Designer Evolution: A Transhumanist Manifesto [Hardcover]

Simon Young (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 2005

The debate about the ethics of human biotechnology or genetic engineering is one of the most important cultural issues of our time. 'Transhumanism' is the philosophy that most of all supports genetic science and biotechnology, yet the public knows little about this emerging philosophy. Transhumanism declares unequivocal support for the attempt to eliminate disease, defeat death, and enhance the body and mind beyond the limitations of the age-old human condition. In "Designer Evolution", Simon Young presents a polemical espousal of transhumanist philosophy and a trenchant attack on its critics, the 'Bio-Luddites'. The author calls for a rejection of premodern superstition and post-modern nihilism in favour of a renewed belief in human progress through scientific rationality. In an age when cynicism, fatalism, and nihilism are rife, "Designer Evolution" will rekindle a feeling of optimism about the future of our species. This is a concise, reader-friendly introduction to a vitally important philosophy that will become difficult to ignore as advances in biotechnology increasingly claim the headlines in the coming decades.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

SIMON YOUNG is the son of pioneering cybernetician and science writer J. F. Young (1929–94), author of such seminal books as Cybernetics (1969), Robotics (1973), and Cybernetic Engineering (1973). As an accomplished pianist and composer, Young’s unusual combination of musical romanticism and rational scientism informs his Transhumanist philosophy—a passionate belief in the striving for human transcendence, not through religion or politics, but science.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 417 pages
• Publisher: Prometheus Books; 1St Edition edition (December 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591022908
• ISBN-13: 978-1591022909
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #600,242 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointed., June 22, 2011

By 

Rob Bairos (Toronto) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Designer Evolution: A Transhumanist Manifesto (Kindle Edition)

I find it very difficult to stop reading any book I've started, but in this case it wasn't much of a problem. I sympathize with Young's view, I really do, however I found this book quite laborious.

I was very frustrated by Young's inventing a word every few paragraphs for concepts that already are well represented by the english language.

I found his chapter on psychology extremely fallacious. Unless I'm mistaken I believe he
was trying to argue the point that all psychological problems are simply a lack/excess of
a small subset of specific chemicals. To me that would be like trying to change the
political theme of a TV show by adjusting its color balance.

I also found he was contradicting himself throughout the book.
He would argue that humans are biologically deterministic entities driven by a chemically driven brain when addressing those who believe in a soul, yet at the same time describes humans as free agents that have some magical will outside their biologically based memes.

I made it through 30% of this book, until I couldn't read much more.
Perhaps Young should take this original book, condense it to 50% of its length,
and rework many of the bad arguments.

Until then, I feel these glowing reviews were quite misleading.

21 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Pure Crap, February 5, 2010

By 

TJS "Broodingferret" (Arlington, VA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Designer Evolution: A Transhumanist Manifesto (Hardcover)

God, this book was a chore. Here I was hoping for at least a moderately well-reasoned treatment on such things as the morality of genetic enhancement or futuristic aesthetics and instead I got 300+ pages of rambling, poorly reasoned ideas based on a flawed understanding of some rather basic scientific principles. At several points Young puts forth ideas that sound intriguing and seem, for purely visceral reasons, to be desirable, but when his "reasoning" is considered it makes no sense. He contradicts himself wildly, obviously doesn't understand the theory of evolution, intentionally misquotes people to support his ideas, uses annoyingly repetitive sound-bites and catch-phrases in lieu of reasoned arguments, and commits that most egregious of all scientific errors of selecting only confirming evidence and ignoring all disconfirming evidence while trying to make his points. Basically, Young reads like someone who took a few philosophy courses in undergrad, then read a whole bunch of pop-science books and now considers himself to be some kind of highly cerebral autodidact on the cutting-edge of everything, yet succeeds only in sounding like an adolescent neo-Randian lobbying for the development of biotech that will give all of us KEWL POWRZ 'cause that would be AWESOME. The one thing that I may end up taking from this is further reading matterial: Young lists several sources as inspiration, sources he may have wildly misunderstood (if his "understanding" of things like evolution is any indication), so I can at least do some back-tracking through his sources and see if any of them are more logical than he was.

1.0 out of 5 stars UNBELIEVABLY BIASED, ALTHOUGH HE CONTINUALLY CLAIMS OTHERWISE, January 30, 2012

By 

Jason Lim "ghoststar" (New York, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Designer Evolution: A Transhumanist Manifesto (Hardcover)

I may not be able to offer you the secrets to immortality, but I can at least keep you from wasting several hours of your life (and $10) by summing this book up in a single sentence: TRANSHUMANISM IS GOOD, EMBRACE IT! Really, that's it. This idea is repeated ad nauseam. Other than the mind-numbing repetition of this one simple idea, the book is only good for learning a new list of jargon that the author seems to be promoting for his own sake, as many of his neologisms already exist in a different form. Yes, he takes words that already exist in popular use and ignores them, creating his own new terminology. I'm not sure if he's doing this in order to make a name for himself by coining new terms or if he's just so poorly educated in science and technology (e.g. biology, cybernetics, artificial intelligence, and the cognitive sciences) that he just plows through by making up new words.

By the way, with nearly all books that have a scanty number of reviews, you can bet all the hyped up, 5-star reviews were written by acquaintances. Just skim through some of them (it won't take long as they are all rather brief, one or two of them only offering a single sentence) and you'll see that the overall rating for this "book" is wholly unmerited.