Sublime dreams of living machines : the automaton in the European imagination / Minsoo Kang.
Material type: TextPublisher: Cambridge, Massachussetts : Harvard University Press, 2011Copyright date: ©2011Description: x, 374 pages : illustrations ; 25 cmContent type:- text
- unmediated
- volume
- 0674049357
- 9780674049352
- Automaton in the European imagination
- 629.892094 22
- TJ211.15 .K36 2011
Item type | Current library | Call number | Copy number | Status | Date due | Barcode | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Book | City Campus City Campus Main Collection | 629.892094 KAN (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | 1 | Available | A515936B |
Browsing City Campus shelves, Shelving location: City Campus Main Collection Close shelf browser (Hides shelf browser)
629.892 WIS Applied robotics II / | 629.892 WOR Algorithmic foundation of robotics VIII / | 629.892015118 KHA Modeling identification & control of robots / | 629.892094 KAN Sublime dreams of living machines : the automaton in the European imagination / | 629.89251 HUG Robot programming : a guide to controlling autonomous robots / | 629.89263 COM Computational intelligence, control and computer vision in robotics and automation / | 629.89263 GUT Almost human : making robots think / |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
The power of the automaton -- Between magic and mechanics: the automaton in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance -- The man-machine in the world-machine, 1637-1748 -- From the man-machine to the automaton-man, 1748-1793 -- The uncanny automaton, 1789-1833 -- The living machines of the industrial age, 1833-1914 -- The revolt of the robots, 1914-1935.
From the dawn of European civilization to the twentieth century, the automaton--better known today as the robot--has captured the Western imagination and provided a vital lens into the nature of humanity. Historian Minsoo Kang argues that to properly understand the human-as-machine and the human-as-fundamentally-different-from-machine, we must trace the origins of these ideas and examine how they were transformed by intellectual, cultural, and artistic appearances of the automaton throughout the history of the West. Kang tracks the first appearance of the automaton in ancient myths through the medieval and Renaissance periods, marks the proliferation of the automaton as a central intellectual concept in the Scientific Revolution and the subsequent backlash during the Enlightenment, and details appearances in Romantic literature and the introduction of the living machine in the Industrial Age. He concludes with a reflection on the destructive confrontation between humanity and machinery in the modern era and the reverberations of the humanity-machinery theme today. Sublime Dreams of Living Machines is an ambitious historical exploration and, at heart, an attempt to fully elucidate the rich and varied ways we have utilized our most uncanny creations to explore essential questions about ourselves. --Book Jacket.
There are no comments on this title.