interview. “Manipulating the genome is creating the irreversible.”

This article is from Les Indispensables de Sciences et Avenir Issue 208, dated January/March 2022.

Jean-Michel Bisnier is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the Sorbonne University.

Science et Avenir: Have humans stopped evolving?

Jean-Michel Bisnier: The evolution of species continues, and nothing a priori should break our course, especially since one of the goals of technology is to control it. This acquisition would work through the effect of evolutionary reversal, a concept developed by Darwinian theorist Patrick Torte. The explanation is simple: Evolution has chosen our abilities to develop tools and language. These initial features of homogeneity result from the emergence of the vertical position, which liberated the hand and vocal organs. Tools and language have enabled us to transform our natural environment, which always imposes new constraints on us, forcing us to invent new tools … step by step, and thus we created agriculture, the industrialized world. According to this scheme, human development is increasingly dictated by cultural factors introduced into the environment. Thus, natural selection chooses civilization, which in turn opposes natural selection by eliminating what makes humanity vulnerable. With this opposite effect, there is a swing by which the development of technologies allows us to control human development in turn.

Tomorrow will we have big eyes, and a bigger brain…? What physical changes can we expect?

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, some scientists speculated that humans had a more developed brain, a flattened face, and an enlarged thumb. Expect more Lamarckism than Darwinism : It is indeed a way to support that function creates the organ and that the type of activity that humans engage in limits the development of their phenotype. With a certain irony, ethnologist Andre Leroy Gorhan postulated that the body, unable to straighten more, would evolve towards a lying position and that man would lose his teeth, due to not having to tear and chew a less meaty diet. …he went so far as to imagine that the hand would play no role anymore, except for moving the thumb to operate the machines…but, in conclusion, it is all fiction. It will take tens of thousands of years for us to witness the emergence of new morphological characters. However, these myths feed our imaginations.

Can we survive the mass extinction of the species we are causing?

Some evolutionists assert that the preservation of biodiversity is essential, but one should not imagine that its impoverishment threatens the human race. In fact, there are always paths of chance. Even if we attack 92% of species, there is still an 8% chance of new life forms emerging, allowing the human race to survive. Therefore, with respect to climate and biodiversity, our decisions will be of much more moral and political order than they may affect the survival of the human race.

Will human genetic manipulation disrupt evolution?

CRISPR-Cas9 molecular scissors allow us to manipulate the genome. Using it, we can imagine grafting specific genes into human embryos to give children new cognitive skills, such as better memory, perfect night vision, and even the ability to echolocation if we imported our genetics from bats. Human enhancement through genetic manipulation is the imagination of robots. CRISPR-Cas9 is a great tool for gene therapy, but is misleading if used for enhanced human production. Even if it is used for medical purposes, this technology can lead to slips – we saw this recently in China, with the birth of twins Lulu and Nana. Manipulating the genome means creating something irreversible: here we have caused unexpected mutations, at a distance from the target gene, which can be passed on to subsequent generations whose fate becomes uncertain. An international law regulating this kind of manipulation is necessary, but still has to be invented…

The crime against the human race to which cloning relates will serve as a reference. Will we have to dissuade some transhumanists who wish to suppress sexual reproduction in order to replace it with this fabrication of man? This ambition is extremely detrimental to the development of the human race. Because sexual reproduction is an adaptive strategy. If we remove it, we make organisms lose the possibility of resistance to mutations imposed by the environment, and in doing so, we weaken them. This manufacturing dream stems from the consumer’s expectation of comfort and perverted personal fantasies. The possibility of creating clones infuriates German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, who sees it as an attack on the foundational autonomy of man. How can a clone or a genetically modified individual not be definitively subject to the project and the decision of his parents? Under the guise of controlling choice, the end of humanity will come true.

Our societies are also changing. What social animals will we be in a few thousand years?

This is the science of the future! But if the appropriation of technology on humans is confirmed, and transhumanist scenarios validated, we will move towards hyper-individualism. To idealize a person is to desocialize him. Because we live in a society as much as we are imperfect beings, we wait for each other. All science fiction scenarios present us with future humanity as made up of individuals closed in on themselves, due to technology making them decentralized. “matrix” It is typical in this respect. “valerian” where “Blade Runner It also describes a world without radio.

If humans reproduced clones, there would be no more sexual encounters. As writer Michel Welbeck forcefully asserts, we make the desire we have for others disappear and we create a society doomed to be bored and repeat the same. Techniques dampen the erotic nature of man, and it is this aspiration for fullness that directs us toward the other.

Finally, what can we hope for in terms of the evolution of our species?

To know how to preserve the symbolic dimension and the independence of human beings. That we remain in the driver’s seat and determined to thwart physicist Dennis Gabor’s adage that everything that is technically possible will be achieved, regardless of the moral cost. The ancient Greeks condemnedarrogance, the transcendent aspiration to rise above the state of the mere mortal. Awareness of the disproportion we bring into the course of nature, into our bodies, should lead us to develop self-regulating structures, states for determining the fair use of technologies, and behaviors of sobriety.

Today, we can still predict the future of our grandchildren, but the generations to be born a hundred years later no longer rally us. We hope that humanity will reconcile with the future… and with the will to build the future.

Interview by François Follett