How to Grow a Human (Филип Болл).

"Как вырастить человека" - это передовое исследование того, что означает быть человеком и иметь "себя" в свете новых научных достижений в генетической редактировании, клонировании и нейронном скачивании. Увидев, как его собственные клетки использовались для выращивания скоплений новых нейронов - в основном мини-мозгов - Филип Болл начинает исследовать концепции идентичности и сознания. Окунувшись в глубокое эволюционное прошлое человечества, чтобы исследовать, как сложные существа, подобные нам, возникли из одноклеточной жизни, он предлагает новую перспективу на то, как люди мыслим о себе. В эпоху, когда нас все больше и больше призывают рассматривать "себя" как абстрактную последовательность генетической информации или как шаблон нейронной активности, который может быть "скачан" на компьютер, он возвращает нас к телу - к плоти и крови - и закрепляет представление о личности в этой уникальной и эфемерной смертной оболочке. "Как вырастить человека" возвращает нас к себе - но при этом оно вызывает сомнения в старых предубеждениях и ценностях. Оно предлагает нам переосмыслить, как мы существуем в мире.

How to Grow Human, by philosopher Philip Ball, explores humanity's evolving understanding of self and identity, as new scientific findings in genetic engineering, cloning, and neural uploading challenge the way we conceptualize being human. After witnessing the growing of brain-clumps out of his own cells, Ball visits the rich evolutionary history of complex organisms such as ourselves, right down to our single-cell beginnings. This provocative work asks us to reject the abstraction of genes as defining the self, and to see humanity through the eyes of embodiment - a unique expression of flesh and marrow, unrepeatable and transitory. Engaging and intellectually engaging, How to Build Human nudges us back toward our grounding in our human condition while promoting a rethinking of the relationship between human existence and the rest of creation.

In How to Build A Human, writer and futurist Philip Ball presents an incisive and provocative exploration of our relationship to ourselves — our selfhood — in an era where genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and extraplanetary travel loom on the horizon, and where the virtualization of mind, body, and spirit have been posed as inevitable next steps in our technological progress. The ideas in this book shift our frame of reference and question fundamental assumptions about who and what we really are, challenging some of our most cherished beliefs about our place in the universe.\nDrawing on narrative, anthropology, literary theory, and far-ranging historical research, Ball’s towering chaptering framework traverses the gamut of prehistory, paleontology, and modern neuroscience, provoked by crucial scientific developments transforming our understanding of the human brain, cellular evolution, artificial intelligence, genetic programming and personhood. Brought together, the various threads of Ball’s argument highlight themes ranging from the aboriginal atemporal “self” circumscribed within a biological realm to the later elements present in more established societies that subsequently come across the invasive terms of moddernism—including alienation, transcendence, and carnivalesque intelligence as permeated through history. In between these disparate yet connected components of human growth, Bartleby the scrivener’s guiding principle to “kill no more,” is made into the operational principles guiding who people construct within their infinite selves, allowing them to establish identity, find solace, remain hopeful, without being consumed by bodies, desires, and industrial economies that form the bare bones of mundane existence. As the influence of digital paradigms ponders humanity’s future beyond the grave, Ball urges cultural redefinition and survival at the highest level of looking inward toward the “value of the microcosm.” Ultimately