Humanity’s Future
A special issue of Humanities (ISSN 2076-0787).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 January 2015) | Viewed by 104395
Special Issue Editor
2. International Centre of Rock Art Dating (ICRAD), Hebei Normal University, Shijiazhuang 050024, China
Interests: pleistocene archaeology; epistemology; rock art; prehistoric art; cave art; dating methodology; archaeometry; Pleistocene seafaring; human evolution
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
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
Keywords
- archaeology
- paleoanthropology
- human evolution
- paleogenetics
- paleopathology
- neuroscience
- neuropsychology
- cognitive science
- human ecology
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