Transhumans

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A group of individuals who embrace advanced technologies to enhance physical and cognitive abilities
2. people who advocate for or participate in the transformation of humanity through genetic and technological improvements
3. individuals who seek to transcend traditional human limitations by integrating biological and artificial enhancements

Etymology: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the French Jesuit priest and palaeontologist, is credited with first using the adjective-turned-noun "trans-humain" in French, sometimes capitalised as "le Trans-humain", alongside "ultra-humain" to describe a human being evolving beyond its present form. The idea was a spiritual and evolutionary one rather than a technological one, and the English word "trans-human" appeared in the 1950s, built from the Latin prefix "trans-", meaning "across" or "beyond", and "human". The countable noun "transhumans", meaning people who take part in or champion this transformation, came into use in the 1960s through F. M. Esfandiary, who wrote under the name FM-2030. In his usage the prefix "trans-" was short for "transitional", describing people whose lives and habits already reflected the next stage of human development rather than going beyond humanity in a mystical sense. That shift from the prefix meaning "across" to meaning "transitional" is the main change in the word's story.

Synonyms: posthumans, augmented humans, enhanced humans, cyborgs, superhumans

Antonyms: humans, mortals, natural humans