Significant Contributions Shaping the Evolution of Transhumanist Philosophy

History

142: Zhang Daoling (traditionally thought to have lived from 34 to 156 CE) establishes a movement known as The Way of the Five Pecks of Rice  (referring to the requested tribute to join) wherein followers lived in self-sufficient communities based on both mutual aid and various proto-“life extension” practices such early forms of breathwork and exercises resembling qigong, various dietary restrictions, and herbal tonics.

~200: Alchemical Practices begin to take root in the Han Dynasty in China. Practitioners seeking immortality experimented with various preparations of minerals and herbs, whose results had oft-disastrous margins of error, depending on the constituent ingredients.

1308-1321: Dante Alighieri, in the Divine Comedy, utilizes the words “Transumanare,” “Trasumanar,” and “Transumano.” ⁷

1605: Francis Bacon, an English philosopher, statesman, and scientist, writes, “The lengthening of the thread of life itself, and the postponement for a time of that death which gradually steals on by natural dissolution and the decay of age, is a subject of which no physician has handled in proportion to its dignity.” (The Advancement of Learning (Book IV, Chapter II)¹

1637: René Descartes envisions medicine granting physical immortality and stronger minds in his Discourse on Method.

1773: Benjamin Franklin, a Founding Father of the United States, a polymath, and a leading figure of the Enlightenment movement writes, “I wish it were possible… to invent a method of embalming drowned persons, in such a manner that they might be recalled to life at any period, however distant; for having a very ardent desire to see and observe the state of America a hundred years hence, I should prefer to an ordinary death, being immersed with a few friends in a cask of Madeira, until that time, then to be recalled to life by the solar warmth of my dear country! But… in all probability, we live in a century too little advanced, and too near the infancy of science, to see such an art brought in our time to its perfection.”  (Letter to Jacques Dubourg, reprinted in  Life Magazine, 9 Jan 1956, page 86) ¹

1780: Benjamin Franklin writes, “The rapid Progress true Science now makes, occasions my Regretting sometimes that I was born so soon. It is impossible to imagine the Height to which may be carried in a 1000 Years the Power of Man over Matter… All Diseases may by sure means be prevented or cured, not excepting even that of Old Age, and our Lives lengthened at pleasure even beyond the antediluvian Standard. O that moral Science were in as fair a Way of Improvement, that Men would cease to be Wolves to one another, and the human Beings would at length learn what they now improperly call Humanity.”  (Letter to Joseph Priestley)

1793: William Godwin argues for “earthly immortality” in Political Justice.

1794: Marquis de Condorcet, a French philosopher, mathematician, and political scientist, writes, “It is manifest that the improvement of the practice of medicine, becoming more efficacious in consequence of the progress of reason and the social order, must in the end put a period to transmissible or contagious disorders, as well to those general maladies resulting from climate, aliments, and the nature of certain occupations. Nor would it be difficult to prove that this hope might be extended to almost every other malady, of which it is probable we shall hereafter discover the most remote causes. Would it even be absurd to suppose this quality of melioration in the human species as susceptible of an indefinite advancement; to suppose that a period must one day arrive when death will be nothing more than the effect either of extraordinary accidents, or of the slow and gradual decay of the vital powers; and that the duration of the middle space, of the interval between the birth of man and this decay, will itself have no assignable limit? Certainly man will not become immortal; but may not the distance between the moment in which he draws his first breath, and the common term when, in the course of nature, without malady or accident, he finds it impossible any longer to exist, be necessarily protracted?”  (Future Progress of Man, Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind)¹

1850s – 1903: Nikolai Fyodorov, a philosopher, religious thinker, and futurologist, introduces Russian cosmism, a spiritual worldview that became a precursor to transhumanism. This belief system champions the pursuit of immortality, exploration of space, and reviving deceased individuals through scientific means. ³

1922: Aleksandr Syvatogor (1889-1937) founds and leads  the short-lived Russian Biocosmism movement, which championed biological immortality and expansion throughout the cosmos. Biocosmism merged anarcho-communism with transhumanist ambitions to aggressively defeat death, resurrect the dead, and colonize space. Svyatogor’s foundational text for the Biocosmism movement is entitled The Doctrine of the Fathers and Anarchism-Biocosmism.

1923: J. B. S. Haldane, a British scientist, atheist, secular humanist, and Marxist, publishes Daedalus; or, Science and the Future, which presents an initial perspective on transhumanism that focuses primarily on the ethical ramifications stemming from scientific progress. ³

1924-1925: Alexander Bogdanov (1873-1928) founds the Institute for Hematology and Blood Transfusion in Moscow and conducts multiple transfusions upon himself in order to achieve a more youthful state, with a fellow revolutionary commenting: “Bogdanov seems to have become 7, no, 10 years younger after the operation.” Bogdanov also wrote the science fiction novel Red Star, contrasting life in Russia at the time with a successful post-Revolutionary society on Mars, and he influenced the field of cybernetics.

1929: John Desmond Bernal, a British scientist publishes The World, the Flesh and the Devil, introducing concepts fundamental to transhumanism, such as the creation of habitable space structures and the potential advancements science may bring to human physicality and intelligence. ³

1931: Neil R. Jones, an author has his short story “The Jameson Satellite,” published in Amazing Stories, revolving around a man whose dead body is sent into orbit and preserved at an extremely low temperature for countless years until a cyborg civilization comes across it. After thawing his brain, they transplant it into a robot’s body. ³

1932: Aldous Huxley, an author, publishes the novel “Brave New World” describing a transhumanist dystopia where mind control, drug use, biotechnology, and casual sex maintain a passive, unchanging caste society. 2

1935: Alexis Carrel, a French surgeon, biologist, and pathologist, writes, “Science, which has transformed the material world, gives man the power of transforming himself. It has unveiled some of the secret mechanisms of his life. It has shown him how to alter their motion, how to mold his body and his soul on patterns born of his wishes. For the first time in history, humanity, helped by science, has become master of its destiny. But will we be capable of using this knowledge of ourselves to our real advantage? To progress again, man must remake himself. And he cannot remake himself without suffering. For he is both the marble and the sculptor. In order to uncover his true visage he must shatter his own substance with heavy blows of his hammer.”  Man, the Unknown (Chapter VIII: The Remaking of Man)  1

1935: Jean Coutrot, a French technocrat begins using the word “transhumanisme” in his French writings. ²

1937: Aleksandr Bogomolets (1881-1946) founds a permanent research unit attached in the Soviet Republic of Georgia on the extension of life expectancy; he is funded in part due to Josef Stalin’s interest in life extension. Bogomolets led the National Academy of Sciences in Ukraine and worked towards development of a life-extension serum.

1938: Aleksandr Bogomolets convenes the world’s first scientific conference on aging and longevity.

1940: W. D. Lighthall, a Canadian poet, writer, historian, and civil servant, is the first to use the term “transhumanism” in English, where he referred to ‘St. Paul’s Transhumanism,’ which could be a tribute to a ‘transhuman change’ described in the 1814 English version of Dante’s Divine Comedy, where one embarks on a journey towards heaven. ²

1942: Julian Huxley, author of Evolution: The Modern Synthesis, uses the term “Evolutionary Humanism” in his writing. ⁷

1945: The Holocaust, was a genocide that resulted in the systematic murder of over six million Jews and other groups undesirable to the Nazi regime. The Holocaust marked the end of western affinity for eugenics and similar programs. ²

1948: Robert Ettinger, an author and cryonics founder, inspired by “The Jameson Satellite” publishes his short story “The Penultimate Trump,” in Startling Stories. Ettinger suggests cryonics as a form of “one-way medical time travel to the future,” in which a person is frozen and preserved in the hope of being revived later on.  ²

1950: T.S. Eliot: author of The Cocktail Party writes the words “Transhumanate” and “Transhumanize”. ⁷

1950’s: Clive McCay conducts experiments on animals laying the groundwork for caloric restriction as a means to life extension, as well as experiments in parabiosis in rats, or “young blood transfusion” from young animals rejuvenating the old.

1951: Julian Huxley, noted evolutionary biologist coins the term “transhumanism” at a lecture delivered in Washington titled Knowledge, Morality and Destiny. Huxley describes his philosophy as “the idea of humanity attempting to overcome its limitations and to arrive at fuller fruition”.  ²

1954: Jerry Sohl, publishes his sci-fi story “The Altered Ego“, in which a man is able to make a digital duplicate of his mind and access it after his death. This marks the first appearance of mind-uploading in fiction.  ²

1957: Julian Huxley, in his essay Transhumanism further defines the word “Transhumanism”. ⁷

1959: Physicist Richard P. Feynman, presents the lecture, There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom, suggesting the possibility of the manipulation of atoms in synthetic chemistry. The lecture will later inspire the field of nanotechnology.  ²

1959: Teilhard de Chardin, author of L’Avenir de L’Homme (The Future of Man), uses the word “Transhuman”. ⁷

1964: Robert Ettinger, publishes “The Prospect of Immortality,” a manifesto for cryonics. A small number of cryonics societies are established across the US.  ²

1961-1972: Project Apollo is funded by the U.S. government and lands a man a moon in 1969, fulfilling JFK’s wish in his address to Congress in 1961 of ” landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth”.

1965: Irving John Good, cryptographer and computer scientist publishes “Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine,” the first proposal for a possible future intelligence explosion in machine learning.  ²

1966: Fereidoun M. (F.M.) Esfandiary, in his course New Concepts of the Human uses the word “Evolutionary Transhuman”. ⁷

1967:  Harry Overstreet, a philosopher makes the first mention “extropy” — the attempt to counteract the natural law of entropy — in a 1967 volume of the journal, Physis.  ²

1967: Robert Nelson, a television repairman becomes the first person cryogenically frozen at the Cryonics Society of California where he was its president. The operation was ultimately deemed unsuccessful and Nelson’s clients were “lost.”  ²

1968: Douglas Engelbart, presents The Mother of All Demos at the ACM/IEEE Computing Society’s Fall Joint Computer Conference. Engelbart from the Augmentation Research Center, established many modern computing concepts.  ²

1968: Abraham Maslow, in Toward a Psychology of Being, uses the word “Transhumans”. ⁷

1972: Fred & Linda Chamberlain, establish the Alcor Society for Solid State Hypothermia, later renamed to the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, in Los Angeles. Fred Chamberlain had previously worked as a space program engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.  ²

1972: Apollo 17, becomes the final manned mission to the Moon.  ²

1972: The Club of Rome, publishes The Limits to Growth, positing dire projections of a growing global population and dwindling resources.  ²

1972: Robert Ettinger, in Man into Superman, uses the word “Transhumans”. ⁷

1973: F.M. Esfandiary, then known as FM-2030, publishes Up-Wingers: A Futurist Manifesto.  ²

1974: Gerard K. O’Neil, physicist publishes “The Colonization of Space” in Physics Today. O’Neil advocates “finding high-quality living space for a world population that is doubling every 35 years; finding clean, practical energy sources; preventing overload of Earth’s heat balance.”  ²

1974: Dr. Ronald Bennet, Chairman of the Committee for Anti-Aging Research, under his grass-roots campaign PROJECT 1989, brings about The Research on Aging Act of 1974 established the National Institute of Aging to back anti-aging research.  ²

1974: F.M. Esfandiary (FM-2030), in Woman In the Year 2000, uses the word “Transhuman”. ⁷

1975: The L5 Society, is established to continue O’Neil’s work advocating for space colonization. Its members include Eric Drexler.  ²

1976: The Cryonics Institute, is established and freezes its first clients in liquid nitrogen.  ²

1980: The L5 Society, helps defeat US ratification of the Moon Treaty, paving the way for private space exploration and resource exploitation of celestial bodies.  ²

1983: Natasha Vita-More publishes The Transhuman Statement (Manifesto), later revised as The Transhuman Manifesto in 1998.  ^{2, 7}

1986: Eric Drexler, research affiliate with MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, partly in response to The Limits to Growth, publishes The Engines of Creation, which proposes the theory of nanotechnology; “‘molecular assemblers,’ devices capable of positioning atoms and molecules for precisely defined reactions in almost any environment,” as a potential solution to Earth’s limited resources.  ²

1986: Eric Drexler and Christine Peterson, establish The Foresight Institute to “ensure beneficial implementation of nanotechnology.”  ²

1988: The first transhumanist magazine, Extropy: Vaccine for Future Shock, is published by Max More and T.O. Morrow. It is later renamed The Journal of Transhumanist Thought.  ²

1989: F.M. Esfandiary (FM-2030) publishes the book, Are You A Transhuman?  ²

1990: Max More, a philosopher, publishes the essay Transhumanism: Toward a Futurist Philosophy.  ⁶

1990-2003: The Human Genome Project was funded by the U.S. Government by the NIH under Bill Clinton.

1990: Hans Moravec publishes Mind Children, predicting superintelligent robots by 2030.  ²

1991: The Extropians Mailing list is established, the first major online hub for transhumanist ideas to be exchanged. Several prominent writers, theorists, and technologists in the movement regularly post to the boards, which continues to be active today.  ^{2, 7}

1993: Vernor Vinge, science fiction author, computer scientist, and mathematician publishes The Coming Technological Singularity, popularizing the theory of the Singularity and predicting its arrival sometime before 2030.  ²

1993: Max More publishes the essay Transhumanism: Principles of Extropy and continues refining the term “Transhumanism” and coins the term “Morphological Freedom”.

1994: Ed Regis profiles Max More and T.O. Morrow and others in Wired magazine, “Meet The Extropians.”  ²

1994: The first Extropy Institute Conference on Transhumanist Thought is held in Sunnyvale, California.  ²

1995: Peter Diamandis, establishes the X Prize to fund “radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity.”  ²

1997: An updated version of Natasha Vita-More’s The Transhuman Manifesto is sent with the Cassini Huygens space probe to Saturn.  ²

1997: The Declaration in Defence of Cloning and the Integrity of Scientific Research is issued.  ²

1998: Nick Bostrom, philosopher founds the World Transhumanist Association with David Pearce. It is later renamed Humanity Plus.  ²

2000: Eliezer Yudkowsky, an artificial intelligence theorist establishes the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, which will then become the Center for Applied Rationality, The Singularity Institute, and finally, the Machine Intelligence Research Institute.  ²

2000: FM-2030, science fiction author and futurist, enters suspension at Alcor.  ²

2000: The SL4 mailing list is founded.  ²

2001: James Hughes, is elected secretary of the World Transhumanist Association, formalizing its structures and begins building up an international network of local groups and volunteers.  ²

2002: SpaceX, the first private space-exploration company, is founded by Elon Musk.²

2003: The Methuselah Foundation, is founded by David Gobel and Aubrey de Grey to research rejuvenative life-extension technologies. The Methuselah Mouse Prize (MPrize) is announced to reward milestones in mouse life extension and rejuvenation in an effort to motivate a cure for aging. Physiologist Andrzej Bartke won the inaugural MPrize in 2003 for breeding the world’s oldest laboratory mouse (GHR-KO 11C), who lived for 1,819 days.

2003: Max More publishes Version 3.11 of the Principles of Extropy.

2004: Nick Bostrom and James Hughes establish the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, which publishes the Journal of Transhumanism.  ²

2004: James Hughes, publishes Citizen Cyborg and the position of Democratic Transhumanism (a form of technoprogressivism) merging transhumanist and leftist political positions.  ²

2004: Francis Fukuyama, prominent bioconservative labels transhumanism “The world’s most dangerous idea.”  ²

2004: The Transhumanist Cooperative Colloquium was a short-lived attempt at a large transhumanist alliance from Natasha Vita-More.  ²

2004: The Methuselah Mouse Rejuvenation Prize is awarded to Stephen Spindler in November 2004, based on Spindler’s work in restricting caloric intake to extend the lifespan of middle-aged mice by 15%.

2004: Max More formulates the “Proactionary principle” as an opposing viewpoint to the precautionary principle. ⁷

2005: Ray Kurzweil publishes The Singularity is Near, further popularizing the idea.  ²

2005: Nick Bostrom establishes the Future of Humanity Institute, with associates Anders Sanberg and Eric Drexler. 1

2008: Nick Bostrom and Anders Sanberg publish “Whole Brain Emulation Roadmap,” a manifesto for mind-uploading. 1

2008: The Seasteading Institute is founded to advocate and test the creation of modular floating platforms that could serve as experiments in governance in international waters. 1

2009: Eliezer Yudkowsky publishes the blog and forum, LessWrong, where discussion on artificial intelligence culminates in the infamous thought experiment, Roko’s Basilisk and banning of its discussion on the forums. 1

2009: Aubrey de Grey founds the SENS Research Foundation to pursue research into curing aging.

2009: The Special MPrize Lifespan Achievement Award is awarded to Dr. Z. Dave Sharp for the successful healthy life extension of already aged mice using a pharmaceutical, rapamycin, by 14% for female mice and 9% for male mice.

2011: Max More becomes CEO of Alcor Life Extension Foundation. 1

2011: Google’s X Lab starts working on Google Brain, an artificial intelligence research project. 1

2012: Along with the CIA, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos invests $15 million in D-Wave, a quantum computing company. 1

2012: Google hires Ray Kurzweil to work on machine learning and AI. 1

2013: Larry Page establishes Calico Labs with Arthur D. Levinson, ex-chairman of Apple, as part of Google (since restructured as a subsidiary of Alphabet). Calico pursues a cure for aging and associated diseases. 1

2013: At the Global Futures 2045 International Congress, Ray Kurweil predicts that human beings will achieve digital immortality through mind-uploading by 2045. 1

2013: Zoltan Istvan publishes the dystopian science fiction novel, The Transhumanist Wager, about a future war between transhumanists and the US Government. 1

2014: Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin, and Arthur D. Levinson establish the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences to fund research in understanding living systems and promoting life extension. 1

2014: Nick Bostrom publishes Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, positing AI as the number one existential threat to humanity. 1

2014: Google acquires DeepMind Technologies to merge with its Google Brain project in its quest to “solve intelligence.” 1

2014: The Palo Alto Longevity Prize, a $1 million award for a life-sciences competition with the aim to “‘hack the code’ that regulates our health and life span” is inaugurated by Joon Yun to motivate research into overcoming aging. 1

2014: Zoltan Istvan founds the U.S. Transhumanist Party on October 7, 2014.

2015: Ramez Naam, a science-fiction author and technologist, writes “The Singularity is Further Than it Appears“, a skeptical essay that suggests that the prospects or a technological Singularity and any threats from AI are unlikely anytime soon. He articulates the view that “Lack of incentives means very little strong AI work is happening. And even if we did develop one, it’s unlikely to have a hard takeoff.”

2015: Zoltan Istvan launches a presidential bid on the U.S. Transhumanist Party ticket and tours the United States on the Immortality Bus, delivering the Transhumanist Bill of Rights (Version 1.0) to the U.S. Capitol on December 14, 2015, advocating morphological freedom, life extension, AI rights, and space colonization. 1

2016: After his Presidential run, Zoltan Istvan steps down from all leadership roles in the U.S. Transhumanist Party. Gennady Stolyarov II becomes the Chairman of the U.S. Transhumanist Party on November 17, 2016.

2017: The Transhumanist Bill of Rights – Version 2.0 is adopted on January 4, 2017, after an exposure period and electronic member vote in late December 2016.

2017: The U.S. Transhumanist Party holds six member platform votes, adopting 82 planks. It is the first U.S. party to use ranked-preference/instant-runoff voting internally.

2017: First successful CRISPR-Cas9 editing of human embryos in the U.S. (correcting pathogenic mutation).

2018: The World Health Organization adopts extension code XT9T (“ageing-related”) in the “Causality” or aetiology section. While this falls short of classifying aging as a disease, it allows aging-related biological processes to be noted as a contributing factor or underlying cause for diseases. The XT9T extension code enables better tracking of aging biology in health data, statistics, and potentially drug development/trials (e.g., noting when a therapy targets underlying aging processes rather than a single disease). Many transhumanists and longevists continue to advocate for classifying aging as a disease, as this will allow for rejuvenation treatments to be clinically evaluated, and approved, and for insurance companies to provide coverage for these kinds of therapies. 2

2018: U.S. Transhumanist Party reaches 1000 members in July 2018 and publishes a demographic analysis of its membership at the time.

2018: The Transhumanist Bill of Rights – Version 3.0 is adopted on  December 12, 2018, after an exposure period and electronic member vote in early December 2018.

2018: The Transhuman Party merges into the U.S. Transhumanist Party effective December 30, 2018.

2019: The Cyborg and Transhumanist Forum is held at the Nevada State Legislature on May 15, 2019. This is the first instance of explicitly transhumanist advocacy before a legislative body at the State level.

2020: The U.S. Transhumanist Party inaugurates its Virtual Enlightenment Salons, weekly livestreams that discuss science, technology, philosophy, culture, politics, and esthetics in an interdisciplinary manner. The Virtual Enlightenment Salons have been held every week, mostly on Sundays, for over six years since.

2020: The U.S. Transhumanist Party endorses Charlie Kam for President of the United States in June 2020. Charlie Kam selects Elizabeth “Liz” Parrish as his Vice-Presidential candidate.

2021: Synchron implants brain chip in ALS patient, Rodney Gorham, enabling thought-controlled communication. Gorham has now had a brain-computer interface (BCI) for over five years. 

Mythology

2105 BCE: Methuselah, a venerated biblical patriarch reputed to have enjoyed a lifespan of 969 years, has become a perennial source of inspiration for contemporary organizations espousing the quest for longevity through scientific advancements, such as the Methuselah Foundation. ⁵

2100-1200 BCE: The Epic of Gilgamesh, a Mesopotamian epic poem, portrays the quest of King Gilgamesh for eternal life.

Sources:

1. Prehistory of Transhumanism. THPedia.
2. History of Transhumanism. THPedia.
3. A Timeline of Transhumanism. The Verge. 2015  
4. “Why Immortality Matters to You“. Carl Carlyle. Immortalists Magazine. May 25, 2021. Updated April 28, 2022.
5. Methuselah. Wikipedia.
6. Max More. Wikipedia.