The intellectual discovery of human extinction

Thesis

Of late, risks of human extinction (or so-called 'existential risks') have become the target of an emerging field of scientifically serious study. We are now increasingly conversant with increasingly distal and severe futurities. Such a dynamic, of incremental entanglement with futurity, typifies the growing edge of modernity. Yet this dynamic is not itself without a history. Or, we have been being swept up in the future for quite some time now. This thesis attempts to supply the history o...

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Authors: Moynihan, T

• Alternative title: Existential risk and the entrance of the future perfect into science
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: Romanticism; Wilfrid Sellars; Byron; Naturphilosophie; Milan Cirkovic; Global Catastrophic Risk; Immanuel Kant; Neo-Catastrophism; Catastrophism; Jaakko Hintikka; Cuvier; X-risk; Percy Shelley; Reinhart Koselleck; von Hartmann; Crisis; Simo Knuuttila; Hans Blumenberg; Robert Brandom; Futurology; Human Extinction; Nick Bostrom; Leopardi; Future Perfect; Fichte; Omegarus and Syderia; Modernity; Odoevsky; The Last Man; Probabilism; Enlightenment; Risk; Extinction; Model-based Reasoning; Sattelzeit; Recollective Rationality; Buffon; Omnicide; Uniformitarianism; Rationalism; Principle of Plenitude; Existential Risk; Thomas Bayes; Schopenhauer; Mary Shelley; Mass Extinction; Modality; Schelling; Political Arithmetic; Le Dernier Homme; Contingency
• Subjects: History of Philosophy; Intellectual History; History of Science; X-RIsk Studies; Future Studies; History of Ideas