BOOM! Fourteen billion years ago there was an explosion like no other. This explosion is called the Big Bang, and it was an event of critical importance to the history of our world. The Big Bang unleashed incomprehensible amounts of energy, which, instead of spreading out evenly, ganged together into groups and settled down into the patterns we know today as matter.

Since the very inception of our universe, it has evinced an absolutely essential property, one so plain and obvious that it is easy to forget: the relationship between all the particles and energy which comprise it is constantly changing. No one moment in our universe parallels any other moment. This is because it is in a constant state of flux, and it is this essential property which allows our universe to evolve.

It is important to keep in mind that evolution is not a process which began operating on our planet shortly before the rise of the dinosaurs; evolution is a process which has been in operation since the moment of the Big Bang. The principles by which it operates have become more complex over time, shifting from simple pattern endurance up to natural selection, but it has always been at work. Indeed, the entire history of our universe has been one of continuous evolution, and it has molded every aspect of what has taken place in time and history, including ourselves.

All the way back to the age of the Greeks, there were some humans who suspected they were the product of evolution, but it would take over two millennia before someone came along and figured out how exactly this process worked. That man was Charles Darwin, and his book, On the Origin of Species, published in 1859, forever changed the world.

While Darwin’s ideas were extremely controversial at the time, today increasing numbers of people are willing to accept them. The scientific community has revised some of Darwin’s ideas and added nuances, but that humans descended from apes by a process of evolution and natural selection is now taken as established fact.

Evolution has forever transformed humankind’s understanding of where they came from, but what about their understanding of where they are going? Increasing numbers of individuals have accepted Darwin’s theories about our past, but what implications do they have for our future? The transhumanists believe they know the answer—humans are destined to evolve into something more than human. From apes to men and from men to…transhumans!

The transhumanists believe that through the application of science and technology to themselves, humans will be able to dramatically extend their capabilities. It is impossible to know at this point the exact details of how such a technologically generated transformation might unfold, but in very broad stroke, one can offer some reasonable suggestions. Already there are several lines of research emerging from fields such as genetic engineering, neuroscience, cybernetics, artificial intelligence, and nanotechnology which hint at ways in which humans might go about transcending their current organic morphology.

Surely humans will encounter unforeseen difficulties, discover limitations, and suffer setbacks along the way, but the evolutionary history of our universe provides a fourteen billion year long track record which strongly suggests that whatever obstacles stand in the way of further evolutionary progress will eventually be transcended. Evolutionary history has a trajectory, and it is unmistakably up!