Genesis redux : essays in the history and philosophy of artificial life / edited by Jessica Riskin.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Riskin, Jessica.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Artificial life.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (408 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2007.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Since antiquity, philosophers and engineers have tried to take life's measure by reproducing it. Aiming to reenact Creation, at least in part, these experimenters have hoped to understand the links between body and spirit, matter and mind, mechanism and consciousness. Genesis Redux examines moments from this centuries-long experimental tradition: efforts to simulate life in machinery, to synthesize life out of material parts, and to understand living beings by comparison with inanimate mechanisms.Jessica Riskin collects seventeen essays from distinguished scholars i

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

List of Contributors

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

1. Introduction: The Sistine Gap

2. The Imitation of Life in Ancient Greek Philosophy

3. The Devil as Automaton: Giovanni Fontana and the Meanings of a Fifteenth-Century Machine

4. Infinite Gesture: Automata and the Emotions in Descartes and Shakespeare

5. Abstracting from the Soul: The Mechanics of Locomotion

6. The Anatomy of Artificial Life: An Eighteenth-Century Perspective

7. The Homunculus and the Mandrake: Art Aiding Nature versus Art Faking Nature

8. Sex Ratio Theory, Ancient and Modern: An Eighteenth- Century Debate about Intelligent Design and the Development of Models in Evolutionary Biology

9. The Gender of Automata in Victorian Britain

10. Techno-Humanism: Requiem for the Cyborg

11. Nanobots and Nanotubes: Two Alternative Biomimetic Paradigms of Nanotechnology

12. Creating Insight: Gestalt Theory and the Early Computer

13. Perpetual Devotion: A Sixteenth-Century Machine That Prays

14. Motions and Passions: Music-Playing Women Automata and the Culture of Affect in Late Eighteenth-Century Germany

15. An Archaeology of Artificial Life, Underwater

16. Booting Up Baby

17. Body Language: Lessons from the Near-Human

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786612537486

9781282537484

1282537482

9780226720838

0226720837

OCLC:

593240120