Artificiality

“ Perhaps this artificiality is in turn mainly due to the survival of political beliefs and machinery from a period when science and technology were so immature as not to permit of a definite technique for handling definite social situations and meeting specific social needs. ”

“ The first has been designated as the natural, and the other the artificial system; and, without entering into a critical disquisition on these definitions, it will be sufficient to observe, that by the Artificial System we bend nature to conform to certain arbitrary principles, which we lay down and to which we insist all her productions known and unknown will conform; while in the Natural method, we endeavour by tracing her modifications, to adapt our system to that which appears to regulate her operations. ”

“ You will find it to be nothing but one great machine, subdivided into an infinite number of lesser machines, which again admit of subdivisions to a degree beyond what human senses and faculties can trace and explain. All these various machines, and even their most minute parts, are adjusted to each other with an accuracy which ravishes into admiration all men who have ever contemplated them. The curious adapting of means to ends, throughout all nature, resembles exactly, though it much exceeds, the productions of human contrivance; of human designs, thought, wisdom, and intelligence. ”

“ Some few of these remaining two millions devoted themselves to the adventure of discovery and exploration of places unseen, of other worlds and other planets. But fewer still devoted themselves to the highest adventure, the unseen places of the mind. Machines—with their irrefutable logic, their cold preciseness of figures, their tireless, utterly exact observation, their absolute knowledge of mathematics—they could elaborate any idea, however simple its beginning, and reach the conclusion. ”

“ Before studying the possible effects upon Man of an artificial environment, consciously and deliberately created by him with the definite purpose of attaining the maximum of human perfection and happiness, we must be clear as to the actual effects upon man of the artificial environment in which he finds himself. And first we must give its full value to the fact that the environment in which we live is in great part artificial, that it is the product not of Nature only, but also of Art. ”

“ Brain: "My course of action is prescribed by that state of the world's affairs at this present time; it is quite clear and obvious: In the face of the manifest human inadequacy to manage the world's affairs my first objective must be to develop my motoric organs to a point where I can bring all the essential production machinery under my control. My second objective must be to achieve auto-procreation through the full automatization of all fabrication processes which are essential to my existence. ”

“ Human Artificials 3. Human Artificials. We have now to consider a class of entities which, though it contains but few individuals, has acquired from its intimate connection with one of the great movements of modern times an importance entirely out of proportion to its numbers. It seems doubtful whether it should appear under the first or third of our main divisions; but, though certainly human, it is so far removed from the course of ordinary evolution, so entirely the product of a will outside of its own, that it perhaps falls most naturally into place among the artificial beings. ”

“ Nature must indeed be a machine if the thinker's knowledge demands uniformity or law, but an instrument of something other than her mechanical self, in short, not a merely revolving, but an evolving, always productive machine, if the knowledge itself is never final. ”

“ Science and technology play into one another's hands. The processes of nature with which science deals and which technology turns to account, the sequence of changes in the external world, animate and [Pg 18] inanimate, run in terms of brute causation, as do the theories of science. These processes take no thought of human expediency or inexpediency. To make use of them they must be taken as they are, opaque and unsympathetic. Technology, therefore, has come to proceed on an interpretation of these phenomena in mechanical terms, not in terms of imputed personality nor even of workmanship. ”

“ If we begin with man and assume intelligence to be the cause of design,—of the purposeful, the self-preserving,—in his action, we shall be likely to infer intelligence as the cause of self-preserving function in all animals, and we shall find great difficulty in drawing any distinct line between intelligence and automatism. If we are not students of inorganic nature, the evolution to be found also in it, up to the attainment [Pg 309] of preservative forms of motion, may escape our observation, preoccupation with man and the self- or rather human-interested bias of observation blinding us to it ”

“ When a machine is taken to pieces, or falls into decay, what becomes of the forces previously manifested by it? Have they gone off, in some associated way, to manifest themselves elsewhere in manufacturing carpets, impelling railroad-trains, or printing newspapers as determined by the original construction of the machine which they have deserted? This question belongs as legitimately to science as the one discussed in the article previously referred to; for the scientist has no knowledge of mind apart from the brain which manifests it. ”

“ Let this be applied to some new mechanical structure produced by the intellect and hand of man. It is a result or product of human interposition. When we describe this human product as an invention, do we refrain from translating words into thoughts because we can not describe the process of invention? or, in other words, because we can not assign the mode in which the mind of the inventor reached his conception, are we to conclude that he did not attain to the conception which is plainly embodied in the machine that stands before our eyes? ”

“ But because machinery, or all mechanical contrivance, is thus capable of resolution into a few elementary forms, it is not to be inferred that science, or art, or both together, though pressed with the utmost force of human genius, and cultivated by the last degree of human assiduity, will ever exhaust the combinations into which these elementary forms may be thrown. An indefinite, though not an infinite, reach of invention may be expected; but indefinite, also, if not infinite, are the possible combinations of elementary principles. ”

“ Machines had imagination of the ideal sort. They had the ability to construct a necessary future result from a present fact. But Man had imagination of a different kind, theirs was the illogical, brilliant imagination that sees the future result vaguely, without knowing the why, nor the how, and imagination that outstrips the machine in its preciseness. Man might reach the conclusion more swiftly, but the machine always reached the conclusion eventually, and it was always the correct conclusion. By leaps and bounds man advanced. ”

“ If by artificial is meant unnatural, we cannot so consider it; but hold, on the contrary, that the whole multiform scheme of the civilized state is not only in accordance with our nature, but an essential condition to the proper developement of the human being. ”

“ Our stage, remote in many ways from the wellspring (Ursprung) , consists of an appropriated environment within which the effort is to provide a pragmatic framework for high efficiency. Logic, rhetoric, heuristics, and dialectics interact inside this framework. In other words, human evolution goes from sensorial anchoring in the natural world to an artificial (human crafted) world superimposed on the concrete reality-and eventually extended into artificial life, one from among the most recently established fields of scientific inquiry. ”

“ If the processes of thought by which the existing mechanisms have been built up are known, it must be possible to continue the use of these processes for the same purpose;—they must furnish the means for arriving at new mechanisms—must, that is to say, take up the position hitherto assigned to invention. I hope not to fall under the suspicion of saying anything so absurd as that the new method will make it possible for the commonplace head to become oracularly inventive like that of the genius. ”

“ When we know this world as alien to us, then its mechanical aspect takes prominence in our mind; and then we set up our machines and our methods to deal with it and make as much profit as our knowledge of its mechanism allows us to do. This view of things does not play us false, for the machine has its place in this world. ”

“ This important difference between artificial and natural selection deserves especial consideration. For we learn by it to understand how arrangements serving a purpose can be produced by mechanical causes acting without an object, as well as by causes acting for an object. ”

“ Each individual has, throughout the whole course of historical development, fortified his existence by all the means at his command, with property, with inherited station, by putting forth all his powers of body or of mind, inherited and personal. Artificial selection has a definite end in view: it aims at transforming for a special purpose that which is offered by nature, and then maintaining the new form for the same end. ”

“ It conduces to this outcome in more than one way. This modern technology is a technology of mechanical process; it looks to and takes care of a sequence of mechanical action, rather than to the conditions of its inception or the sequel of its conclusion. A mind imbued with the logic of this machine process does not by habitual proclivity or with incisive effect attend to these alien matters that have no meaning within the horizon of that logic. The creative augmentation of material objects is a matter lying without the scope of the machine’s logic. ”

“ Machines—man was the product of life, the best product of life, but he was afflicted with life's infirmities. Man built the machine—and evolution had probably reached the final stage. But truly, it has not, for the machine can evolve, change far more swiftly than life. ”

“ But this merely shows that the purpose exhibited in the machine’s construction originated outside the machine itself, and that the originator had not the power to carry out his purpose with complete consistency. It does not in the least detract from the essentially teleological and purposive character of the machine quà machine.
This brings us to our second point. Just as no true machine is purposeless, so no true machine is self-acting. Not only are all machines in the end the product of designing intelligence, but all machines are dependent upon external purposive intelligence for control. ”

“ We shall be obliged on other days to have recourse to the processes of a good gymnastics, mere artificial processes, but which have the advantage of being applicable everywhere, and of producing, in the hands of experienced masters, successful results—an artificial remedy in an artificial medium, if we will call it so, and if we can define precisely the boundary between the natural and the artificial. ”

“ If human ingenuity can construct a machine which shall exhibit the introduction of new laws, after the old ones had been established by an induction of a hundred million of examples, and these new ones be succeeded by others, how much easier for the infinite God to construct the vast and more complicated machine of the universe, so that new laws, or modifications of the old ones, shall be introduced at various periods of its history, to meet every exigency! ”

“ Those constructions that at other times are the marvel of the ignorant crowd deserve the admiration of the reflecting:—Something of the power that has organized matter seems to have passed into combinations in which nature is imitated or surpassed. Our machines, so varied in form and in function, are the representatives of a new kingdom intermediate between senseless and animate forms, having the passivity of the former and the activity of the latter, and exploiting everything for our sake. ”

“ The efficacy of simple forces such as these can be increased in infinite diversity by the “construction of the apparatus” in which they operate. Life is the function of a quite unique, marvellously complex, inimitable combination of machines. If these be given, the most complex processes fulfil themselves of necessity and without the intervention of special vital forces. But how can they be “given”? The sole analogy to be found is the making of real machines, artificial products as distinguished from fortuitous products. They cannot be made without the influence and activity of intelligence. ”

“ Every real machine is, to begin with, the incarnation of the internal purpose of a sentient being. It is something which has been fashioned for the express object of attaining a certain result, and the more perfect its structure the greater is the impossibility of understanding the principle of construction without comprehension of the result it is devised to effect. Why the various parts have precisely the shape, size, strength, and other qualities they have, you can only tell when you know what is the work the maker of the machine intended it to do. ”

“ Cybernetics, biogenetics, computers, and research in artificial intelligence and artificial life, as well as political, social, aesthetic, or religious concepts are examples of domains where such sign systems have been devised. ”

“ And the machinery itself was guided, handled, operated—even, in some instances, constructed—by other, more intricate machines. They were fashioned in pseudo-human form—thinking, logically acting, independently acting mechanisms: the Robots. All but human, they were—a new race. Inferior to humans, yet similar. ”