Okay, 2 comments and 3 upvotes is good enough for a quick comment but not a discussion post.

By the "hard core of transhumanism" I mean the belief that humans could use reason to obtain knowledge of the natural world that we can use in order to develop technologies that will allow us to cure sickness, eliminate the need to labor, and extend our lifespans to greater-than-human levels and that we should do these things.

During the Islamic Golden Age, many thinkers combined Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism with knowledge from indigenous craft traditions into a form of alchemy that was refined using logic and laboratory experimentation (Jābir ibn Hayyān is probably the most famous of these thinkers). These philosophers and technologists believed that their theoretical system would allow them to perform transmutation of matter (turn one element into another) unlocking the ability to create almost any "machine" or medicine imaginable. This was thought to allow them to create al ixir (elixir) of Al Khidr fame which, in principle, could extend human life indefinitely and cure any kind of disease. Also of great interest was the attainment of takwin, which is artificial, laboratory-created "life" (even including the intelligent kind). It was hoped (by some) that these artificial creations (called a homunculus by Latin speakers and analogous to the Jewish golem) could do the work of humans the way angels do Allah's work. Not only could these AIs do our work for us, they could continue our scientific enterprise. According to William Newman, these AIs or robots "...of the pseudo-Plato and Jabir traditions could not only talk - it could reveal the secrets of nature." Sound familiar?