The Human Prospect is a peer-reviewed, indexed journal focused on the development and refinement of humanist values and ethics, as well as ways the humanist movement can foster them throughout society. It also covers new scientific evidence, theories, and conclusions, as well as their impact upon and relationship to society, values, and ethics.
A radical change in understanding nature occurred when humans recognized that supernatural explanations could not account for natural phenomena. The earliest pre-Socratic philosophers in ancient Greece sought to explain events by reference to natural causes. They appealed to reason and observation to interpret nature, not faith or revelation, miracles or theology, uncorroborated by objective evidence. Modern science did not develop until the Renaissance. The ancients used reason and common sense (for example, Aristotle observed a lunar eclipse and reasoned that Earth must be a sphere because it cast a round shadow).
What I think is rather unique about humanism today as a first principle is that we are “citoyen du monde,” that is, citizens of the world community, members of the human species over beyond our gender, national, racial, or religious affiliations, which all too often have separated human beings in the past.
