Etymology From trans- + human, also attested as trans-human in the 1950s. Attributed to Teilhard de Chardin, as French trans-humain (noun, sometimes capitalised as (le) Trans-humain), who used it alongside ultra-humain (“the ultra-human”). As a countable English noun (plural transhumans) introduced by F. M. Esfandiary in the 1960s (here trans- is short for transitional).
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More than human; superhuman.
Turning fallible human foot soldiers into transhuman machines who need neither sleep nor food, and are incapable of resistance and independent thought, is a Napoleonic dream .2009, Vinoth Ramachandra, Subverting Global Myths, →ISBN:
A template for those who will become transhuman.2015, Laurence Moroney, TRANSHUMAN: Volume 1 : The Deconstruction of Hu Ying Chao:
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Related to transhumanism.
I believe that this is important, because taken in isolation the kind of enhancements portrayed by transhuman philosophers might seem relatively innocuous.2011, Ronald Cole-Turner, Transhumanism and Transcendence, →ISBN:
The transhuman ideal is based upon a reconception of evolution, a perfecting and transcending of the human race through the next step in progress: not through biological mutation but through science and technology.2012, J. B. Stump, Alan G. Padgett, The Blackwell Companion to Science and Christianity, →ISBN:
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In a study of transhumanists and video games, fully twothirds of the participants claimed that video games incline players toward a transhuman sense of self.2014, Robert M. Geraci, Virtually Sacred: Myth and Meaning in World of Warcraft and Second Life, →ISBN:
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Involving something beyond the merely human; transcending human limitations or boundaries.
Near-synonym: posthuman (sometimes synonymous)
This "other world" is transcendent because the experience of the sacred—an encounter with a reality transcending immanent life—gives birth to the idea that there are absolute, that is, transhuman, realities.2000, Victor Segesvary, Dialogue of Civilizations: An Introduction to Civilizational Analysis, →ISBN:
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Thus, regardless of whether one prefers to replace the father symbol with other human symbols like mother and maternal—or with transhuman and transsexual symbols like first/last reality—none of these images or symbols are really integral to the message of the Gospels.2001, Anna Wierzbicka, What did Jesus Mean?, →ISBN:
Subjectivity, as a paradoxically transhuman phenomenon of awareness renderred only in ecologies, is rendered into inscriptions and images even as no self is adequate to the report.2011, Richard M. Doyle, Darwin's Pharmacy: Sex, Plants, and the Evolution of the Noosphere, →ISBN:
transhuman
noun
Etymology From trans- + human, also attested as trans-human in the 1950s. Attributed to Teilhard de Chardin, as French trans-humain (noun, sometimes capitalised as (le) Trans-humain), who used it alongside ultra-humain (“the ultra-human”). As a countable English noun (plural transhumans) introduced by F. M. Esfandiary in the 1960s (here trans- is short for transitional).
› An enhanced human:
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An individual having characteristics transitional between a human and a posthuman species.
In the same way that a transhuman is a transitional human, Christians are also humans in transition, living in a kingdom that has come and yet is coming, “strangers in the world.”2007, Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Charles A. Anderson, Michael J. Sleasman, Everyday Theology (Cultural Exegesis), →ISBN:
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Broadly An individual of a posthuman species.
On the coffee table rested a sculpture of the fundamental, recombinant DNA of the present transhumans.2008, Christopher Ejsmond, Reflections on Life, →ISBN, page 100:
In practice, this technological transhumation would wreak havoc on the earth. While modern transhumans are meant to come into being through technology, Augustine offers two models of transhumans made by a divine rather than a human creator -- Adam and Eve in Eden and the resurrected saints in heaven.2011, Andrea Nightingale, Once Out of Nature: Augustine on Time and the Body, →ISBN, page 4:
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Will it happen again if we transition from human to transhuman?2014, Calvin Mercer, Tracy J. Trothen, Religion and Transhumanism: The Unknown Future of Human Enhancement, →ISBN, page 207:
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A being that transcends humanity; a superhuman being.
I bet every critter that thinks it thinks—even the transhumans—worry about how to do right for themselves and the ones they love.2002, Vernor Vinge, The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge, →ISBN:
Imagine a living computer running a simulation where math functions within the simulation think. Then consider an implication of anthrocosmology: if human consciousness created reality and transhumans can simulate any reality they can imagine, that suggest the physical universe has no special status above any other virtual reality.2004, Lou Anders, Projections: Science Fiction in Literature and Film, →ISBN, page 123:
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Now ask yourself a question, don't these transhumans have as much a right in killing us for food as we do in killing cows?2015, David Lane, The Thinking Text, →ISBN, page 46: