Constructing the Human Being

The question, "What is man," Kant once observed, is the encompassing question for all philosophy. Individual Humans are constructed through development, and the human species is constructed through evolution. But every time we think we can decide what "the human" is, we find how much we are inventing it in the very process. We already remake our bodies through diet, fitness, surgery, and chemistry. Now biotechnological interventions extend the remaking process further to prosthetics, tissue engineering, and genetic enhancement. Language, education, and culture all conspire in fashioning and self-fashioning individual humans, a much-debated process that questions traditional categories like gender. The arts serve as windows into humanity by constructing virtual humans in fiction and painting. By considering the continuing construction and reconstruction of human beings we can gain insight into our fundamental nature and its ever-shifting expression.

2006 Fall Lecture Schedule

• Tuesday, 19 September 2006, 4:00 p.m., McMurtry Auditorium, Duncan Hall

Alexander X. Byrd, Assistant Professor, History Department, Rice University

"From Chattel to Human: 'Race,' Politics, and the American Revolution's Black Refugees"

In the aftermath of the American revolution thousands of former slaves who had sided with the forces of George III retreated with the British at war's end when the king's troops evacuated the Thirteen Colonies. They have been missing ever since form the political history of the American Revolution. This paper examines the odyssey of these former slaves as they crisscrossed the British Atlantic world-from New York, to Nova Scotia, to London, to Sierra Leone-fighting through their various transatlantic movements to master the transition from legal chattel to fully human (from the objects of the natural rights of others to the acknowledged possessors of those rights themselves). Though the life stories of these black migrants unwound outside the new United States, the struggles of these erstwhile black Virginians, Carolinians, and others remained, in important ways, fundamentally American. The story of the American Revolution and the rise of American democracy is greatly enriched when both movements' black refugees are closely accounted for.

Video available here.

• Tuesday, 10 October 2006, 4:00 p.m., McMurtry Auditorium, Duncan Hall

G. Anthony (Tony) Gorry, Friedkin Professor of Management & Professor of Computer Science, Jones Graduate School of Management, Director, CTTL, Director, W.M. Keck Center for Computational Biology, Rice University/Baylor College of Medicine

"Human Beings and the Machines of Sunshine"

Machines have undeniably extended and amplified our abilities, relieved us of drudgery and danger, and generally enriched the material aspect of our lives. But as the early Satanic textile mills quickly demonstrated, machines can be intrusive, oppressive and even dehumanizing. Over the past hundred years, however, new technologies have emerged that test our notions of what machines are and how we relate to them. Today, as Harraway has observed, our best machines are made of sunshine; they are nothing but signals, electromagnetic waves and slices of the spectrum. Yet by weaving patterns of light, these devices, of which the computer is the most prominent and protean, can erode the boundaries between nature and technology, reality and artifice, mind and body and person and machine. In this talk, I will discuss the emergence of these machines and suggest some of the ways in which they are changing who we are and what we may become.

Video available here.

• Tuesday, 14 November 2006, 4:00 p.m., McMurtry Auditorium, Duncan Hall

Marcia K. O'Malley, Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science Department, Rice University
Panelists:
Michael Dwyer Byrne, Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, Rice University
William E. Cohn, M.D., Associate Professor of Surgery, Transplant and Assist Devices Division, Michael E. DeBakey Department of Surgery, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas

"Extending the Human Being via Robotics"

While you may be familiar with commercial applications of robotics that improve our efficiency, like the Roomba, or toy robots that entertain and teach children, like Robosapien, there are a number of directions of robotics research that seek to extend human capabilities. This talk will discuss surgical robots, rehabilitation robots, and new applications of robotics for motor learning that have great potential. Applications range from enabling remote surgery, rehabilitating sufferers of stroke and spinal cord injury, speeding the acquisition of new motor skills, and potentially training amputees to use complex prosthetic devices. Also discussed will be the implications of providing humans with skills beyond the innate or physiologically viable.

Video available here.

• Tuesday, 5 December 2006, 4:00 p.m., McMurtry Auditorium, Duncan Hall

Karin Broker, Professor/Chair, Visual Arts Department, Rice University

"An Artist Constructs the Human or how I see your DNA"

As an artist, I feel my job is to pay attention and then regurgitate the information that sticks to my brain or my gut into something visual. My tools range from prints, steel sculptures and small boxes to large-scale drawings. It's the information; however, that has for me the most importance and has the most consistency. I accumulate information in my brain in small "post-it" note memory thoughts. When these notes, about something or someone, build up to a screaming crescendo, then I manipulate my tools to build those notes into an art "thing." It's a gut reaction married to a carefully studied idea. Sometimes it's pretty and sometimes it's not. I will show examples of my work over the past number of years and try to show my thought progression as an artist. My work has visually dealt with bad boyfriends, quirky family problems, death, and that ever-marching ticking of time called aging.

Video available here.

2007 Spring Lecture Schedule

• Tuesday, 16 January, 2007, 4:00 p.m., McMurtry Auditorium, Duncan Hall

Thomas R. Cole, Beth and Toby Grossman Professor and Director, McGovern Center for Health, Humanities, and the Human Spirit, University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston, and Visiting Professor, Humanities, Religious Studies Department, Rice University

"Aging and the Changing Nature of the Human"

This lecture will first discuss the recent debate over bioengineering and posthumanism. Then it will probe the place of aging in contemporary American culture--with emphasis on efforts to banish aging from human experience. Finally, it will speculate about issues of dementia, memory loss, and personhood.

Video available here.

• Tuesday, 20 February, 2007, 4:00 p.m., McMurtry Auditorium, Duncan Hall

LECTURE CANCELLED . . . TO BE RESCHEDULED FOR A FUTURE SCIENTIA SERIES
Carol E. Quillen, Associate Professor of History, Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, Director, Boniuk Center for the Study and Advancement of Religious Tolerance, Rice University

"Humans After Humanism: The Problem of Difference in an Age of Equality"

• Tuesday, 20 March 2007, 7:00 p.m., McMurtry Auditorium, Duncan Hall – THE BOCHNER LECTURE

Laurie Zoloth, Professor of Medical Humanities & Bioethics and Religion, Director of the Center for Bioethics, Science and Society, Northwestern University

"Work in Progress: Science, Religion, and the Human Future."

Biographical Sketch: In addition to being the Director of the Center for Bioethics, Science and Society, and Professor of Medical Ethics and Humanities at Northwestern University, Feinberg School of Medicine, and Professor of Religion and a member of the Jewish Studies faculty at Northwestern University, Weinberg College of Arts and Science, she directs bioethics at the Center for Genetic Medicine , the Center for Regenerative Medicine, and the Institute for Nanotechnology.

Video available here.

• Tuesday, 24 April, 2007, 4:00 p.m., McMurtry Auditorium, Duncan Hall

Kyriacos Athanasiou, Karl F. Hasselmann Professor of Bioengineering. Bioengineering Department, Rice University

"Bioengineering Toward Mending the Human Being: Is Arthritis Indeed Incurable?"

The tissue most pivotal for motion and overall function is, arguably, articular cartilage. This soft, white tissue that covers the ends of our long bones cannot heal by itself. Indeed, articular cartilage is notorious for its degenerative progression to osteoarthritis following an injury. The demanding biomechanical milieu of a joint,, plus cartilage's relative lack of cells and blood supply, render this tissue almost unique in its inability to repair adequately. This presentation will describe our group's efforts toward helping joint cartilages, such as hyaline tissue, knee meniscus, and the TMJ disc, repair themselves via tissue engineering approaches. Also shown will be some of our latest results indicating that cartilage regeneration to mend the arthritic human being is inexorably becoming a tractable problem.

Video available here.