Becoming Human by Design [Hardcover]

The last in Tony Fry's celebrated trilogy of books continues his radical rethinking of design.Becoming Human by Design's provocative argument presents a revised reading of human 'evolution' centred on ontological design.

Examining the relation of design to the nature of the human species - where the species came from, how it was created, what it became and its likely future - Fry asserts that current biological and social models of evolution are an insufficient explanation of how 'we humans' became what we are.

Making a case for ontological design as an evolutionary agency, the book posits the relation between the formation of the world of human fabrication and the making of mankind itself as indivisible. It also functions as a provocation to rethink the fate of Homo sapiens, recognising that all species are finite and that the fate of humankind turns on a fundamental Darwinian principle - adapt or die. Fry considers the nature of adaptation, arguing that it will depend on an ability to think and design in new ways.

PrefaceIntroductionThe story framedBeing HereOrientationsNietzsche: the Man in the MiddlePart One: First PassEnds of the storyThe EnlightenmentNietzsche and NihilismHistory and GenealogyStart of a StoryProximityWhat am 'I' near?Being Here: the Self, the Social and the Physical BodyThe Touch of the Hand and InstrumentalismPart Two: Emergence Over Origin - A Relational AccountComing into Being via Natural SelectionThe Picture from Being CentredRevisiting Natural SelectionOut of the Animal: Human Emergence and TimeIn the BeginningEmergence: out of the PhylumComing into Being via Un-natural SelectionHuman Emergence and Un-natural SelectionOntological Designing and TechnicsSocial Selection and its UnderpinningsSocial Selection and CultureUn-natural Selection Re-confrontedComing into Being via Design: Tools, Technology and Un-natural ThingsDesignToolsPassing Figures of Technoll¦