The Evolution of Techno-Cultural Man
(Do We Need a New Philosophy of Life?)
By: Dr. Ken Boddy MB, BS FRCOG
Senior Lecturer in Obstetrics & Gynaecology (Retired), University of Edinburgh UK
Medical director: Edinburgh Healthcare Telematics Centre
Discussion Paper 1
According to our anthropologists and archaeologists the origin of today’s techno-cultural ethos began
when the higher ‘larger-brained’ mammalian species developed tools and ways of working together
(technologies and societal organisation). Since the emergence of the hominids and their convergence in
mankind the last ten thousand years or so has seen an ever changing techno-cultural progress which has
been punctuated by the appearance and disappearance of cultures and civilisations as well as by the rise
and fall of empires. In more recent times, the last 300 years of recorded history in the Western World has
been characterised by the rise and the partial-fall of the modernist world view.
Living in the modern western world, which stemmed from the European enlightenment and the era of
modern science, was associated with the techno-cultural and societal changes brought about by the French
and the industrial revolutions and by the two great wars of the twentieth century. We are now living in the
post-Modern, post-Darwinian era where modernist progress still exists alongside the philosophical
deconstruction of some of its fundamental tenets. In this regard, the post-Modern, post-Darwinian debates
have involved all branches of the western academic world including both the sciences and the arts - and
they have become focussed in the humanities and the biological and earth sciences as well as in the
philosophies, the religious, the ethics and the educational communities. They have also penetrated the
socio-political world and have impacted on the way that late-modernist western societies have developed
over the last half century or so. 2
In the context of this confusing historical background there has been the development of new information
and telecommunications technologies (ITC’s) which have provided the ways and means for the capture,
processing; storage and retrieval of all types of information and knowledge as well as for their global
dissemination so that all may benefit. This has assisted the progress of societal change and it has impacted
on all our human activities. New ITC bio-technologies with their knowledge-based systems have also
assisted and transformed the multidisciplinary research and the combined developments that have
occurred between the scientific; the healthcare; the educational; the socio-political; and the industrial and
business sectors. In the world of modern medicine, there has been a predictable impact on the
improvement and the further progress of clinical practise which in turn has led to a greater ability to alter
the normal course of natural events in a positive direction. There has also been more and improved
1
This paper has been pre-circulated as part of the proceedings for the 100 year celebrations of the Hong Kong Medical School, to
be held in May 2007. It provides background information to the key-note lecture of the same title by Dr. Ken Boddy as well as
providing discussion material for the panel on ‘The Future of Medical Education’. It is deliberately provocative and it is intended
to stimulate frank and open discussion on the issues raised.
The societal changes brought about by modernity are also the context for the rise of ‘post-modernism’ in which we see the socalled 'death of the metanarrative' - the critique applied to the great stories (beliefs) of both the ancient and the modern world.
These big stories (beliefs) are now being deconstructed, or demythologised but there is the recognition that we still have the ‘real
issues’ concerning our wellbeing, to contend with – we still have tyranny, we still have the third world, we still have wars, and
we still have pollution; ethnic cleansing; inequalities and inadequacies in education and healthcare provision; we also still have
debates on social exclusion, terrorism, global warming, abortion, cloning, euthanasia, care of the elderly and the plight of the
more vulnerable in our societies. Such things have not gone away nor have they been healed by all our modern unhindered
progress. They form for us ‘the running sores’ of our postmodern world. Precisely because post-modernity says “my story
matters, your story matters, everybody's story matters”; so we have moved on to talk of our individual and collective rights - the
rights of all citizens including minority groups, our freedom of choice, our human dignity and worth - all these now create the
agendas for everyone in today’s post modern world. This is the political and ethical edge of post-modernity and it has led to the
current focus on holistic services which address our wellbeing through a combination of applications that are designed to cater
for all our perceived needs.
2
1
medical information being made available to a global society and this has led to the development of a
‘techno-culture’ in healthcare expectations. Today there is a renewed expectation that science and modern
medicine will eventually provide the means to escape our present human condition - that the ‘replacement
of human parts’ from both ‘artificial’ and ‘biological’ source materials will allow a gradual progress
toward the development of a ‘post-human entity’.
This ‘man-made’ evolutionary progress is no longer regarded as science-fiction.3 Continuous cellular
replacement and the development of artificial life forms in which the ’human personhood’ can be
embedded, are now being actively pursued and there is the perception that both ‘robotics’, ‘cybernetics’
and ‘informatics’ as well as ‘stem-cell research’, ‘genetics’ and the ‘neurosciences’ have all progressed
sufficiently enough to provide the grounds for believing that man himself can determine his own
evolutionary progress. But, there is always a ‘dark side’ – as history records - so all the progress and the
knowledge that we currently have is now becoming combined with the new ITC and knowledge-based
systems in such a way as to make it imperative that we begin to think again about the processes of
‘natural selection’ in the further evolutionary development of mankind as well as that of all other lifeforms. Many voices are now suggesting that we need a new understanding of man and his/her role in
determining the progress of life on earth (and elsewhere in the cosmos). For this reason, the current path
being followed toward ‘the post-human condition’ and its new capacities as well as its potential for
further development, has not escaped the notice of our philosophers and our religious and ethics experts.
Moreover, the theological, the political and the legal implications of such changes are now becoming
more widely debated and it has therefore been suggested that we may not only need a new philosophy of
life, with new ethical and legal concerns, but also a new politic and a new theology as well.
Our politicians are now being urged to be engaged in the development of ‘a new world order’ in which
the ‘post-human techno-cultural entity’ can be assisted to achieve its full evolutionary potential.
As a counterbalance to any untimely haste in these things it remains a fact that the post-modern and the
post-Darwinian debates together with the current techno-cultural progress have not yet provided a
satisfactory set of answers which could provide a well-defined path whereby man could free himself from
his mortality and from his need for procreation. To achieve such a man-made ‘unnatural progress’ toward
the post-human entity, the processes of procreation and ageing as well as the concepts of personhood and
the preservation of ‘the dignity’ of human and other species would need to be much more understood and
debated.4 With the development of further new technologies and deeper understandings there will also be
alterations to any political and legal eugenics-based techno-cultural changes. Already the rights of
technological systems themselves have entered into the legal system.5
3
See: (a) Francis Fukuyama, Our Posthuman Future, Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution
Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1998 and Gregory Stock, Redesigning Humans. The views of both US based authors have now gained
prominence in the UK. In 2002 they debated their views at the Institute of Education.
(b) N. Katherine Hayles, How
We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics, Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago & London,
1999: (c) Brent Waters, ’From human to Posthuman – Christian Theology and Technology in a Postmodern World’ Ashgate
Publishing:2006
See John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986) – and - John
Leslie, "The Prerequisites of Life in Our Universe," in Newton and the New Direction in Science, ed. G.V. Coyne, M. Heller, J.
Zycinski (Vatican: Citta del Vaticano, 1988).
4
5
See: ”Posthuman Law: Information Policy and the Machinic World” by Sandra Braman - in which she states: ”That
technical decisions have direct tremendous social, political, cultural, and economic impact is now widely understood”, and that
“the first steps towards developing methods for taking such decisions into account in the conduct of information policy analysis
are now beginning to appear (Mansell and Silverstone, 1996).She also points out that “The legal status of the natural world
before the law, has been raised by those concerned about environmental matters in recent decades….it is now likely that
consideration of the ‘right’ of the technologies upon which we are dependent will also become more explicit over the next few
years”
.
2
In spite of all our modernist and postmodern progress we are still faced with the age-old concerns of the
nature of man and with a confusing array of ethical and ‘rights’ issues as well as with the competing
theories and explanations regarding the mechanisms concerned in the origin and the progress of life. So
far as our current societies are concerned, the post-modern ‘deconstruction of previous ancient and
modernist understandings’ with its new emphasis on ‘the individual’ and on ‘the rights of the individual’
as well as on the influences of our societal embedding’ – as being the primary sources of all our necessary
truths - has now led to the cultural changes associated with ‘liberalism’ and ‘relativism’ – with ‘my
freedom of choice’ and ‘my freedom of expression and action’ and with the ‘political accommodation of
others to these things’. This is the age of ‘emerging democracies’ and ‘emerging globalisation’ with the
potential for ‘a single and democratic world government’ and a ‘single global world view’
(philosophy/religion). It is also the age of the power of ‘the minority group’ and ‘the pressure group’ as
well as ‘the fundamentalists’ on all sides of the debate.
In order to progress the debate further it is said that we are required to recognise that there are currently
no ‘universal (true for everyone) truths’. Current religious metanarratives only apply to ‘current believers’
and current science and modern medicine have been devalued from the status of providing ‘empirical or
objective truth’ to that of being ‘the current imperfect observations of a particular cultural group’.
In the post-modern world there are only ‘my truths’ and ‘my rights’ which are determined by ‘my
equality with others’ in the society in which I reside, and in the wider human or global society. Such a
current world view with its ‘political correctness’ would stifle the debate on progress and would resist any
movement toward the development of a post-human existence – at least for a little while! 6
It would appear however, that there are evolutionary processes at work in the whole of our cosmos and
that all biological and techno-cultural (societal) progress exhibits the punctuation marks of emergence,
convergence and redundancy - with individual and mass extinctions. There also appears to be an
underlying set of co-incidences which favour life and which bring about the changes needed to progress
from simple to more complex forms as time passes by.7 There is therefore said to be a discernable
Aristotelian8 ‘teleonomic anthropic principle of good’ associated with all the natural systems of our
cosmos.
6
In his book "Our Posthuman Future," . Fukuyama sets out to define the dangers posed by biotechnology and to propose a
solution. In the first section of the book, "Pathways to the Future" he points out the extent of the changes looming. In-vitro
fertilisation already routinely screens embryos for birth defects before implantation. Human-animal hybrids are rapidly becoming
a reality. And germ-line engineering, in which genetic changes will be handed on to future generations, is coming soon. All of
these are eugenic in purpose. All of them portend the end of a distinction between medicine and enhancement. And all of them
weaken the natural basis of rights and dignity. "The reasons for the persistence of the notion of the equality of human dignity are
complex. … the last important political movement to explicitly deny the premise of universal human dignity was nazism…" (F.
Fukuyama)
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Since the beginning of the 1900’s the scientific community has been stunned by its discovery of how complex and sensitive a
set of conditions must have been present in order for the universe to permit the origin and the progress of life here on planet
earth. In the various fields of physics and astrophysics, classical cosmology, quantum mechanics, biology and biochemistry as
well as the earth and the human sciences, numerous discoveries have repeatedly disclosed that the existence of life as well as our
overall wellbeing depends upon a delicate balance of biological, physical and cosmological quantities, such that were any one of
these quantities to be slightly altered, the balance would be destroyed and life would not exist. This has always been a suspected
thing even by our ancient scholars – it is known as the ‘anthropic co-incidences’ or the ‘teleolonomic anthropic principle’
elucidated by Aristotle - and it has now been re-discovered by all our new scientific observations and measurements – moreover it has been confirmed to be present in all the natural systems and sub-systems that have been studied here on earth. The anthropic
principle appears to operate as ‘a natural process’ in ‘a positive direction’ to overcome the contingencies of life - all the events
we encounter in nature, all the chance/choice happenings, all the interventions that may hold us back - and it provides for all the
‘good’ of our progress – it favours life in our universe - and here on earth, it favours the progress from simple life-forms to the
large brained and complex organisms (such as man) in particular.
8
In his observations of the natural world Aristotle noted that the organs and tissues in living things serve specific functions in the
economy of the organisms or systems of which they are a part. The phrase "that for the sake of which" (hou heneka) recurs
constantly in his explanations of the structures of living things. Horns are for the sake of defence; the fat that surrounds the
kidneys is for the sake of warmth, and so on. The natural operation of the liver brings about "concoction" and this is for ‘the good
of’, indeed ‘is necessary to’, the flourishing of the individual organism. Aristotle's De Partibus Animalium contains scores of
examples of this sort. The paradigm of ‘goal-directed process’ for Aristotle was found in ontogeny - the normal development
3
Whether all these things can be explained on the basis of contingency (chance) alone or whether there is
room in the system for individual or collective choices to be made or for an existential ‘Demiurge’ 9 to be
involved, is still a matter of our ‘current individual world view’ (opinion). Also, what can be done about
‘the destructive influences’ or ‘the dark side of life’ – whether man-made or otherwise - still remains as a
question to be answered for both human beings as well as for all other life-forms.
So - what will be the focus for the future? What issues will the next 100 years of medical education and
societal progress focus on?
In order to achieve a further meaningful evolutionary progress for mankind and the world we live in the
emphasis for the future cannot be focused in revisiting the ancient philosophies and religions except in so
far as their sacred texts may contain verifiable information. Neither can the emphasis be focussed on the
modernist view of an unregulated pursuit of the discoveries of science as the only way of achieving such a
progress. Even the post-modern concerns of ‘my equality with others’ and the compliance with so-called
‘human rights’, will not suffice. The emphasis for the future will need to be directed toward the utilisation
of ‘verified information from all sources’ with the addition of a ‘goal directed good’ for all creation.
Verified information with the ‘value concerns’ which meet ‘needs’ - and not ‘rights’ - will therefore be
the focus to best achieve the conditions required for changes that are meaningful in evolutionary terms.
The transition from human to post-human will not be meaningful if we only prolong life a little longer by
‘replacement parts’ or if we are only capable of dealing with the threats to survival that we currently
know about – although these may be the first steps in the current endeavours. In order to be meaningful in
evolutionary terms, the successful emergence and convergence of a ‘new man’ will need to be
accomplished without there being a future redundancy and the requirement for natural selection through
death and procreation and without there being a potential for future reversals or extinctions. In the same
way the future progress of all life on earth (and elsewhere) will only be meaningful in evolutionary terms
if there were to be a similar transition for all species with no built in redundancy and no threat from
extinctions.
All this will need a new approach to our thinking. Science and medicine together with philosophy will
need to focus on ‘man-made creativity’ and on ‘permanency’ together with the ‘value statements’
whereby selfish ends do not justify unethical means - but where means (resources) are directed to achieve
the step-by-step fulfilment of a progress which meets all our needs – including that of our evolutionary
progress. The achievement of a ‘good’ evolutionary progress will also need changes to the current politic
and the current laws in order to support it. Whether a new theology will also emerge, remains to be seen but in the mean time an initial effort will be required to acquire the necessary knowledge and the requisite
tools (technologies) as well as the necessary ethos to avoid and to overcome ‘the dark side’.
In terms of medical education, there is already a requirement for an enhanced understanding of the new
bio-technologies and their knowledge-based systems – including that of computer modelling techniques.
This will continue and expand and there will be a growing requirement for exposure to the ‘biological and
earth sciences’ as well as to the laboratory medical science, to ‘stem-cell and genetics research’, to the
from embryo (origins) to the adult (mature) form – however - the "telic" aspect of natural process - its tendency to promote the
larger good of the whole was seen as not being confined to the living world only. For Aristotle, the goal of all natural motion (for
example) is the recovery of ‘natural place’ - not just in the factual sense that this is where the motion terminates (or comes to
organised stability), but that this is ‘for the good of the body and of the cosmic order generally’. At the core of Aristotle's notion
of ‘telos’ is the idea of ‘a mode of flourishing’, an ‘anthropic principle of good’, which is served by the structure or the process
in question and which thus serves to explain that structure or process in a distinctive way. As natural processes which relate to
our evolutionary progress the development of societal structures can be seen as having a ‘goal directed’ good for the sake of
everyone as individuals as well as for the sake of society as a whole and they therefore exhibit a teleological anthropic principle
of good. The same would appear to be true for the structures and processes involved in the development of the post-human entity
and the effort must therefore be made to defining the right path and the right choices in order to avoid ‘the dark side’.
9
In the ancient world the stress laid by Aristotle on natural process was supplemented by Plato who looked for the evidence of an
intelligence of some sort (a demiurge) being behind it all.9 In today’s world the natural process argument is seen in the work of
Darwin and others, yet there still persists the notion of ‘intelligent design’. There are many respected scientists who still find
room for a creator who cares for us as a loving parent would, as well as adhering to the evidences of natural processes and the
need for personal responsibility.
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‘neurosciences’ and to the new and emerging domains of ‘informatics’, ‘robotics’, and ‘cybernetics’ –
together with their ethical concerns.
Medical education will therefore continue to be associated with an ever increasing requirement for lifelong professional learning including that of regulation and re-training and the exposure to new knowledge
and to new and emerging technologies.
Current undergraduate and postgraduate training programmes create a culture of their own with a
dependency on ‘manual skills’ and ‘pharmaceuticals’ as well as on other ‘treatments’ and of course – a
dependency on ‘doctors’ - this will become less in evidence as diagnostic and preventative as well as
curative medicine becomes more focussed in the technology advances that are now taking place.
Intelligent clothing as well as personalised medical devices and ‘off the shelf’ diagnostic tools as well as
replacement parts will soon overtake the capabilities of trained physicians and surgical practitioners. They
will place the delivery of healthcare in the home and in the local community rather than in remote and
specialised hospitals. They will also place the information gathering and its processing as well as some of
the diagnostic and treatment regimens in the hands of ‘technical experts’ and ‘machines’ rather than
doctors – emphasising the power of information.10 This is already beginning to occur and the new
technologies will soon make it possible for the client to be in control of their information as well as to
participate in determining their own needs and their own service requirements. The societal progress
toward acceptance of such changes will not be a difficult exercise and medical educators will need to take
note of this. Some 500years ago when the Royal College of Surgeons was established in Edinburgh the
principal entry qualification for trainees was the ability to read and write – the future entrance
requirements for undergraduate and postgraduate medical education may depend on the ability to master
the language of computers and to engage in understanding and utilising the new technologies.
The future will also expose doctors to the broader issues to be considered. Whilst it would be pointless to
pursue permanency for mankind if we were to destroy everything else in the process - it may also be
pointless to resist the man-made creativity which can lead toward our own evolutionary progress and
toward the end of human suffering and the end of modern medicine as we currently know it. 11
The acceptance of advances such as ‘germ-line engineering’ and ‘artificial life forms, in which the human
personhood is embedded’ will provide a different and more difficult path to follow.
The potential for the ‘dark-side’ to assert its influence will be much greater in this scenario of progress.
Nevertheless, governments and the business world are currently preparing the ground for the wider
acceptances of the robotics and the cybernetics research which has largely taken place in the military
context where ethical justification is less of a priority and where advances can be made away from the
public eye. The choices that exist between biological and artificial life solutions is also being considered
and the business world is currently promoting both of these aspects since it perceives a monetary gain in
both. Governments are also pursuing their own agendas with the need for accurate information regarding
all of our individual characteristics being on their ‘high priority’ list.
Identity and personhood are closely related concepts and the current pursuit of ‘identity information by
biometric and genetic means’ is seen as a first step in the information gathering needed for future
developments to take place.
10
The computer modelling of natural systems and computerised decision-making have already infiltrated policy-making
processes in three ways: (i) they supplement human decision-making when they provide aids to humans for specific decisionmaking tasks (ii) they supplant human decision-making when it appears that the decisions are human but in fact are made by
machines and (iii) they supersede humans when effective decision-making is undertaken by autonomously evolving non-human
electronic intelligences.
11
Our current notions of natural rights, our claims of human dignity and equality, are all based on the complex interplay of birth,
health, aging, and death. And when these have changed as completely as biotechnology wants to change them, what will remain
of such rights, dignity, and equality?
5
If doctors are to be part of this ‘future post-human progress’ they will need to be part of the basic sciences
and the clinical and technical sciences that are pursuing them. They will also be required to understand
the basis of the ethical judgements to be made and to promote the societal discussions of the choices to be
made. The power of information will need to be addressed in the context of ’the engineering of societal
change’ as well as in the context of ’the progress of human evolution’ - so that a consistent and a
verifiable ‘world view’ will be required. We will not only need the help of our science and technology
colleagues as well as our ethics and legal experts but we will also need the input of our historians,
philosophers and theologians. The future promises to be an exciting and perhaps a frightening place to be!
6