X-Risk: How Humanity Discovered Its Own Extinction - Softcover

Moynihan, Thomas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1913029840 ISBN 13: 9781913029845

Publisher: Urbanomic Media Ltd, 2020

Synopsis

How humanity came to contemplate its possible extinction. From forecasts of disastrous climate change to prophecies of evil AI superintelligences and the impending perils of genome editing, our species is increasingly concerned with the prospects of its own extinction. With humanity's future on this planet seeming more insecure by the day, in the twenty-first century, existential risk has become the object of a growing field of serious scientific inquiry. But, as Thomas Moynihan shows in X-Risk, this preoccupation is not exclusive to the post-atomic age of global warming and synthetic biology. Our growing concern with human extinction itself has a history. Tracing this untold story, Moynihan revisits the pioneers who first contemplated the possibility of human extinction and stages the historical drama of this momentous discovery. He shows how, far from being a secular reprise of religious prophecies of apocalypse, existential risk is a thoroughly modern idea, made possible by the burgeoning sciences and philosophical tumult of the Enlightenment era. In recollecting how we first came to care for our extinction, Moynihan reveals how today's attempts to measure and mitigate existential threats are the continuation of a project initiated over two centuries ago, which concerns the very vocation of the human as a rational, responsible, and future-oriented being.

About this title

About the Author

Thomas Moynihan focuses on intellectual history and existential risk, aiming to supply a historically reflective dimension to the emerging field of "future studies."

Edition details

• Publisher: Urbanomic Media Ltd
• Publication date: 2020
• ISBN 10: 1913029840
• ISBN 13: 9781913029845
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 224