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The diverse world of contemporary science is constantly evolving and now integrates curiosity, motivation and abilities from around the world. A growing number of people are eager for knowledge about what made humans as they are human, and there is no doubt that Earthlings look at other Earthlings the same way based on their knowledge. However, if they want to understand what kind of creature they are, they have to adopt a very different point of view, basically that of the Martian studying humans.
Importantly, in the last hundred years or so, which were years of fear and turmoil, the interdisciplinary investigation of the biological, social and environmental factors has underlaid human nature and life history. Shared care by many different scientists reduced human mortality, and a later age of maturity became an evolutionary advantage that allows a longer period for brain growth and development, and the rest, as they say, is history. Humans never stop evolving while the Earth keeps revolving, and the loss of today’s formative conditions of caring can undermine the very conditions that have made life on Earth possible.
Equally importantly, in many essential human properties, most are cast to the same mold. The Martian scientist might reasonably conclude that there is a single human behaviour with differences only at the margins. For human lives, the slight differences are what matters, not the overwhelming similarities, which they unconsciously take for granted. There is no doubt that humans look at other humans the same way, and no definition seems yet to perfectly explain what human is or does while the biologically same species share each other a range of problems and life’s indeterminacies.
However, at the same time, any work on human, as well as its criticism, should not be done in the same way as philosophy, with rigorous logic, trying to get from assertion P to assertion Q to assertion R, nor like a work of history, with evidence and references. Those attempts only make people want to grow up to maliciously dissect work of human, or work of human on human. Then, instead of trying to attend to the work as it is, the certainty seekers will fit it into or reject it from their model of the world, and lots of their criticism will also obscure many works instead of illuminating them.
Hence, there have been hundred years of efforts to see the different side of the coin of human beings and their nature, but many people take the work on human for granted and use it for making quick judgement of the same human. What matters today would be sinuous understanding of them, and there should be more unending debates on them. Although it might seem that the evolution as a distinct human race stopped, they will not procrastinate the perfect joy that comes from refusal of any definition of human and non human. |