Genesis Redux

Genesis Redux PDF Author: Jessica Riskin
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226720837
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
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 in several fields. These studies offer an unexpected and far-reaching result: attempts to create artificial life have rarely been driven by an impulse to reduce life and mind to machinery. On the contrary, designers of synthetic creatures have generally assumed a role for something nonmechanical. The history of artificial life is thus also a history of theories of soul and intellect. Taking a historical approach to a modern quandary, Genesis Redux is essential reading for historians and philosophers of science and technology, scientists and engineers working in artificial life and intelligence, and anyone engaged in evaluating these world-changing projects.

Genesis Redux

Genesis Redux PDF Author: Jessica Riskin
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226720837
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 408

Get Book

Book Description
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 in several fields. These studies offer an unexpected and far-reaching result: attempts to create artificial life have rarely been driven by an impulse to reduce life and mind to machinery. On the contrary, designers of synthetic creatures have generally assumed a role for something nonmechanical. The history of artificial life is thus also a history of theories of soul and intellect. Taking a historical approach to a modern quandary, Genesis Redux is essential reading for historians and philosophers of science and technology, scientists and engineers working in artificial life and intelligence, and anyone engaged in evaluating these world-changing projects.

Genesis Redux

Genesis Redux PDF Author: Ed Rietman
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies
ISBN:
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
Genesis Redux makes cutting-edge research into biotechnology, neural networks, artificial intelligence, robotics, ecosystems, and cellular biology accessible. Contains artificial life simulation for BASIC, C, and Pascal programmers. Interactive programs on disk allow programmers to create complex, dynamic organisms on their PCs.

Genesis Redux

Genesis Redux PDF Author: Edward Rietman
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780070527379
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


Embodiment and Mechanisation

Embodiment and Mechanisation PDF Author: Daniel Black
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317144880
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
Drawing on philosophical, neurological and cultural answers to the question of what constitutes a body, this book explores the interaction between mechanistic beliefs about human bodies and the successive technologies that have established and illustrated these beliefs. At the same time, it draws upon newer perspectives on technology and embodied human thought in order to highlight the limitations and inadequacies of such beliefs and suggest alternative perspectives. In so doing, it provides a position from which widely held assumptions about our relationship with technology can be understood and questioned, by both showing how these presuppositions have emerged and developed, and examining the extent to which they are dependent upon our grasp of specific technologies. Illustrated with examples from the Renaissance and Enlightenment periods, as well as the industrial age and the recent eras of informatics, gene science and nanotechnology, Embodiment and Mechanisation highlights the ways in which technological changes have led to shifts in the definition of machine and body, investigating their shared underlying belief that all matter can be reduced to a common substance. From clockwork and cadavers to engines and energy, this volume reveals our long-standing fascination with and enduring commitment to the idea that bodies are machines and that machines are in some sense bodies. As such, it will appeal to scholars across the humanities and social sciences with interests in the sociology of science and technology, embodiment, cultural studies and the history of ideas.

Re: The Ash Lad

Re: The Ash Lad PDF Author:
Publisher: noemata.net
ISBN: 8292860002
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 11285

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Book Description


Neotheology

Neotheology PDF Author: Immanuel Goldstein
Publisher: Wheatmark, Inc.
ISBN: 1587363488
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 150

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Book Description
The opening sentence of the Old Testament-"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth"-has actually established a mind-boggling enigma for all who would be attracted to the monotheistic proposition of creation. To create a universe with a beginning, God, who is perforce infinite and eternal, would have divided his own existence into two distinct epochs as a result. He would have had to pre-stand forever behind the act before having accomplished the feat! How is this possible? The puzzle would appear beyond the logical, finite mind to explain. Neotheology was designed to address this enigma from a secular perspective and propose a hypothetical solution to the question. Moreover, if an answer to the query is possible to decipher, then it should lead to a confrontation with the grand, underlying conundrum: given the nature of the physical cosmos, which appears to obliterate all of its created forms, why was an act of physical creation undertaken at all?

Programmable Planet

Programmable Planet PDF Author: Ted Anton
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231555849
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 446

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Book Description
A new science is reengineering the fabric of life. Synthetic biology offers bold new ways of manufacturing medicines, clothing, foods, fragrances, and fuels, often using microbe fermentation, much like brewing beer. The technology can help confront climate change, break down industrial pollutants, and fight novel viruses. Today, researchers are manipulating life forms and automating evolution to create vegetarian “meat,” renewable construction materials, and cancer treatments. In the process, they are changing our concept of what life science can achieve. Is this a new industrial and information revolution—or dangerous tinkering that could unleash unintended consequences? Programmable Planet is a grand tour through the world of synthetic biology, telling the stories of the colorful visionaries whose ideas are shaping discoveries. Ted Anton explores the field from its beginning in fighting malaria in Africa to the COVID vaccines and beyond. Covering medical and agricultural triumphs and blunders, he examines successes in energy production, plant gene editing, and chemical manufacturing, as well as the most controversial attempts at human gene enhancement. This book reports from the front lines of research, showing policy makers’ struggle to stay abreast of the technologies they aim to regulate. Even-handed, lively, and informative, Programmable Planet gives a glimpse of the promise and problems of a new biology-based industry.

Victorian Automata

Victorian Automata PDF Author: Suzy Anger
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 100911848X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
Speaking to today's fascinations and anxieties surrounding artificial intelligence, this multidisciplinary collection is the first to examine the widespread Victorian interest in human and mechanical automata. This title is part of the Flip it Open programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

Goethe Yearbook 23

Goethe Yearbook 23 PDF Author: Adrian Daub
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1571139575
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
Cutting-edge scholarly articles on diverse aspects of Goethe and the Goethezeit, featuring in this volume a special section on Goethe and visual culture.

A Beginner's Guide to America

A Beginner's Guide to America PDF Author: Roya Hakakian
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0525565922
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
A stirring, witty, and poignant glimpse into the bewildering American immigrant experience from someone who has lived it. Hakakian's "love letter to the nation that took her in [is also] a timely reminder of what millions of human beings endure when they uproot their lives to become Americans by choice" (The Boston Globe). Into the maelstrom of unprecedented contemporary debates about immigrants in the United States, this perfectly timed book gives us a portrait of what the new immigrant experience in America is really like. Written as a "guide" for the newly arrived, and providing "practical information and advice," Roya Hakakian, an immigrant herself, reveals what those who settle here love about the country, what they miss about their homes, the cruelty of some Americans, and the unceasing generosity of others. She captures the texture of life in a new place in all its complexity, laying bare both its beauty and its darkness as she discusses race, sex, love, death, consumerism, and what it is like to be from a country that is in America's crosshairs. Her tenderly perceptive and surprisingly humorous account invites us to see ourselves as we appear to others, making it possible for us to rediscover our many American gifts through the perspective of the outsider. In shattering myths and embracing painful contradictions that are unique to this place, A Beginner's Guide to America is Hakakian's candid love letter to America.