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Chapter 1
Towards Homo Manufactus?
An Introduction to this Volume

Christoph H. Lüthy and Bert-Jaap Koops

Abstract This contribution explores how the concept of human engineering

emerged and what place it assumes in contemporary debate. The term has recently
been used in discussions on a range of subjects, among which are technology,
science and sports. As the number of different ways of adjusting the human body
keeps growing, the idea of ‘transhumans’ is taking hold in today’s society.
Although scientists generally consider it unlikely that ‘transhumans’ will become a
reality in the foreseeable future, the concept still causes fear, raises hopes and leads
to numerous questions. The main issue is whether or not it is ethical to interfere with
the human body to such an extent. While it is certain that these kinds of changes can
transform the human condition, the extent to which this is possible remains unclear.

Transhumanist Scenarios

The Transhumanist Declaration of 1998 begins with the following statement:

§1. Humanity stands to be profoundly affected by science and technology in the future. We
envision the possibility of broadening human potential by overcoming ‘aging’, cognitive

C.H. Lüthy (&)

Faculty FTR, Center for the History of Philosophy and Science,
Radboud University Nijmegen, Erasmusplein 1, 6525 HT, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
e-mail: [email protected]
URL: http://www.ru.nl/philosophy/chps/current_members/luthy/
B.-J. Koops
Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology and Science, Tilburg University,
P.O. Box 90153, 5000 LE, Tilburg, The Netherlands
e-mail: [email protected]
URL: http://www.tilburguniversity.edu/webwijs/show/?uid=e.j.koops

B.-J. Koops et al. (eds.), Engineering the Human, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-35096-2_1, 1

Ó Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013
2 C.H. Lüthy and B.-J. Koops

shortcomings, involuntary suffering, and our confinement to planet Earth (The Transhu-
manist Declaration 1998).

One is tempted to reformulate these sentences in the present tense: ‘today,

humanity is profoundly affected by science and technology’. Does our rising life
expectancy not testify to impressive successes in combating the process of ageing?
Are our cognitive shortcomings not already made up for by electronic gadgets and
psychopharmaceuticals? Is much involuntary suffering not being alleviated or
entirely done away by today’s medical treatment?
The Transhumanist Declaration (1998) is, however, not about recent medical,
technological and scientific advances, but emphasises a vision of the near future—
a prediction, moreover, which it welcomes and embraces. It is based on the
assumption that the various recent technological accomplishments will soon
converge, and that this convergence should bring about a new type of human
being, the ‘transhuman’ mentioned in the manifesto’s title.
A number of scenarios have been developed, some by real or would-be sci-
entists, others by science fiction authors or filmmakers, in which the world
resembles that of Star Wars, where human beings live together with intelligent
robots and modified man-machines. ‘These will soon become symbiotic, leading to
a synergy between men and machines that few anticipated’, according to Benford
and Malartre (2007) (196). Warwick (2003), for one, of the Department of
Cybernetics at the University of Reading, is convinced that ‘the era of the Cyborg
is now upon us’, the Cyborg being ‘part human part machine’ (131). The inventor
and science author Kurzweil (2005, 2006), in turn, predicts that
the most important and radical application particularly of circa-2030 nanobots will be to
expand our minds through the merger of biological and nonbiological or machine intel-
ligence. In the next 25 years, we will learn how to augment our 1000 trillion very slow
interneuronal connections with highspeed virtual connections via nanorobotics. This will
allow us to greatly boost our pattern-recognition abilities, memories, and overall thinking
capacity, as well as to directly interface with powerful forms of computer intelligence. The
technology will also provide wireless communication from one brain to another. In other
words, the age of telepathic communication is almost upon us. (43)

Or take the philosopher Bostrom (2003) at Oxford University, who in 2003

announced that he was preparing himself ethically for our future as ‘transhumans’,
that is, genetically and bionically modified creatures that Bostrom (2003) hopes
will be ‘healthier, wittier, happier people’, who moreover ‘may be able to reach
new levels culturally’ (498).
The majority of contemporary scientists find most of these predictions highly
unrealistic. They either consider it unlikely that the envisaged merger of nano-
technology, engineering and biotechnology can be carried out as predicted; or they
reject the proposed time frame between 2020 and 2050 as implausibly soon; or,
when they do give some credit to these scenarios, they suggest that legislation or
ethical standards will prevent them from being implemented.
1 Towards Homo Manufactus? An Introduction to this Volume 3

Man-made Man?

Whether plausible or not, such scenarios inevitably provoke discussions, cause

anxieties, engender fantasies and nurture expectations. Discussion may take on a
variety of forms, ranging from science fiction novels and movies to proceedings of
ethics conferences, from advisory policy reports to public debates. Moreover, each
country or, rather, each linguistic community conducts these discussions differ-
ently. This has to do with the terminology that is used to refer to the bundle of
medical, technological and scientific procedures that are allegedly transforming
humankind. In English, the term ‘human enhancement’ dominates the debate,
implying the improvement of the already existing functions and capacities, while
the alternative terms ‘artificial man’ or ‘transhuman’ imply a disruptive discon-
tinuity between current, naturally engendered human forms and future, artificial
ones. The German expression ‘die Perfektionierung des Menschen’ (‘perfectioning
of man’), by contrast, possesses, like ‘enhancement’, a positive connotation of
improvement, but not of discontinuity. The alliterative Dutch expression ‘de
maakbare mens’ (‘makeable man’), in turn, provides a more value-neutral term
that can include any of the current techniques applied to changing human nature—
not all of which need to aim at enhancement.
The present collection of essays was first written for a Dutch-speaking audi-
ence, and it carried in its original title the local catch-all term—‘makeable man’—
which indeed stands for all kinds of procedures enhancing, improving or indeed
engineering humans. The 12 sections of the 2003 Technology Festival held at
Amsterdam, which dealt with the issue of the ‘makeable man’, convey an idea of
the diverse connotations of this term:
1. Cloning
2. Prenatal selection of babies
3. Gene therapy
4. Techniques of conditioning behaviour
5. Neurosurgery
6. Replacement medicine
7. Cosmetic surgery
8. Anti-ageing
9. Top-class sport (enhanced performance)
10. Cybernetics (applying artificial intelligence to human beings)
11. Nanotechnology and its use inside the human body
12. Nutrition
It turns out that this untranslatable catch-all term, ‘makeable man’, offers a range of
advantages over expressions such as ‘human enhancement’. Precisely because of the
4 C.H. Lüthy and B.-J. Koops

all-inclusiveness of the term, Dutch and Flemish society has benefited from a
comprehensive discussion. The debate has taken future scenarios of converging
technological, medical and scientific advances seriously, has attempted to gauge
their likelihood and to fathom possible advantages and disadvantages, and has
contemplated the ethical and political limits that ought possibly to be formulated.
Here are some examples. The just-named 2003 Technology Festival in Amsterdam
was entitled ‘Homo Sapiens 2.0: Festival about the ‘‘Makeable Man’’’. In 2004, the
Flemish Institute for Science and Technology Assessment organised an essay contest
with ‘Makeable Man’ as its theme. In translation, the description of the essay
question read as follows: ‘Artificial muscles for the disabled. A chip implanted in
your head. Technology makes man. Dream or nightmare?’ Three years later, in 2007,
the Rathenau Institute, a technology assessment body advising Dutch parliament,
asked scientists and philosophers whether there should be limits to the engineering of
‘makeable humans’. Yet another year later, an organisation called ‘Makeable Man’
(De Maakbare Mens), which describes itself as a ‘critical movement for bio-ethics’,
invited entries for a photo contest about ‘Sports and the makeability of humans’
(www.demaakbaremens.org). Finally, Maastricht University has over the past few
years offered its students a course entitled ‘Makeable Man’ in its Bachelor degree
programme ‘Arts and Culture’. This list could be continued ad nauseam; for example,
by adding numerous magazine and newspaper articles that have addressed the issue.
The question is warranted whether a debate that covers such a broad range of
heterogeneous practices can possibly be meaningful. Will it not necessarily mix up
separate issues in a general scenario that, however unrealistic, is likely to engender
only fear? The illustration on the programme flyer of the ‘Homo Sapiens 2.0’
festival displayed plastic mannequins, in a gesture towards a future in which
human beings will be artificially produced that bear only a superficial resemblance
to the humans they replace. The cover of the syllabus of Maastricht’s bachelor
course (Fig. 1.1) shows a picture of a drawer divided into many small compart-
ments, which are filled with human heads, conjuring up the idea of a repository in
which the engineers of humanity can store spare parts and from which, whenever
needed, a replacement head can be taken out. In short, then, the suggestion is
invoked that it will soon be possible to reform, perfect, standardise or indeed
replace ‘naturally evolved’ human beings by engineered specimens. Since such a
wholesale replacement presently belongs to the realm of fiction, not of fact, one
may in fact wonder about the usefulness of such scenarios. Is it helpful to lump
cloning, conditioned behaviour, anti-ageing techniques, cosmetic surgery and
performance-enhancing drugs together and view them as so many stepping stones
on our way towards the creation of artificial life? It could perhaps be more
meaningful to highlight the generic differences, rather than stretching some sim-
ilarities, between the following types of interventions: (1) enhancement of the
existing functions; (2) methods of selection in the reproduction of human indi-
viduals and possible improvements of the genetic makeup of the embryo; (3)
replacement or expansion of natural elements by artificial elements (from
replacing organs to the creation of cyborgs); (4) methods designed to steer human
behaviour; (5) the development of robots that increasingly resemble humans.
1 Towards Homo Manufactus? An Introduction to this Volume 5

Fig. 1.1 Kurt Kranz, ‘Kopfvorrat’. From: Barbara Auer, Künstler mit der Kamera. Photographie
als Experiment, Mannheim, Vits and Kehrer 1994.

What Lies at the Core of the Debate?

The main reason for asking academics from a variety of disciplines, ranging from
reproductive biology over artificial intelligence and law to the history of science,
to reflect on ‘makeable man’ was exactly so as to gauge the coherence of the
debate. When viewed from a number of scientific perspectives, do short- and long-
term projections of technological, medical and scientific developments justify such
a general and as yet hypothetical debate? Or is it driven by merely fictional
scenarios that do not accomplish more than to give rise to unfounded hopes and
fears and provoke distressingly unanswerable questions? Is ‘the future of our
selves’ really at risk, as was suggested in the title of a 2002 advisory report from
the Health Council of the Netherlands?
There are the optimists, cited at the beginning of this Introduction, who welcome
the convergence of various human-related technologies in the coming decades and
the advent of superman. Among the optimists are not only pioneering scientists
such as Warwick (2003) or visionaries like Kurzweil (2005, 2006) but also ethicists
such as Harris (2007) who claim a moral duty to enhance ourselves. Still on the
optimistic side of the spectrum are those who, like lawyer Gavaghan (2007) in
6 C.H. Lüthy and B.-J. Koops

Defending the Genetic Supermarket, use rational argumentation to challenge many

fallacies used in the debate. Gavaghan (2007) argues that—barring really harmful
consequences which are seldom proven to be realistic—individuals have the right
to decide for themselves whether or not, and how, to engineer human life.
In the middle of the spectrum, we find those who think that it is our moral task
rather to be conceptually ready with nuanced answers for all eventualities, irre-
spective of whether any of the prophecies will come true. This is the position, for
example, of the German ethicist Gesang (2007) whose recent survey book, Die
Perfektionierung des Menschen, attempts to find utilitarian answers to questions
regarding the demarcation between desirable, and hence permissible, and unde-
sirable and illegitimate alterations of human nature. The Oxford ethicist Glover
(1984), in turn, tries to answer the question: What Sort of People Should There Be?
He argues that there are certain aspects to human nature which might become
stronger with the help of biotechnology rather than being threatened by it. The
breadth of the middle ground is illustrated by the many contributions to the volume
Human Enhancement. Its editors, Savulescu and Bostrom (2009), pp. 18–19, stress
that the issue has moved from the realm of fiction to that of practical ethics. This
implies that part of the debate should now focus on the specifics of disaggregated
forms of enhancement, while another part needs to develop a long-term and big-
picture perspective on the future of humanity.
At the pessimistic end of the spectrum, we find those who warn against the
de-humanisation of humans. Kass (2002), chairman of the President’s Council on
Bioethics under the former US president George W. Bush, emphasises the fact that
all important aspects of human life—including work, sexuality, food, rituals—are
meaningless when they are placed outside of our traditional life cycle. In order to
preserve meaning, we must, therefore, preserve this cycle from birth to death. For
similar reasons, Fukuyama (2002) argues that human life will lose its meaning if
we design out human suffering and bad luck altogether. After all, happiness is only
possible if people know the meaning of unhappiness as well. Therefore, he con-
siders the proposal to raise human beings to a new level with the help of bio-
technology to be ‘the world’s most dangerous idea’. Dekker (2007), professor and
molecular biophysicist at Delft University of Technology, agrees with Fukuyama
(2002, 2004): ‘This might sound like a drastic statement, but I agree with it’. After
all, he continues, ‘I support technology’s commitment to heal human beings, but I
object against the endeavour to improve humans out of a sense of hubris, which
will lead to dangerous side effects’. Of these side effects, the most dangerous is,
according to Dekker (2007), the loss of ‘human dignity’. In a similar vein, Sandel
(2007), pp. 96–97 in The Case Against Perfection, warns against the consequences
of losing our ‘openness to the unbidden’ in engineering human life: we will no
longer value natural gifts or show humility in the face of privilege, and we may
lose the knack of improving the world around us if all we do is try to improve
ourselves.
The pessimists do not tire of warning us of the impending loss of ‘naturalness’.
Even though it might be argued that human beings were driven from the paradise
of ‘naturalness’ long ago, the current impression of a potential loss of naturalness
1 Towards Homo Manufactus? An Introduction to this Volume 7

seems caused by the speed and intensity of progress in, particularly, the bio-
technological domain. History shows that public debates are usually not caused by
changes themselves, but rather by the speed at which these changes take place.
Changes which happen slowly and almost imperceptibly tend to cause little
resistance, while changes happening so fast that they become noticeable often
incite public debate. As the historian Bess (2008) mentions in his study about the
history of biological ‘enhancement’:
This time around, however, the radical innovations are coming upon us suddenly, in a
matter of decades. Contemporary society is unprepared for the dramatic and destabilizing
changes it is about to experience, down this road on which it is already advancing at an
accelerating pace.

Indeed, we live in a time of rapid technological innovations, not least in the

biomedical field, which are often publicly financed and affect all areas of our lives.
These changes are reflected in life statistics: we see a decrease in the number of
infant deaths through the prevention of infections, and also an equally strong
increase of average life expectancy. Economically, these changes are paired with a
noticeable and still increasing use of the medical sciences. Culturally, they are
expressed through the flourishing of a health culture and the glorification of ‘body
consciousness’, an awareness of the body in general and our own, individual
bodies in particular. Scientifically, these changes are both represented and pushed
forward by an ever growing group of scientists and professionals in the life
sciences.
It is precisely this conjunction of far-reaching changes in healthcare with
achievements in such sciences as robotics and artificial intelligence that lies behind
the diffuse but widespread fantasies of man-made man, of the artificially improved,
eternally healthy and possibly immortal human being. It is the just-named com-
bination of developments that endows the prophecies of the post-human Über-
mensch with a certain degree of credibility. After all, artificial intelligence, pre-
implantation genetic diagnostics, genetic engineering, drugs for the improvement
of memory, concentration, alertness and mood, together with performance
enhancers, plastic surgery, sex-change operations, prosthetic medicine, anti-ageing
medicine and direct interaction between human beings and machines—these are
all types of technological interventions that are already existent today, and they are
starting to be combined in remarkable, often unimagined manners.

Between Fiction and Fascination

But again, how realistic are the different ideas of the future with which futuro-
logically inclined scientists or visionaries confront us? What are the actual sci-
entific and technological possibilities, and how will they further develop? What are
the chances that current fictional ideas, based on the predictions of both futurists
and pessimists, will become reality? Also, if we assume that some of these ideas
8 C.H. Lüthy and B.-J. Koops

will become real, what will be the implications for society and individuals? These
are questions to which the authors of this book have been asked to respond.
They have done so in a number of ways. One obvious way in which to address
such a cluster of questions is by placing it in a historical perspective. Such a
method manages to show that a good portion of our expectations and fears has a
long history and that our concerns lose some of their urgency and seeming novelty
when placed in a broader historical perspective. We need only mention Rostand’s
(1959) Can Man Be Modified? and Ramsey’s (1970) Fabricated Man here to show
that the participants in today’s human enhancement debate are hardly discussing
radically new issues. This method is used in some of the initial essays of this book.
Some of the other contributions document, by contrast, that professionals who are
actually working in fields that shape our human future do not consider the sce-
narios sketched by the prophets of human engineering to be realistic. A further
method for dealing with this cluster of issues is the traditional approach of dividing
the general discussion into thematic issues, such as prenatal diagnostics, artificial
intelligence or human rights. Such an approach helps us understand that the
supposed whole is bigger than the sum of the separate parts, but also that the
individual parts are easier to understand on their own. This method is used either
implicitly or explicitly by most authors in this book.
This book originated from the decision of a handful of members of The Young
Academy (De Jonge Akademie), the younger sister of the Royal Netherlands
Academy of Arts and Sciences, in collaboration with the Centre for Society and
Genomics (CSG) of Radboud University Nijmegen, to get a better understanding
of the ongoing debate surrounding the enhancement of humans and their possible
transformation into post-humans. By combining the perspectives of many different
disciplines, the authors hope to enhance (but not engineer) the international debate
on ‘makeable man’.1

Acknowledgments The papers in this collection were translated from the original Dutch by
students of the MA Writing, Editing and Mediating at the University of Groningen. Publication of
this volume was made possible through the generous financial support of The Young Academy
(De Jonge Akademie). We are very grateful to Lydia ten Brummelhuis for her careful and
dedicated work in editing the final manuscript.

1
The Young Academy, established in 2005, counts 50 members, which have been selected for
their academic excellence and international reputation, as well as their interdisciplinary
background and methodology. Since The Young Academy includes representatives from all
academic disciplines, the topic of this book appeared to be an ideal topic for a collective research
project. The book project was made possible through a fruitful cooperation with the Centre for
Society and Genomics (CSG) at Radboud University Nijmegen, which investigates the
relationship between society and genomics.
1 Towards Homo Manufactus? An Introduction to this Volume 9

Bibliography

Benford G, Malartre E (2007) Beyond human: living with robots and cyborgs. Tom Doherty
Associates, New York
Bess M (2008) Icarus 2.0: A historian’s perspective on human biological enhancement. Techno
Cult 49(1):114–126
Bostrom N (2003) Human genetic enhancements: a transhumanist perspective. J Value Inq
37:493–506
Bostrom N (2005) A history of transhumanist thought. J Evol Techno 14(3):1–30
Dekker C (2007) Stel grenzen aan het gesleutel van de mens. NRC Handelsblad 10–11 Nov 2007
Fukuyama F (2002) Our posthuman future: consequences of the biotechnology revolution. Farrar,
Straus and Giroux, New York
Fukuyama F (2004) Transhumanism. Foreign Policy 144:42–43
Gavaghan C (2007) Defending the genetic supermarket: law and ethics of selecting the next
generation. Routledge-Cavendish, New York
Gesang B (2007) Die Perfektionierung des Menschen. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin
Glover J (1984) What sort of people should there be? Pelican, London
Harris J (2007) Enhancing evolution: the ethical case for making better people. Princeton
University Press, Princeton
Kass L (2002) Life, liberty, and the defense of dignity: the challenge for bioethics. Encounter
Book, San Francisco
Kurzweil R (2005) The singularity is near: when humans transcend biology. Viking adult, New
York
Kurzweil R (2006) Reinventing humanity: the future of machine-human intelligence. Futurist
40(2):39–46
Ramsey P (1970) Fabricated man: the ethics of genetic control. Yale University Press, London
Rostand J (1959) Can man be modified? Basic Books, New York. Translated by Jonathan Griffin.
Original: Peut-on modifier l’homme? (Gallimard, 1956)
Sandel MJ (2007) The case against perfection: ethics in the age of genetic engineering. Harvard
University Press, Cambridge
Savulescu J, Bostrom N (2009) Human enhancement. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Transhumanist Declaration (1998). http://humanityplus.org/philosophy/transhumanist-
declaration/
Warwick K (2003) Cyborg morals, cyborg values, cyborg ethics. Ethics Inf Technol 5:131–137
Chapter 2
Historical and Philosophical Reflections
on Natural, Enhanced and Artificial Men
and Women

Christoph H. Lüthy

Abstract This chapter considers human engineering from a historical and

philosophical perspective. Engineering suggests artificiality and thereby takes us to
the issue of ‘nature versus nurture’. Must any intervention in natural growth and
development patterns be considered ‘artificial’? Humans belong to a domesticated
species, and the notion that human beings are shaped through both their biological
heritage and their upbringing is as old as Western thought itself. Ideas about the
manufacturing of humans—homunculi, golems or Frankensteins—remained usu-
ally in the sphere of pure speculation. Only in the twentieth century was the old
suggestion, first formulated by Plato, that it would be profitable to breed humans
like cattle first translated into political measures, as a consequence of social
Darwinist ideas. Historically, we find ourselves in a unique position because we
are, for the first time, able to change the human body through technological means.
While many current practices can still be defined as therapeutic interventions, as
genetics and artificial intelligence are further developed, the ethical issues
involved in their application will inevitably become more complex. It is of great
importance that before science and technology present us with unpleasant choices,
society itself, as well as legislators and scientists, should determine where to draw
the line between desirable and undesirable modifications of human nature.

As the Introduction to this volume has indicated, current discussions concerning

the perfecting, engineering, conditioning, manufacturing or enhancing of humans

Translated by Samuel van Kiel.

C.H. Lüthy (&)

Faculty FTR, Center for the History of Philosophy and Science,
Radboud University Nijmegen, Erasmusplein 1, 6525 HT, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
e-mail: [email protected]
URL: http://www.ru.nl/philosophy/chps/current_members/luthy/

B.-J. Koops et al. (eds.), Engineering the Human, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-35096-2_2, 11

 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013
12 C.H. Lüthy

mix facts and fictions and tend to view actual scientific and medical practices in
the light of possible and imaginary future developments. For this very reason, the
debate often suffers from a lack of conceptual clarity.
Let us therefore begin by unpacking some of the underlying concepts. The most
important idea that calls out for analysis is that of the un-tampered with, ‘natural’
man, the presumed subject or victim of all technical interventions. The notion of
‘artificial man’ implies, after all, that there is such a thing as a ‘natural man’, from
whom he can be distinguished.

Traditional Ways of ‘Making Humans’

To begin with, let us recall that traditionally, Christianity considers man to have
been made in a non-natural manner—namely by God. According to the biblical
descriptions in Genesis 1 and 2, the Creator ‘made’ Adam and Eve (fecit, in the
Latin of the Vulgate), together with the world and its other inhabitants. Con-
spicuously, the notion of nature and man as products of the divine Artificer, the
summus Artifex, seems to suggest that humans, even when they dwelt in the most
natural of places, Paradise, were artefacts. To disentangle the apparent contra-
diction inherent in the notion of a natural artefact, theological jargon distinguishes
human acts of ‘making’ (from existing materials) from divine acts of ‘creating’
(out of nothing, ex nihilo).
It is worth keeping in mind the distinction between fabrication and creation
when considering the claim made by religious critics that today’s geneticists are
‘playing God’. Strictly speaking, this claim may be rejected by pointing out that
geneticists are unlike God precisely because they cannot ‘create out of nothing’; at
best, they intervene in, and modify, existing materials. Their ways of making
would, therefore, differ fundamentally from the Creator’s.
However, when the accusation of playing God is levelled against genetic
engineers, this does not refer to the act of creating as such, but rather to the alleged
modification of the essence of a God-given human nature. Nick Bostrom sum-
marises the logic of the charges as follows: ‘playing God, messing with nature,
tampering with our human essence, or displaying punishable hubris’. But note that
this concatenation of accusations is hardly self-evident. To begin with, the belief in
static, species-related essences is not Judeo-Christian, but Aristotelian in origin,
and it is doubtful whether a modern theologian needs to subscribe to it. Even
present-day supporters of ‘intelligent design’ are usually content with a God who
created natural species in such a way that they may continuously change from
within, and in so doing propel evolution in the process. More specifically, as far as
the question of the essential nature of humans is concerned, both Aristotelian
philosophers and Christian theologians would concur that it is to be found in the
soul (which to the Aristotelian represents the specific form of man)—yet, no one
accuses geneticists of tampering with the soul. Lastly, it is also to be doubted
whether such an essentialist view on natural species should be upheld, even from a
2 Historical and Philosophical Reflections on Natural 13

theological standpoint, in a period in which most educated contemporaries con-

ceive current species to be the result of an evolutionary process. In short, asso-
ciating the modification of human bodies with playing God is dubious from a
theological point of view and outdated philosophically.
When we worry about contemporary or future attempts to make artificial
humans, we obviously do not intend to refer to divine acts. We also exclude the
other obvious possibility of making humans; namely, parents’ traditional way of
‘making babies’ through copulation. Incidentally, the seventeenth-century Flemish
philosopher Arnold Geulincx correctly pointed out that the expression ‘making
babies’ is odd and linguistically inaccurate. A potter who ‘makes a pot’ has
acquired the skill for his trade and is able to ‘make’ a pot precisely because he
knows how to make one. A man and a woman, on the other hand, have on the
whole little understanding of what happens between that enjoyable night and that
moment, roughly 9 months later, when a brand new, tiny but complete human
person materialises from the woman’s womb. Certainly, the parents have not
‘made’ the child in the common sense of the word.
Having now excluded divine acts of creation and human acts of procreation, let
us examine the types of ‘making humans’ that are suggested in current debates.
What we find in all discussions are the following two elements: (1) human action
(as opposed to divine intervention) and (2) artificial methods of production (as
opposed to natural ones).
While these definitional restrictions may prove useful, they also raise new
questions. Specifically, it remains to be seen whether ‘artificial’ and ‘natural’ are
really opposites, as one would expect. When organic shops conjure up the notion
of ‘natural foods’, they obviously do not intend the opposite of ‘artificial’; in fact,
the organic cabbage that is sold is not the opposite of non-organic cabbage. Rather,
what the shop owner means is that his or her cabbage has not been sprayed with
chemicals. Applying this reasoning to human beings, it is clear that someone is
called ‘natural’, instead of ‘artificial’, when he or she has not been ‘treated’. There
is, however, a problem with both the cabbage and the human being: neither life
form grows in the wild—both are cultivated products! The question of distin-
guishing between treated and untreated, and between natural and artificial, in
human beings, takes us to the well-known debate about how much of our
behaviour results from nature and how much from nurture. While this age-old
debate needs not to be examined here, it must be obvious that we humans have
never been entirely ‘untreated’ and ‘organic’. We are, perforce, socialised crea-
tures who are raised in a cultured, and therefore unnatural, environment.
But if the definition of a natural human being remains elusive, then the same
must needs apply to the definition of an artificial human being! Indeed, in the
literature, we encounter a surprisingly diverse range of examples for the term
‘artificial human’, of which the most important are the following:
• someone fertilised in vitro;
• someone with different (‘modified’) DNA with respect to that of his or her parents;
• someone cloned from the cells of another individual;
14 C.H. Lüthy

• someone who is ‘enhanced’ in a number of ways, through genetics or techno-

logical implants, in order to perfect his or her looks and abilities;
• someone composed of organic material and a neurocomputer that controls
cerebral functions;
• someone who is not made up of any organic materials and instead is a machine
that simulates human behaviour perfectly.
These six examples have little in common. The first five display a progressive
gradation in modifying human material; with the last example, modification has
made way for an entirely artificial copy.
It is clear from what has been discussed so far that we use the term ‘artificial’ as
an umbrella term that applies to any kind of intervention in natural patterns of
growth and development. Is it legitimate, however, to equate artificiality with any
type of intervention? Is such an equation credible in our modern society, which, all
the way from prenatal diagnostics to the nursing home, protects and prolongs life
by technological means? In other words, does life in modern society, from ‘good
clothes, a well-stocked larder, a TV set, a car, a house and so on, all within the
existing order’ (Herbert Marcuse), take place within an essentially unnatural,
indeed artificial, context? Or, put even more radically, is the cunning homo
sapiens, who is ‘knowing’ by definition and therefore a dexterous tool creator, not
always actively helping, improving or denying the natural through ways of the
artificial?
Throughout the centuries, people have without any hesitation accepted that
human beings have been shaped, conditioned and improved through natural
selection, education and indoctrination. This acceptance, then, takes us to the
following question: what is it that is substantially different about contemporary
attempts at improving human beings?
This question becomes particularly difficult to answer when we consider con-
temporary humanity as the merely provisional and transient result of the evolu-
tionary power of selection. If homo sapiens is itself the result of a process of
selection which has continuously preferred individuals and species made up of
favourable attributes, then to what extent are modern attempts at improving human
beings anything else than a conscious execution of ‘natural’ forces? We shall have
to return to this question below.

Breeding Humans

The way in which the current debate talks about engineered or artificial humans
suggests that science is tampering with the ‘natural form’ of human beings. Yet,
we have just questioned whether one can presuppose that such a thing as a ‘nat-
ural’ human being exists. Concerning plants and animals, we can distinguish
‘wild’ species from ‘domesticated’ ones: the first reproduce freely and without
restraint, while the second are cultivated or bred. We humans would seem to
belong to the second kind. Humans do not grow up in the wild, such literary
2 Historical and Philosophical Reflections on Natural 15

examples as Mowgli or Romulus and Remus excluded. Homo sapiens is an

‘eminently domesticated animal’, to invoke an expression once used by Charles
Darwin.
Farmers have known from time immemorial that they, using techniques such as
grafting (for plants) and breeding (for animals), can improve the quality of new
stock by combining the parents’ desired attributes. The same techniques can
obviously be applied to the human species. The most famous proposal to apply
breeding techniques to human beings is found in Plato’s Republic, written in the
fourth century BC. Plato suggests that it would be advantageous for a state if the
ruling classes were produced using the same criterion that farmers use in
improving their animal livestock. Men and women with the best physical and
mental attributes should be selected and encouraged to reproduce—outside of any
family context, remarkably enough—and their progeny would subsequently be
trained to become the ideal members of the ruling class. Aware of the difference
between humans and livestock, however, Plato developed his scheme to go beyond
breeding alone. He accurately described the intellectual, athletic and psychological
programmes through which children would have to pass on their way to perfection.
The notion of the profile of an individual human as being as much determined
by inherited and psychological features as by his or her physical, emotional and
intellectual characteristics is therefore clearly as old as Western philosophical and
scientific thought itself. The expressions ‘well-bred’ and ‘of good extraction’, used
to typify a person conforming to acclaimed standards of behaviour, derive from
this original farmers’ experience, which had already risen to Platonic heights more
than two millennia ago.
Plato’s project was not carried out at the time, and it is somewhat surprising to
historians to find that the concept of breeding humans as one would breed horses
and cows was ignored even in times when Plato’s philosophy was en vogue. In
fact, even the historians’ surprise has historical precedents. In Tommaso Cam-
panella’s The City of the Sun (1602), we encounter a senior official of a utopian
state ‘who takes care of generation, and of the union of males and females in such
a way that they produce a good race. And they laugh of us because we look after
the race of dogs and horses, but neglect our own’. Only after 1859, thanks to the
publication of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species, did a serious debate initiate
about the long-term effects of goal-oriented selection in the process of domesti-
cation, as Darwin’s readers started taking the idea of breeding humans seriously. If
evolution truly functioned the way Darwin described it, so some of his followers
reasoned, then it would be beneficial for a society to act analogously to the way
that farmers do with their livestock by guiding society’s reproduction through
approved directives. Imposed choice was to replace chance.
In 1865 Francis Galton exclaimed: ‘What an extraordinary effect might be
produced on our race, if its object was to unite in marriage those who possessed the
finest and most suitable nature, mental, moral, and physical!’ These extraordinary
results could, however, only be obtained on the basis of a specific policy that
would prevent the increase and propagation of inherited vices such as ‘craving for
drinking or for gambling, strong sexual passion, a proclivity to pauperism, to
16 C.H. Lüthy

crimes of violence, and to crimes of fraud’. A supposedly scientific movement

emerged which called itself ‘eugenics’ (literally ‘well-born’), which was influ-
enced by voices like Dalton’s; voices which were grouped together under the term
‘social Darwinism’. This movement worked towards ‘the self-direction of human
evolution’.
In the early decades of the twentieth century, scientific and political leaders in
various countries propagated measures to ‘self-direct human evolution’, according
to the slogan of the eugenics movement. Initially the movement advocated poli-
cies, to be implemented by the government, of facilitating civilians who had the
desired characteristics (positive eugenics) and of hindering the reproduction of
civilians with undesirable characteristics (negative eugenics). In immigration
countries such as the United States, this meant for instance that certain values were
attributed to specific immigrant groups. A policy was adopted which encouraged
the influx of families of highly valued races and discouraged an influx of any of the
other races. Charles Davenport, director of The Station for Experimental Evolution
in Cold Spring Harbor as well as of the Eugenics Record Office, wrote as early as
1910 that ‘society must protect itself, as it claims the right to deprive the murderer
of his life, so also it may annihilate the hideous serpent of helplessly vicious
protoplasm’.
Notoriously enough, Nazi Germany took this concept further than any other
nation: to them racial cleansing justified the ruthless extermination of so-called
inferior races, a programme that complemented the positive strengthening of the
Nordic races through institutions of reproduction such as Lebensborn. While
eugenics has thus in its worst manifestation led to genocide in the name of racial
cleansing, it has more frequently implied sterilisation programmes for individuals
with a mental handicap, which were implemented not only in communist coun-
tries, but also in Sweden and elsewhere. Moreover, even after World War II, a
series of European countries ran programmes that systematically snatched away
gipsy children, who could subsequently be adopted by ‘regular citizens’.
Such measures are without a doubt attempts at steering the makeup of society
through governmentally implemented choices in reproduction. It is, however,
unclear whether the results may be called ‘artificial’. Eugenicists themselves
argued that their measures only reinforced, or gave direction to, a natural process
of selection that is, unconsciously in nature and consciously in human societies,
omnipresent. Did not nobles traditionally marry other nobles and landowners other
landowners, while the affluent could afford to marry the beautiful and healthy of
lower extraction, thereby enhancing the vigour and looks of their own families?
And did not, by contrast, those who were redundant and physically or mentally less
endowed die of hunger? Were not the superfluous sent to die in battles as mer-
cenaries or confined to monasteries where they were deprived of the possibility of
reproducing themselves?
There is certainly some truth to the claim made by the proponents of the
eugenics movement that they did not propose anything ‘unnatural’. They merely
claimed to carry out the work that ‘nature unrestrained’ would have done if left to
its own device; namely, exterminating the weak and destroying those who in