Transhumanism and the Philosophy of Human Enhancement

The term "transhumanism," in its modern philosophical sense, was coined by evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley — elder brother of novelist Aldous Huxley — in the essay "Transhumanism," collected in his book New Bottles for New Wine (1957), in which he envisioned the human species eventually "transcending itself" through the deliberate application of science and technology to human biology and society. The contemporary movement acquired institutional form decades later through Max More's "Principles of Extropy" (first drafted in 1990) and the associated Extropy Institute, and then, more durably, through the World Transhumanist Association, founded in 1998 by philosophers Nick Bostrom and David Pearce, which was renamed Humanity+ in 2008 and remains one of the movement's principal international organizations.