What does it mean to be alive and conscious: an aware, thinking creature? Using lifelike machines to discuss animation and consciousness is a major cultural preoccupation of the early twenty-first century; but few realize that this practice stretches back to the middle of the seventeenth century, and that actual lifelike machines, which peopled the landscape of late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, shaped this philosophical tradition from its inception. By the early 1630s, when René Descartes argued that animals and humans, apart from their capacity to reason, were automata, European towns and villages were positively humming with mechanical vitality, and
...MoreBook Charlene Villaseñor Black; Mari-Tere Álvarez (2019-11-01) Renaissance Futurities: Science, Art, Invention.
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