Genesis Redux: Essays in the History and Philosophy of Artificial Life

By: Jessica Riskin

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Synopsis: 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.

Book Quality:: Publisher Quality
Book Size:: 336 Pages
ISBN-13:: 9780226720838
Related ISBNs:: 9780226720807, 9780226720814
Publisher:: University of Chicago Press
Date of Addition:: 12/27/20
Copyrighted By:: N/A
Adult content:: No
Language:: English
Has Image Descriptions:: No
Categories:: Nonfiction, Science, Computers and Internet, Health, Mind and Body, Philosophy
Submitted By:: Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:: This is a copyrighted book.
Edited by:: Jessica Riskin