The figures presented here can be regarded as precursors of Cancerism in different degrees. Some anticipated major elements of the theory; others expressed only particular ideas, intuitions or analogies that would later be incorporated and developed within the Cancerist framework. None of them formulated Cancerism as a complete theory.
They came from philosophy, literature, medicine, anthropology, biology, ecology and the study of civilization. Some questioned humanity’s anomalous position within nature. Some identified human intelligence or consciousness as a possible evolutionary problem. Others examined population growth, technological expansion, ecological domination or the progressive destruction of the biosphere. A few explicitly compared humanity with cancer.
Taken separately, these ideas represent fragments of a much larger problem. Cancerism attempts to bring them together within a unified interpretation of humanity as a species whose exceptional evolutionary development has allowed it to escape many natural constraints and progressively behave, within the biosphere, in ways structurally comparable to malignant disease.
The pages below present selected texts, ideas and arguments from these authors, together with an explanation of their affinities — and, where necessary, their differences — with Cancerism.
1584 — Giordano Bruno
1762 — Jean-Jacques Rousseau
1808 — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
1864 — Fyodor Dostoevsky
1873 — Friedrich Nietzsche
1933 — Peter Wessel Zapffe
1954 — Alan Gregg
1964 — Jean Servier
1967 — Arthur Koestler
1973 — Emil Cioran
1980 — Aurelio Peccei
1987 — Jared Diamond
1989 — Warren M. Hern
1992 — Frank Forencich
1996 — Allan Kent MacDougall
1999 — Daniel R. Wilson
2000 — Claude Lévi-Strauss
2010 — John Zerzan
2010 — Thomas Ligotti
2012 — Dennis Meadows
2012 — Rutilio Sermonti
2014 — Daniel Pauly
2020 — Philippe Descola
