Thank you for sharing this interesting perspective on humanism. I still recall a conference on “Literature and the Environment” I attended some years ago, where in one discussion, I announced that I’m a “Gaian Humanist.” A guy in front of me turned around and sneered, “That’s a contradiction in terms.”
Is it? I’m not sure. As you note, the scientific community embodies humanism at its best—a willingness to transcend boundaries of gender, nationality, ethnicity, and cultural heritage and collaborate in a common quest for truth (or at least for reliable generalizations that account for all the evidence thus far in a given inquiry.) But such activity, if infused by humility (that is, the awareness that we are as utterly dependent on Gaia as every other organism), is both Gaian and humanistic at its best.