What does it mean to be human?

1. What does it mean to be human? “We are the first species that represents our reasons, and can reason with each other. The planet has grown a nervous system."—Daniel Dennett—

2. What does it mean to be human? “We do something other species can’t: We remember. We have cultures, ways of transmitting information.”—Marvin Minsky—

3. What does it mean to be human? “[The human is] markedly distinguished from all other living beings by his technical predisposition for manipulating things (mechanically joined with consciousness), by his pragmatic predisposition (to use other human beings skillfully for his purposes), and by the moral predisposition in his being (to treat himself and others according to the principle of freedom under the laws).”—Immanuel Kant—

4. What does it mean to be human? “How did we develop empathy? Appreciate our mortality? And we should admit that there are areas that might not submit to material analysis: beauty, inspiration. We shouldn’t dismiss these as epiphenomenal froth.”—Francis Collins—

5. What does it mean to be human? “Our ability to generate hypotheses and make measurements.”—Harold Varmus—

6. What does it mean to be human? “All are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.”—Ecclesiastes 3.20—

7. What does it mean to be human? “The critical unique factor is language. Creativity. The religious and scientific impulse. And our social organization, which has developed to a prodigious degree. We have a record of history, moral behavior, economics, political and social institutions. We’re probably unique in our ability to investigate the future, imagine outcomes, and display images in our minds.”—Antonio Damasio—

8. What does it mean to be human? “The innate disposition to produce art and the innate appetite for art is not only a distinctive attribute of the human species - it’s also one of the principal means by which we keep trying to answer [this] fundamental question.”—Kiernan Ryan—

9. What does it mean to be human? “It is a never-ending quest that threatens to vanish in the present climate of sound bites and slogans that produce only the shallowest of perspectives. We have a mission to transmit the best that has been wondered, and to elicit serious and thoughtful responses from our students. Let us proceed with passion.”—John Dexter Marble—