 1957). The key passage deserves to be read for what it says — and does not say: the human species can, if it wishes, "transcend itself… man remaining man, but transcending himself, by realizing new possibilities of and for his human nature". Huxley, a biologist and humanist, speaks of education, society and the flourishing of the species — not of implants or digital immortality. The word's current technological meaning came later; one must therefore beware of the anachronism that would make UNESCO's first director-general the godfather of Silicon Valley.
[DOCUMENTED FACT] The chronology of the organised movement is precise: in 1988, Max More and Tom Morrow launched the magazine "Extropy"; in 1992, the Extropy Institute was founded in California; in 1998, Nick Bostrom and David Pearce created the World Transhumanist Association, which adopted a first "Transhumanist Declaration" (since revised); in 2005, Bostrom founded the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University — a sign that the current was entering academia — and the WTA took the name Humanity+ in 2008. [CORRELATION] This trajectory — fanzines, associations, university chairs, tech patronage — mirrors that of the digital industry, with which the movement partly shares its geography (California) and its funding.
[DOCUMENTED FACT] Transhumanism has identified intellectual adversaries — further proof of its public character: in 2004, the political scientist Francis Fukuyama designated it, in the journal Foreign Policy, as "the world's most dangerous idea", on the grounds that it would threaten equal rights founded on a shared human nature; the philosopher Jürgen Habermas voiced a related worry about liberal eugenics. Transhumanists responded publicly, Bostrom foremost among them. [HYPOTHESIS] Who is right is an open normative debate; the established fact is that this is a philosophical controversy conducted in the open, in journals — not a hidden agenda.
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.
The biologist Julian Huxley, who popularised it in a 1957 essay ("man remaining man, but transcending himself"). Earlier forms exist, but it is he who gave it its modern meaning.
In 1998, with the founding of the World Transhumanist Association (WTA) by Nick Bostrom and David Pearce — today called Humanity+, whose symbol is "H+".
No. It is a public philosophical current of thought, with identified authors, texts, journals and associations — the opposite of a clandestine organisation. It raises real ethical questions, but it is not a secret plan.
The "transhuman" (a term coined by FM-2030) refers to a transitional being who adopts augmentation technologies; the "posthuman" refers to the hypothetical end state, beyond current human limits. The first leads to the second, in theory.
"H+" (for Humanity Plus) is the emblem of the transhumanist movement, adopted by the association Humanity+ (formerly the World Transhumanist Association, founded in 1998).
Dossier : Transhumanisme militaire & DARPA
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