Notes and Queries Advance Access published July 12, 2015 2015 NOTES AND QUERIES 1 Notes and Queries ß Oxford University Press 2015; all rights reserved year in the journal Psychiatry.3 In the first Notes lecture Huxley describes his creed thus: ‘Such a broad philosophy might perhaps be called, not Humanism, because that has certain unsat- THE HISTORY OF ‘TRANSHUMANISM’ isfactory connotations, but Transhumanism. TRANSHUMANISM is a movement that It is the idea of humanity attempting to seeks to promote the evolution of the human overcome its limitations and to arrive at race beyond its present limitations through the fuller fruition.’4 The lecture was subsequently use of science and technology. The evolution- published with light revisions in Huxley’s 1957 ary biologist and eugenicist Julian Huxley collection of essays New Bottles for New Wine.5 (1887–1975) is usually identified as the origin- The volume opens with a short piece bearing ator of the term ‘transhumanism’, although the title ‘Transhumanism’, and which contains present opinion differs on when he first used a paraphrase of the original definition from Downloaded from http://nq.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on July 13, 2015 the expression. We suggest that Huxley did not 1951: ‘We need a name for this new belief. coin the term and that his first uses of it do not Perhaps transhumanism will serve; man coincide with any of the dates usually given. remaining man, but transcending himself, by More interestingly, perhaps, in spite of its realizing the new possibilities of and for his human nature.’6 This appears to be a self- futuristic connotations ‘transhumanism’ has a conscious coining of the expression and no long history that dates back to Dante’s doubt explains why the term is commonly, if Paradiso and, ultimately, to the Pauline mistakenly, said to originate in this source. epistles. It is significant that the index to this Most authorities, including the OED, trace collection includes several references to ‘trans- the earliest use of the term ‘transhumanism’ to humanism’, including ten pages of another Huxley’s 1957 essay of the same name.1 A essay entitled ‘Evolutionary Humanism’ in minority, including leading figures of the which the term does not appear. Presumably, transhumanist movement, have proposed the the person who constructed the index thought earlier date of 1927, when Huxley’s essay that significant elements of the essay concerned ‘Evolutionary Humanism’ was published.2 the subject matter of transhumanism, even if However, both of these dates are wrong. the term itself was not present. This would Huxley first used the term, as far as we can have been an innocent enough decision had it establish, in his two-part lecture ‘Knowledge, not been for the fact that a much earlier Morality and Destiny’. This was the third version ‘Evolutionary Humanism’ appeared series of William Alanson White Memorial in Huxley’s 1927 publication Religion without Lectures delivered in Washington, DC on 19 Revelation. It seems likely that it was on the and 20 April 1951 and published in the same basis of the 1957 index that James Hughes— who proposed the earlier date—deduced that 1 See, e.g., OED, sv. ‘Transhumanism’; ‘Julian Huxley the term was coined in 1927, mistakenly and Transhumanism’, <http://www.huxley.net/transhuman reasoning on the basis of the New Bottles ism/>, accessed 11 April 2014; Gregory Hansell and William index that the word appeared in Grassie (eds), Hþ/–: Transhumanism and its Critics, ‘Evolutionary Humanism’ and therefore must (Philadelphia, 2011), 20; Ronald Cole-Turner (ed.), Transhumanism and Transcendence (Washington, DC, have appeared in the 1927 version of that 2011), Introduction, 12. essay. In short, the most widely accepted date 2 James Hughes claims in Citizen Cyborg that for Julian Huxley’s coining of ‘transhu- ‘transhumanism’ first appears in Huxley’s Religion without manism’—1957—is incorrect. Huxley first Revelation (1927) but gives no page number for the citation. Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to used the term in a 1951 lecture that was the Redesigned Human of the Future (Cambridge, MA, 3 2004), 158. Nick Bostrom, one of the most prominent Psychiatry, xiv (1951), 127–51. 4 contemporary advocates of transhumanism, repeats the Ibid., 139. 5 1927 date in ‘A History of Transhumanist Thought’, Julian Huxley, ‘Knowledge, Morality, and Destiny’, Journal of Evolution and Technology, 14 (2005), 1–25, at 2. New Bottles for New Wine (London: Chatto and Windus, This date also appears, on Bostrom’s authority, in Al Gore, 1957), 245–78. 6 The Future (New York, 2013), 239. Huxley, ‘Transhumanism’, 13–17, definition on p. 17. 2 NOTES AND QUERIES 2015 published in the same year. The alternative Words may not tell of that transhuman change:9 date of 1927 is the result of an erroneous Here Dante makes reference to the deification deduction from the misleading index entry in of Glaucus, recounted in Ovid.10 But there are New Bottles for New Wine. If Huxley coined also unambiguous references in this Canto to the term, he did so in 1951. St Paul’s description of being ‘caught up’ to the But was Huxley the first to use the term? In third heaven (2 Corinthians 12). Dante’s a word, no. A significant earlier reference to allusions to the biblical text are evident not ‘transhumanism’ comes in a paper by merely from the general context, but also the Canadian author, historian, jurist, and from his mention of the ineffability of the philosopher W. D. Lighthall. Among experience and his questioning of whether it Lighthall’s varied accomplishments was had taken place in bodily form or not—both election to Fellowship of the Royal Society of of which are rehearsals of St Paul’s own Canada. In the 1940 Proceedings and speculations about the experience.11 Transactions of that body Lighthall published Lighthall, then, is making an ‘ism’ of the Downloaded from http://nq.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on July 13, 2015 a highly speculative theory of cosmic evolution reference to the transhuman state familiar to entitled ‘The Law of Cosmic Evolutionary readers of Carey’s translation of the Divine Adaptation: An Interpretation of Recent Comedy. In an added twist, Lighthall got the Thought’.7 The article outlines a progressivist biblical reference wrong. The 2 Corinthians metaphysical philosophy, similar in certain passage that Dante draws upon speaks of respects to that of both Huxley and Pierre ‘things that cannot be told, which man may Teilhard de Chardin, that sought to connect not utter’ (12:4). This bears a passing cosmic, organic, and cultural evolution. resemblance to the 1 Corinthians passage Lighthall here speaks of the ‘Paul’s cited by Lighthall: ‘Eye has not seen, nor ear Transhumanism’, citing the biblical reference heard’ which no doubt led to his confusion. I Corinthians 2:9: ‘Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither has it entered the conception of Lighthall’s conflation of these passages man.’8 Given the vast gulf, both temporally notwithstanding, it is clear that he is seeking and in terms of philosophical orientation, to baptize his new scientific version of transhu- between St Paul and Julian Huxley, this refer- manism by invoking Dante’s trasumanar and ence may seem puzzling. However, a link St Paul’s rapture. between St Paul’s putative transhumanism Although we lack direct evidence of Huxley’s and that of Julian Huxley is provided, albeit familiarity with Lighthall’s paper, given the for- circuitously, by Dante and his early nine- mer’s deep interest in speculative theories of teenth-century translator, Henry Francis cosmic evolution and the prominence of the Carey. journal in which the paper appeared, it is In what was to become the standard likely that he had read it. Huxley had been Victorian translation of Dante’s Divine searching for an alternative to ‘evolutionary hu- Comedy, Carey used the term ‘transhuman’ in manism’ to characterize his own utopian scien- 1814 to render a term in the first Canto of tific philosophy, and it seems that in Lighthall’s Dante’s Paradiso. In describing his heaven- formulation he had found one. Thus, while wards journey with Beatrice, Dante speaks of there is no doubt that Huxley’s appropriation being ‘transhumanised’, creating a new Italian of the term ‘transhumanism’ and his association verb trasumanar: of it with his own brand of futurist ideology has As Glaucus, when he tasted of the herb, 9 Dante, The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieiri, tr. That made him peer among the ocean gods; William Henry Carey [1814] (New York, 1970), Paradiso, Canto 1, 68–70. 7 10 W. D. Lighthall, ‘The Law of Cosmic Evolutionary Ovid, Metapmorphoses, XIII, 898–968. 11 Adaptation: An Interpretation of Recent Thought’, Royal For commentary see especially Steven Botterill, Dante Society of Canada, Ottawa. Proceedings and Transactions / and the Mystical Tradition: Bernard of Clairvaux in the Me´moires et Comptes Rendus de la Socie´te´ Royale Du Commedia (Cambridge, 1994), 94–241. Cf. C. H. Canada 1940. ser. 3, v. 34, section 2, 135–41. Grandgent, Companion to the Divine Comedy (Cambridge, 8 I Cor. 2:9; ‘Law of Cosmic Evolutionary Adaptation’, MA, 1975), 215–17; James Miller, Dante and the Unorthodox 189. (Waterloo, Ontario, 2005), 6–7. 2015 NOTES AND QUERIES 3 led to its present currency, he was not, as is JOSEPH WOLYNIAK commonly thought, its originator. As for the University of Oxford convoluted history of the term, its significance doi:10.1093/notesj/gjv080 goes beyond etymology. It offers additional ß The Author (2015). Published by Oxford University Press. data for a longstanding debate about whether All rights reserved. For Permissions, Western notions of progress and modernity are please email: journals.permissions@oup.com This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of simply secularized versions of Judeo-Christian the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial eschatological conceptions or whether they License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), have an independent legitimacy.12 which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and PETER HARRISON reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact University of Queensland journals.permissions@oup.com Downloaded from http://nq.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on July 13, 2015 12 The classic statements of opposed positions on this question were provided by Karl Lo¨with, Meaning in History (Chicago, 1949) and Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age (Cambridge, MA, 1985).