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An Artificial History of Natural Intelligence

Thinking with Machines from Descartes to the Digital Age
Brief Description
A new history of human intelligence that argues that humans know themselves by knowing their machines. We imagine that we are both in control of and controlled by our bodies—autonomous and yet automatic. This entanglement, according to David W. Bates, emerged in the seventeenth century when... Read More
Format: Hardback
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A new history of human intelligence that argues that humans know themselves by knowing their machines.

We imagine that we are both in control of and controlled by our bodies—autonomous and yet automatic. This entanglement, according to David W. Bates, emerged in the seventeenth century when humans first built and compared themselves with machines. Reading varied thinkers from Descartes to Kant to Turing, Bates reveals how time and time again technological developments offered new ways to imagine how the body's automaticity worked alongside the mind's autonomy.

Tracing these evolving lines of thought, An Artificial History of Natural Intelligence offers a new theorisation of the human as a being that is dependent on technology and produces itself as an artificial automaton without a natural, outside origin.

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780226832104

Publisher: The University of Chicago Press

Format: Hardback

Date Published: 02 April 2024

Country: United States

Imprint: University of Chicago Press

Illustration: 15 halftones

Audience: Professional and scholarly

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 30.0mm

Width: 152.0mm

Height: 229.0mm

Weight: 708g

Pages: 408

About the Author

David W. Bates is professor of rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of three books, including Enlightenment Aberrations: Error and Revolution in France.

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  • An Artificial History of Natural Intelligence
    A new history of human intelligence that argues that humans know themselves by knowing their machines. We imagine that we are both in control of and controlled by our bodies—autonomous and yet automatic. This entanglement, according to David W. Bates, emerged in the seventeenth century when humans first built and compared themselves with machines. Reading varied thinkers from Descartes to...
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