Re: "Post-humanism": The right term?

Stan Kretler (skretler@infinitefaculty.com)
Sat, 28 Aug 1999 00:52:34 -0700

An old thread, but another non-e discussion reminded me that I meant to post the examples from the OED definition of "ultra."

: 1. 1904 W. James Coll. Ess. Rev. (1920) xxxii. 451
: `Radium', for example;
: humanistically, both the that and the what of it are creations of
: yesterday. But we believe that ultra-humanistically they existed ages
: before their gifted discoverers were born. In what shape? There's the
rub!
: for we have no non-humanistic categories to think in.
: [quoted in the entry for the word humanistical]
:
: 2. 1818 Coleridge in Lit. Rem. (1836) I. 185 All other super or
: *ultra-human beings.
:
: [quoted in the entry for the word ultra-]
:
: 3. 1856 R. A. Vaughan Mystics (1860) I. 99 The intellectual
: refinements of an ultra-human spiritualism.
:
: [quoted in the entry for the word ultra-]
:
: 4. 1883 Jefferies Story of my Heart 63 All things being
: ultra-human and without design.
:
: [quoted in the entry for the word ultra-]

Makes "ultrahuman(ism)" seem like the wrong term (or terms).

(The view from the nontechnophile world is fairly solidly this: 'technohumanism' describes transhumanists' beliefs best.)

Stan.