Beyond Human Physiology to Post-Human Physiology
Two Volume Set

Book Abstract
Is the idea of function in human physiology really so significant that, as Buddha once claimed, using health as an example, “To keep the body in good health is a duty…otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear”? (TE 2018) This positive view on health as function in human physiology can be contrasted with an opposing one by Charles Baudelaire, who gave the warning that “the trouble about always trying to preserve the health of the body is that it is so difficult to do without destroying the health of the mind”? (TE 2018a)
Contrary to these opposing views (and other ones as will be discussed in the book), human physiology (in relation to healthfulness and non-healthfulness—as well as other dichotomies) is neither possible (or impossible) nor desirable (or undesirable) to the extent that the respective ideologues (on different sides) would like us to believe, such that there is no healthfulness without non-healthfulness (and vice versa), to be explained by the “functionality-nonfunctionality principle,” the “activeness-nonactiveness principle,” the “valuation-devaluation principle,” the “regression-progression principle,” the “absoluteness-relativeness principle,” and other ones in “existential dialectics” (in Chapter Four).

Surely, this challenge to the conventional debate does not mean that human physiology, as a field of study, is not significant, or that those diverse fields (related to human physiology)—such as social work, nursing, ethology, botany, psychology, sociology, demography, public health, anthropology, ethics, political science, religion, economics, history, physics, and so on—should be ignored. (WK 2017) Of course, neither of these extreme views is reasonable.

Rather, this book offers an alternative (better) way to understand the future of human physiology (and related fields) in regard to the dialectic relationship between healthfulness and non-healthfulness (and those in other dichotomies)—while learning from different approaches in the literature but without favoring any one of them (nor integrating them, since they are not necessarily compatible with each other). More specifically, this book offers a new theory (that is, the healthful-nonhealthful theory of physiology) to go beyond the existing approaches in a novel way and is organized in four chapters.

This seminal project will fundamentally change the way that we think about human physiology (in relation to the dialectic relationship between healthfulness and non-healthfulness—as well as those in other dichotomies) from the combined perspectives of the mind, nature, society, and culture, with enormous implications for the human future and what I originally called its “post-human” fate.