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Humanities Encounters Science: Confronting the Challenge of Post-humanism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2018

Ning Wang
Ning Wang*
Affiliation:
Institute of Arts and Humanities, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China. Email: [email protected]; [email protected]
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Abstract

Post-humanism has recently come to China and challenges traditional humanism and the humanities. The author first offers a reflection on the evolution of humanism in modern Chinese intellectual history. To the author, we are now in a ‘post-theoretical era’, in which the function of theory is no longer so powerful and ubiquitous as it used to be. It is then argued that the rise of the ‘post-humanist’ trend in the West during the past decades indicates that, in the present era, humankind is only one of many species on earth, whose existence and development, to a large extent, depend on natural law. At the same time, post-humanism tells us that humankind may no longer be able to control some of its own creations. The author concludes by calling for digital humanities to bridge the gap between science and humanities and to establish a new relationship between the two.

Type
Conflicts and Dialogues between Science and Humanities
Information
European Review , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , May 2018 , pp. 344 - 353
Copyright
© Academia Europaea 2018 

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