How humanism became the new driver of futurism

It might seem strange to some, but in the earliest days of the Royal Society, everyone was at least somewhat religious. Convinced that the world was rational and ordered, the first official scientific society on Earth was driven to use this new thing called ‘science’ for the good of one’s fellow humans. Medicine, research, and investigation changed forever and took on a trajectory that transformed first the Western world, and then the entire world. This, one might say, was the beginning of futurism.

Dating humanism as a specifically non-religious ethical/philosophical stance is contentious. Some view it as beginning with the Renaissance, others the Enlightenment, or even the 1933 Humanist Manifesto or 1948 Declaration of Human Rights. Some would even go as far back as ancient Greece. Regardless, something very odd happened in the early twentieth century: a flailing movement changed hands. Whilst there is no doubt that a great many of the most influential scientists have been religious, several historical developments have brought us to a point where the driving force of futurism is almost entirely humanist, rather than religious, in nature.

I have previously defined futurism as ‘a position of “science-optimism” or “techno-optimism”… a concerted effort to dream of and reach for a future in which science and technology have advanced to the point that humanity has fully spread its wings and achieved the most extraordinary possibilities.’ The futurist vision foresees humanity cooperatively solving all its problems, using science and ingenuity. And using science to better humankind was at the heart of the largely religious early Royal Society.

The early spirit of the Royal Society drove through two centuries. For a long time, clergymen were often the only official practitioners and teachers of science, and religious thought, especially in the form of natural theology, pervaded the sciences. Charles Darwin studied theology at Cambridge because he was interested in natural theology and wanted to understand nature as much as possible. At Cambridge, he even lived in the former rooms of William Paley, the natural theologian who had earlier provided what is still the best-known formulation of the ‘argument from design’ (of course, Darwin would later handily dispose of that argument and lose his religious belief). And it was the monk Gregor Mendel, working around the same time as Darwin, who gave birth to the field of genetics through his pea plant experiments.

However, the late 18^th and 19^th centuries were also periods of great religious upheaval, particularly in the United States. In religious revivals in America, apocalyptic visions of the imminent return of Christ to end the world swept over swathes of the population. This was the era of the Mormons, Millerites, and Seventh Day Adventists, to name just a few. Their religious enthusiasm was founded on pessimism rather than optimism. Why bother to make the world a better place when its end is imminent? Why study the natural world when it is fading away?

At this time, the overseas missionary movement also exploded, reaching its high point just before the First World War. The emphasis shifted from improving the lot of one’s fellow humans through scientific investigation to helping others with shelter, clothing, medicine, and food. It was more Salvation Army and less Royal Society. This intellectual shift was subtle for many clergymen in their country parsonages, but it ran deep among the masses. There were still plenty of religious scientists in the early to mid-twentieth century, but the public’s appetites were different.

Furthermore, by the end of the nineteenth century, the role of ‘scientist’ rather than ‘natural philosopher’ was becoming more well-established, and the study of nature was becoming more professionalised in universities. The age of empire had launched a new generation of naturalists across the globe to research, write, and bring home collections to a flourishing industry of new museums.

The optimism of the beginning of the early 20^th century was devastated by the two World Wars and their associated horrors. However, the wars had also helped to rapidly increase the speed of scientific and technological advancement, too. The explosive revolution in physics between the wars paralleled the birth of the Humanist Manifesto, and the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights paralleled the move of many influential physicists from physics to biology, birthing the explosive molecular biology revolution of the 1950s-1970s. It is in this period that we start to see a more explicitly humanist futurism. The atheist scientist Linus Pauling won his second Nobel Prize in 1962 (for peace) for his activism against nuclear disarmament (the first was in chemistry). His fellow nonbelieving Nobel-winning scientist Maurice Wilkins (whose religious background lay in nonconformist Protestantism) launched a secular, humanistic quest for environmentalism.

Meanwhile, in the religious world, after another revival in the 1950s, the churches spent much of their energy reacting to the liberalism of the 1960s. Religious scientists were confined principally to academic life and university fora on the theological implications of the new scientific revolutions. The gap between the everyday church and science grew wider. The humanists, however, never slowed down. Nonbelieving scientists and science communicators like Stephen Hawking, Martin Rees, Francis Crick, Richard Dawkins, Carl Sagan, and David Attenborough became the champions of science in the public sphere. There was no Christian (or other religious) equivalent. Instead, religion was more likely to be associated negatively with science, as the Young Earth Creationism of Henry M. Morris, Kent Hovind, and Duane Gish, with its aggressively anti-science propaganda, took off and became popular among masses of (especially American) Christians threatened by social liberalism and the apparent godlessness of science.

As the twentieth century drew to a close, the bearers of the hope of a grand future for humanity—a hope that had been borne through the Space Race, TV science fiction, the launch of the Voyager and other solar system-spanning probes, the establishment of a permanent human home in space, and the emergence of robotics and the internet—were firmly humanist.

Indeed, most of the current champions of futurism, such as Steven Pinker and Martin Rees, are humanist ones. The religious voices tend to be confined to academia, engaging with ethical questions on AI and genetic engineering, whilst the religious masses remain strongly apocalyptic and hostile to science. There are exceptions to the former, of course (and the latter), but very few, and they pale in comparison to the mainstream humanist voices. It is an immense fall from the spirit of the original Royal Society.

Surveying the wider religious landscape, one can look to the work of the scientist and historian Joseph Needham, who once examined the question of why the Eastern religions never led to a scientific revolution. In his view, those worldviews simply were not conducive to an ordered, rational world that could be understood and manipulated. Thus they could not develop a vision of futurism.

Meanwhile, Islam’s relationship to science is particularly complicated. Consider that the Quran is seen to be perfect and all-sufficient, yet it contains no real science, whatever the pretensions of Islamic apologists. Furthermore, Mohammed taught that the greatest period of history was his own one and that each successive generation would be further removed from its purity. Muslim leaders throughout history have been content to utilise science if it benefits their political and religious goals, but they have rarely seen science as an end in itself. Again, the worldview was not conducive to a vision of futurism. (The Islamic Golden Age might be argued to be an exception, but much of the innovation during that period came from non-Muslims living under Muslim rule, or scholars of Islamic background who were unorthodox. In any case, the reimposition of religion over free enquiry after a few centuries put an end to it and left the Islamic world stagnating.)

I predict that futurism will continue to be driven by humanism unless there is an overhaul of religious priorities or unless religious scientists can exert more influence in their communities, both of which I doubt will happen. Regardless, it is the responsibility of all of us to champion science-optimism as we proceed through the current age of scientific revolutions. From the life sciences to AI, things are changing, and quickly. But if we focus and get things right, we might change the world for the good, in ways previously undreamt of. We must encourage the next generation of scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and researchers, not turn them off with pessimistic visions. The future can be as bright as we wish it to be, and it belongs to all of humanity.