List of Modifications to Humans
http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Bernal/flesh/
The Flesh
In the alteration of himself man has a great deal further to go than in the alteration of his inorganic
environment. He has been doing the latter more or less unconsciously and empirically for several
thousand years, ever since he cased being parasitic on his environment like any other animal, and
consciously and intelligently for at least hundreds of years; whereas he has not been able to change
himself at all and has had only fifty years or so to begin to understand how he works. Of course, this is
not strictly true: man has altered himself in the evolutionary process, he has lost a good deal of hair, his
wisdom teeth are failing to pierce, and his nasal passages are becoming more and more degenerate.
But the processes of natural evolution are so much slower than the development of man's control over
environment that we might, in such a developing world, still consider man's body as constant and
unchanging. If it is not to be so then man himself must actively interfere in his own making and interfere
in a highly unnatural manner. The eugenists and apostles of healthy life, may, in a very considerable
course of time, realize the full potentialities of the species: we may count on beautiful, healthy and
long-lived men and women, but they do not touch the alteration of the species. To do this we must alter
either the germ plasm or the living structure of the body, or both together. The first method - the
favorite of Mr. J. B. S. Haldane - has so far received the most attention. With it we might achieve such a
variation as we have empirically produced in dogs and goldfish, or perhaps even manage to produce
new species with special potentialities. But the method is bound to be slow and finally limited by the
possibilities of flesh and blood. The germ plasm is a very inaccessible unit, before we can deal with it
adequately we must isolate it, and to do this already involves us in surgery. It is quite conceivable that
the mechanism of evolution, as we know it up to the present, may well be superseded at this point.
Biologists are apt, even if they are not vitalists, to consider it as almost divine; but after all it is only
nature's way of achieving a shifting equilibrium with an environment; and if we can find a more direct
way by the use of intelligence, that way is bound to supersede the unconscious mechanism of growth
and reproduction.
In a sense we have already started using the direct method; when the ape-ancestor first used a stone
he was modifying his bodily structure by the inclusion of a foreign substance. This inclusion was
temporary, but with the adoption of clothes there began a series of permanent additions to the body,
affecting nearly all its functions and even, as with spectacles, its sense organs. In the modern world, the
variety of objects which really form part of an effective human body is very great. Yet they all (if we
except such rarities as artificial larynges) still have the quality of being outside the cell layers of the
human body. The decisive step will come when we extend the foreign body into the actual structure of
living matter. Parallel with this development is the alteration of the body by tampering with its chemical
reactions - again a very old-established but rather sporadic process resorted to to cure illness or
procure intoxication. But with the development of surgery on the one hand and physiological chemistry
on the other, the possibility of radical alteration of the body appears for the first time. Here we may
proceed, not by allowing evolution to work the changes, but by copying and short-circuiting its methods.
The changes that evolution produces apart from mere growth in size, or diversity of form without
change of function, are in the nature of perversions: a part of the fish's gut becomes a swimming
bladder, the swimming bladder becomes a lung; a salivary gland and an extra eye are charged with the
function of producing hormones. Under the pressure of environment or whatever else is the cause of
evolution, nature takes hold of what already had existed for some now superseded activity, and with a
minimum of alteration gives it a new function. There is nothing essentially mysterious in the process: it
is both the easiest and the only possible way of achieving the change. Starting de novo to deal with a
new situation is not within the power of natural, unintelligent processes; they can only modify in a limited
way already existing structures by altering their chemical environment. Men may well copy the process,
in so far as original structures are used as the basis for new ones, simply because it is the most
economical method, but they are not bound to the very limited range of methods of change which
nature adopts.
Next
http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Bernal/flesh/
The Flesh
In the alteration of himself man has a great deal further to go than in the alteration of his inorganic
environment. He has been doing the latter more or less unconsciously and empirically for several
thousand years, ever since he cased being parasitic on his environment like any other animal, and
consciously and intelligently for at least hundreds of years; whereas he has not been able to change
himself at all and has had only fifty years or so to begin to understand how he works. Of course, this is
not strictly true: man has altered himself in the evolutionary process, he has lost a good deal of hair, his
wisdom teeth are failing to pierce, and his nasal passages are becoming more and more degenerate.
But the processes of natural evolution are so much slower than the development of man's control over
environment that we might, in such a developing world, still consider man's body as constant and
unchanging. If it is not to be so then man himself must actively interfere in his own making and interfere
in a highly unnatural manner. The eugenists and apostles of healthy life, may, in a very considerable
course of time, realize the full potentialities of the species: we may count on beautiful, healthy and
long-lived men and women, but they do not touch the alteration of the species. To do this we must alter
either the germ plasm or the living structure of the body, or both together. The first method - the
favorite of Mr. J. B. S. Haldane - has so far received the most attention. With it we might achieve such a
variation as we have empirically produced in dogs and goldfish, or perhaps even manage to produce
new species with special potentialities. But the method is bound to be slow and finally limited by the
possibilities of flesh and blood. The germ plasm is a very inaccessible unit, before we can deal with it
adequately we must isolate it, and to do this already involves us in surgery. It is quite conceivable that
the mechanism of evolution, as we know it up to the present, may well be superseded at this point.
Biologists are apt, even if they are not vitalists, to consider it as almost divine; but after all it is only
nature's way of achieving a shifting equilibrium with an environment; and if we can find a more direct
way by the use of intelligence, that way is bound to supersede the unconscious mechanism of growth
and reproduction.
In a sense we have already started using the direct method; when the ape-ancestor first used a stone
he was modifying his bodily structure by the inclusion of a foreign substance. This inclusion was
temporary, but with the adoption of clothes there began a series of permanent additions to the body,
affecting nearly all its functions and even, as with spectacles, its sense organs. In the modern world, the
variety of objects which really form part of an effective human body is very great. Yet they all (if we
except such rarities as artificial larynges) still have the quality of being outside the cell layers of the
human body. The decisive step will come when we extend the foreign body into the actual structure of
living matter. Parallel with this development is the alteration of the body by tampering with its chemical
reactions - again a very old-established but rather sporadic process resorted to to cure illness or
procure intoxication. But with the development of surgery on the one hand and physiological chemistry
on the other, the possibility of radical alteration of the body appears for the first time. Here we may
proceed, not by allowing evolution to work the changes, but by copying and short-circuiting its methods.
The changes that evolution produces apart from mere growth in size, or diversity of form without
change of function, are in the nature of perversions: a part of the fish's gut becomes a swimming
bladder, the swimming bladder becomes a lung; a salivary gland and an extra eye are charged with the
function of producing hormones. Under the pressure of environment or whatever else is the cause of
evolution, nature takes hold of what already had existed for some now superseded activity, and with a
minimum of alteration gives it a new function. There is nothing essentially mysterious in the process: it
is both the easiest and the only possible way of achieving the change. Starting de novo to deal with a
new situation is not within the power of natural, unintelligent processes; they can only modify in a limited
way already existing structures by altering their chemical environment. Men may well copy the process,
in so far as original structures are used as the basis for new ones, simply because it is the most
economical method, but they are not bound to the very limited range of methods of change which
nature adopts.
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