A new approach to describe human–social origins and processes of changes-over-time-and-space is required for communicative clarity, since most people are not convinced by the perspective of ‘evolution everywhere’ and ‘everything evolves’. The idea of Human Extension is thus presented here in a general language that can be applied broadly in everyday life and specifically in HSS. If people are listening on a clear channel, the concept duo of Human Extension will make immediate sense to them and can open up new possibilities in understanding humanity and the social–cultural world.

Let us take for granted at the start then that most people know what ‘human’ means or what it signifies to them. As individuals, people may not hold the same views or exact definitions of ‘humanity’. Nevertheless, let us say for now that most people have a good grasp of what ‘human’ means. Then what does ‘extension’ mean? That is where we must begin.

1. Human Extension applies to individuals, societies and to humanity as a whole. It stakes its claim in HSS as an ‘anthropic principle’, rather than as a mathematical or physiological principle, for example as R. Descartes suggested of extension (res extensa) in the 17th century. Human Extension contrasts with the contemporary (un-reflexive) anthropic principle used in cosmology, astrophysics and other related areas. As a real anthropic principle it provides a perspective that combines with cultural philosophy to promote ‘cross-civilisation respect’, which is generally absent in evolutionary social theory.⁴ It thus enables an alternative to Social Darwinism and evolutionism with their obviously implied hierarchy of human forms, undeniable and still prominent history of ‘civilisational racism’.⁵

Human Extension accepts upfront the ‘common descent’ of humankind from a single source, in other words, it rejects polygenism. This enables a united, monogenic view of the ‘human family’ as ‘equals’ rather than categorically differentiating us into higher and lower civilisations or peoples. This is not, however, to attempt to answer whether or not Allah/God/Yahweh (in the languages of Abrahamic theists) created all people(s) equal. As a feature of common descent, humanity’s extensions are measurable (and thus, ‘scientific’ in the human–social scholarly sense) from the choices that individuals and groups make and by their/our causal effects. The causal efficacy of Human Extension makes it a paradigm for exploration in HSS. Each person, community, society or nation has extensions (and intensions) that can be studied and measured through observing their institutions and artefacts, generally or specifically. Our ability to ‘extend’ ourselves via relationships, activities, media and technologies and in both our mundane and transcendental beliefs is thus understood as a species mark of our ‘humanness’.

2. Human Extension is already validated linguistically by ‘extension theory’. The fields of agriculture and education give two clear and robust examples of where ‘extension’ has already been widely applied through individual and community action for change and development. In these fields, extension and training ideas have influenced and continue to influence the daily lives and possibilities of countless millions of people around the world. Scholarship and practice on ‘extension’ have taken place in a variety of ways, through the historical educational extension programs that started at Cambridge and Oxford Universities in the late 19th century (see W. Draper 2007) to the US Department of Agriculture’s cooperative extension model. Out of this, educational extension services and careers as extension agents have developed that are detailed, explored and analysed in the Journal of Extension and the Association and Journal of International Agricultural and Extension Education, among others. This work goes far beyond what ‘evolutionary’ models have been able to achieve in terms of providing practical humanitarian resources, support and services globally and locally.

These precedents reveal a solid, tangible basis for conducting new research that investigates science, technology and development as social epistemological artefacts of human creation (or ‘design–manufacture’ below) in HSS, in addition to providing an alternative to evolutionism. Human Extension can thus be used to both contextualise and analyse the practical work already done on ‘extension’ as well as to provide a social philosophical covering view for its justification. Following the work of McLuhan, Human Extension applies to all sciences and technologies as ‘human-made things’ that result from innovations, inventions, actions and discoveries that scientists, artists, thinkers and others make in the course of ‘doing their work’ in whatever realm(s) they/we inhabit.

What Human Extension then does is to insist that in a real sense of human development, human-made things cannot be said to have ‘evolved’ stochastically because the intentionality of human actions overrides the comparatively simplistic population genetics, probabilistic and biological scientific analogies to ‘random’ or ‘environmentally determined’ human choices.⁶ It thus accords a new category to ‘human-made things’, similar to what others have discussed (e.g. McLuhan, H. Simon, J. Ellul, N. Postman et al.) in terms of both the ‘artificial’ and ‘artefacts’, while nevertheless still firmly remaining within the mainstream of historical and current HSS thought.

3. Human Extension constitutes a vehicle for active peace-making and meaningful reconciliation, in contrast to the evolutionary mantra of ‘struggle for existence’ (T. Malthus) and ‘survival of the fittest’ (H. Spencer). In place of a conflict-oriented philosophy,⁷ Human Extension offers the grand (if often unknown in the ‘west’) alternative category of ‘mutual aid’ (vzaimopomosh, K. Kessler 1870 and later P. Kropotkin 1903), as a symbiosis-oriented philosophy, like ‘extending one’s hand’ for an agreement, friendly greeting or salutation. Mutual aid as an example of ‘working together’ provides an opportunity for people to turn away from the Darwin-Malthus-Spencer Victorian epoch’s primary insistence on struggle, war, conquest and domination. Our hope is that the world has moved beyond this particular ideology in history and can now build new models that more accurately reflect today’s conditions and opportunities.

In place of competition, Human Extension prioritises the ideas of cooperation, collaboration and altruism (P. Sorokin). It turns out that altruism has been misappropriated away from HSS (sociologist A. Comte coined the term) by zoologists, ethologists, game theorists and other naturalists using a cultural–materialist worldview (W. Hamilton 1964, M. Harris 1968, S. Sanderson 1990 et al.), or wildly distorted, as by one particular Russian-American novelist (A. Rand 1943, 1957). This has led to serious disagreements today about many evolutionary theories specifically as they relate to humanity, due to a perceived command– control style of scholarship and a misanthropic or dehumanised form of altruism.

Human Extension as an alternative to the exaggeration of evolution into HSS (evolutionism) can help people to rise above some of the ‘just-so’ stories in evolutionary sub-disciplines (e.g. evolutionary psychology, evolutionary economics) and likewise move beyond other controversies surrounding ‘evolutionism’ as a universal ideology. Evolutionism is therefore deemed a failed and unsustainable socio-cultural ideology that should no longer be considered healthy or moral for application in HSS, yet which still carries a significant following. Alternatives to evolutionism should instead be explored and developed, with the caveat that supporting and respecting the proper borders and boundaries of biology be tempered with rejecting biologism.⁸

This lays a foundation for scholars in HSS to recognise more clearly and coherently how evolutionism has damaged ...