In Chapter 20 of Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari explains that Homo sapiens has moved beyond the limits of natural selection and is entering an era of intelligent design through biotechnology, cyborg engineering, and non-organic engineering. He encourages us to consider how these changes will affect the future of humanity and where we are headed.
Chapter 20 of Sapiens (Yuval Noah Harari) is titled The End of Homo Sapiens. The author argues that history is the next step in the continuum that led to physics, chemistry, and biology, and that homo sapiens is subject to that process. Natural selection is a theory of biological evolution that has traditionally been supported by the scientific community as the process by which the most adapted to their environment survive and leave offspring in a competition for survival.
As a result of this natural selection, Homo sapiens has adapted to its surroundings and continues to evolve traits that make it suitable for survival. However, even so, the results and efforts of natural selection cannot push us beyond the boundaries of our biologically limited maximum capabilities. Just as a giraffe may have developed a longer neck to access food at higher elevations and thus become more nutritionally favorable for survival, but it cannot have transcendent powers like growing wings. This makes sense to anyone who has studied biology in high school, and even those who haven’t.
Interestingly, the author of the book argues that in the 21st century, Homo sapiens is beginning to break the finite boundaries set by the law of natural selection and replacing it with the law of intelligent design. The discussion of intelligent design can be considered in conjunction with creationism, which has been a major issue in religious circles. Proponents of intelligent design theorize that biological complexity presupposes the existence of a creator who pre-designed every biological detail. While the theories of biologists in the past have been reasonable, the evolution of Homo sapiens in the future is ironically more in line with the opinions of intelligent design advocates, given the history of natural selection and adaptation. In Intelligent Design, the authors describe three ways in which intelligent design could replace the natural selection that has shaped human history, and they argue that it may be underway right now.
The first is biotechnology, which refers to intentional human intervention at the level of biology. Genetic recombination technology, monoclonal antibody technology, etc. are examples of the biotechnology mentioned above. Even if you’re not a biology major, you’ve probably heard of Dolly, the cloned sheep. Dolly, a cloned sheep, was created by replacing the nucleus of an unfertilized egg with a somatic cell nucleus and implanting the fertilized egg with a somatic cell nucleus into the uterus of another ewe (surrogate mother), resulting in a lamb that was genetically identical to the first one. As genetic engineering and biotechnology advances by leaps and bounds, humans are artificially intervening in the evolutionary process of living organisms by defying the traditional laws of natural selection. As such, humans have assumed the status of intelligent designers, almost as if they were in the realm of God. At this rate, it may be possible to reorganize society through genetic manipulation without any ethical backlash.
Secondly, the author mentions cyborg engineering, where a cyborg is a being that combines organic and inorganic matter. Have you ever heard of bionics? Imagine if you were in an accident and lost an arm or leg. If a robotic arm is attached to your arm and leg and you are able to go about your daily life again when intervention at the biological level fails to improve the situation, it will be as if the creator has given a new life to a disadvantaged human being. What if we replace the inferior parts of a particular individual with cyborgs that have transcendent powers, such as intestines with artificial cyborg organs, eyes with cyborg eyes, nerves, brains, and so on? Whether we see them as humans or robots will be debated by many scholars, but what is certain is that we have begun to enter a new evolutionary dimension beyond natural selection.
The third way to change the laws of life is through the creation of completely inanimate objects. Computer programming, artificial intelligence robots, etc. These are beings that are not rooted in a biological base, but have evolved to have life-like characteristics. It’s significant that after four billion years of roaming around in the small world of organic compounds, life has finally begun to venture into the realm of the non-organic.
In reality, only a few of these imaginings have been fully realized. But what is certain is that we are liberating ourselves from our biological confines. The transformation of the taken-for-granted into the taken-for-granted has given us something to think about, something to consider. At the end of the chapter, the author cautions against this radical development of intellectual design, referring to Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein. He warns that we could hasten the end of Homo sapiens by creating monsters like Frankenstein.
We must continue to be rational intelligent designers, diligently examining where we are headed in our departure from the laws of biology and what our true desires are. The end of Homo sapiens may be in our hands. It will be up to each of us to choose whether we will remain human and enter a new evolutionary phase, or whether we will transform into transcendent beings.
What path will we choose between natural selection and intelligent design? This is more than just a scientific and technological debate; it is a philosophical and ethical question surrounding the meaning and future of human existence. The author poses this important question to readers and invites them to find their own answers.
