Special Issue "Humanity’s Future"

Guest Editor
Dr. Robert G. Bednarik
International Federation of Rock Art Organisations (IFRAO), PO Box 216, Caulfield South, Vic. 3162, Australia
Website: http://mc2.vicnet.net.au/home/auraweb/web/index.html
E-Mail: auranet@optusnet.com.au
Interests: pleistocene archaeology; epistemology; rock art; prehistoric art; cave art; dating methodology; archaeometry; pleistocene seafaring; human evolution

Dear Colleagues

This is a proposal for a special theme issue of Humanities. For a new journal to establish itself effectively, it is essential that it feature a theme that is of universal appeal and can attract wide attention not only in the scientific and humanities communities, but also in the wider public. One of the timeliest themes in this era of uncertainties about the sustainability of humanity and its demands on this planet is surely the question of the future of our species. One can either speculate about the developments of our technology and society, which has been done many times; or one can delve deeply into the human past and develop plausible trajectories of how humans got to where they are now, and then extrapolate from these known trajectories into the future, to see where they might take us. Naturally, in some areas such predictions would be subject to significant unknowns, but with the majority of variables, extrapolation would be perfectly reasonable to create credible scenarios. For instance the development of the brain and all it entails is likely to continue on its present course, as is the development of pathologies, human cognition, the genome, and of human physiology. In most of the factors that make up what we are and are likely to become, rationalizations about the future are perfectly reasonable, especially if the principal moderating influences can be accounted for.
On this basis it is proposed to explore the past trajectories of such aspects as human ecology, human biology, pathology, physiology, evolutionary biology, genetics (populations, molecular, behavioral), endocrinology, neuroscience and cognitive science, in order to determine the most likely future directions in their development. This should lead to realistic predictions of the future of our in many ways troubled species.

Dr. Robert G.Bednarik
Guest Editor

Submission

• archaeology
• paleoanthropology
• human evolution
• paleogenetics
• paleopathology
• neuroscience
• neuropsychology
• cognitive science
• human ecology

Title: A Naturalistic Approach to the Future of Law
Author: Atahualpa Fernandez
Affiliation: Group Human evolution and cognition, University of the Balearic Islands-IFISC, Spain; E-Mail: atahualpaf@yahoo.es
Abstract: Analyze some issues about the impact that naturalistic perspectives have to do with the current theoretical and methodological structure of juridical science. A philosophy or science of law developed from a naturalistic approach allows to be opposed, a real and practicable form, to the evidence that human nature not only generates and limits the conditions of possibility of our societies but guides and sets limits to the institutional and normative set that regulates the social relations. To understand better our evolutionary past could provide the basis for a viable system with sense, for a Law to provide order and purpose to our lives in the future.
Keywords: law; evolution; human nature; juridical discourse; legal education