HUMAN
The Central Focus of Inquiry
Among the forms of life known to us, the human being occupies a distinctive position.
Not because other forms of life are secondary or exist for humanity’s sake. Nor because the human being can be regarded as a finished or perfect form of life.
The reason is different.
At present, the human being is the form of life known to us that is capable not only of existing within the surrounding reality, but also of consciously investigating it, forming an understanding of it, setting goals, and deliberately changing the conditions of its own existence.
Human beings create language and culture, science and technology, social systems and works of art. They are capable of investigating their own nature while simultaneously asking what they might become.
This is why the human being occupies a central place in the research of the Creative Causality Research Center.
The Human Being as a Point of Departure
The Center is created by people.
Its questions are formulated by people. Its research is conducted by people. And the consequences of the knowledge it produces enter, first and foremost, into human reality.
It would therefore be a mistake to regard the human being merely as one among many objects of study.
Within our frame of reference, the human being is simultaneously the object of inquiry and the one who inquires.
We study the Universe — but it is the human being who investigates it.
We study life — and the human being is one of its forms.
We investigate intelligence — yet today it is through human intelligence that the very question of the nature of rationality is posed.
We investigate society, language, technology and art — and all these phenomena are directly connected with the development of the human capacity to understand, create and transform reality.
Thus, the Center’s various fields of inquiry radiate from a single central point and ultimately return to it:
what does the knowledge we acquire mean for the human being, and what new possibilities does it open for human development?
Beyond What the Human Being Is Today
The study of the human being cannot be limited to describing the present human condition.
Biology can investigate the human organism. Psychology — mental processes. Anthropology — human origins and development. Sociology — human existence within society. Neuroscience — the workings of the nervous system and the brain.
All these fields are necessary.
But for us there is another question that connects them:
what potential is inherent in the human form of life, and to what extent has that potential been realized today?
This gives rise to a distinction between the human being as presently realized and the human being as possibility.
The modern human being is the result of a long process of biological, cultural and historical development. Yet humanity’s present condition need not represent the limit of that process.
The capacities for thought, self-knowledge, cooperation, creativity, transformation of the environment and conscious transformation of one’s own life may be understood not only as existing characteristics, but also as directions for further development.
The study of the human being therefore inevitably becomes a study of what the human being may yet become.
Knowledge as a Means of Development
Knowledge is not an end in itself.
We can endlessly increase the amount of information we possess about the world without answering the more fundamental question: what is this knowledge for?
For the Center, this question is fundamental.
The study of nature, life, intelligence, society and technology acquires a creative meaning when it contributes to the unfolding of life’s possibilities and to the development of the capacity of intelligent beings to shape their own future independently and responsibly.
In relation to the human being, this means creating conditions for the fuller realization of physical, intellectual, ethical, social and creative capacities.
Not adapting the human being to a system at any cost.
Not turning the human being into a more efficient component of a productive or technological mechanism.
Rather, developing the human being as a subject capable of thinking, choosing, creating, entering into relationships with others, and consciously participating in the formation of the surrounding reality.
The Human Being Does Not Exist Apart from Life
Placing the human being at the center of our inquiry does not mean placing humanity above life.
Human existence depends upon an immense system of relationships that arose long before us: atmosphere, water, soil, plants, animals, microorganisms and the extraordinarily complex ecological processes of the planet.
By destroying this system, humanity destroys the conditions of its own existence.
Human development therefore cannot be considered separately from the development of the environment of which humanity is a part.
A creative model implies a different relationship: the development of human potential should be accompanied by an increasing capacity to sustain, restore and enrich the living world around us.
Development is then measured not only by what human beings are able to obtain from the world, but also by what kind of reality they are able to create through their presence within it.
Humanity and Future Forms of Intelligent Life
There is another reason not to confine this inquiry exclusively to the human being as we know it today.
We do not know whether humanity will remain the only advanced form of intelligent life known to us.
In the future, humanity may encounter fundamentally new forms of intelligent systems. Some may emerge through the development of artificial intelligence, biotechnology, or other fields not yet known to us. Nor can we exclude the existence of intelligent life beyond Earth.
The study of the human being therefore also becomes a point of departure for the broader investigation of intelligent agency.
What makes an intelligent being an agent in its own right?
What enables such a being to become aware of itself, formulate its own goals, enter into relationships with other agents, and not merely adapt to existing reality but create a new one?
Where does the boundary lie between intelligence as the capacity to solve problems and rationality as the capacity to understand the grounds of one’s own actions?
These questions extend beyond any single biological form.
Yet today, the human being is the point from which we can begin to investigate them.
The Human Being as an Open Possibility
For this reason, the Creative Causality Research Center does not regard the human being as a finished object awaiting a final definition.
The human being is regarded as an open possibility.
A form of life in which intelligence, self-awareness, goal-setting and creativity have already emerged, but whose limits of development remain unknown to us.
From this follows the central task of this field of inquiry:
to understand the human being deeply enough to distinguish what is acquired from what is essential, what constrains from what develops, what is automatic from what is agentic, and what has already been realized from what remains possible.
And then to ask the next question:
what conditions allow human potential to unfold most fully — not at the expense of other forms of life, but in creative interrelation with them?
In this sense, the human being stands at the center of the Center’s research not because everything that exists should serve humanity.
On the contrary.
Knowledge should serve human development so that human beings themselves may become capable of serving the development of life.
And perhaps it is here that the transition begins: from the human being as one form of life to the human being as a conscious participant in life’s further development.