Bodies/Machines - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1859736955 ISBN 13: 9781859736951

Publisher: Berg Publishers, 2002

Synopsis

It is hard to believe that the pursuit of artificial intelligence is not a phenomenon of the twentieth century. For over three hundred years, the boundaries between bodies and machines the natural and the artificial, the animate and the inanimate have been passionately explored. These explorations, beginning in the seventeenth and eighteenth and increasing during the nineteenth century, have been all but forgotten, lost beneath the commotion of the modern day world. This book retrieves these lost histories, giving voice to the hopes, dreams, and fears of philosophers, medical practitioners, engineers, craftsmen and artisans who have all been fascinated by the interface between bodies and machines. The journey back in time unfolds with the mysterious advent of mechanical philosophies, which conceptualized the body and the surrounding world largely in terms of mechanistic interactions. These theories develop in intriguing directions and fuel experiments in such areas as material production and social punishment, spiritualism and mental health. From reanimating dead bodies with electricity, which led to the introduction of the electric chair, through to the use of machines to render hysterics and the insane fit for reintroduction into society, this book conveys the dark truths behind our relationship with machines. This book is not only an exceptional contribution to the history of technology but also to contemporary debates about humans and machines.

About this title

About the Author:

Iwan Rhys Morus Lecturer/Wellcome Award Holder,Queen's University, Belfast

Review:

'Where Bodies/Machines succeeds is in its efforts to complicate common misconceptions as to the centrality and scope of the mechanistic view of the human body as it has evolved over the past three centuries.'John Baily, Department of English, University of Melbourne

About this edition

• Publisher: Berg Publishers
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 1859736955
• ISBN 13: 9781859736951
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256
• Editor: Morus Iwan Rhys