Image courtesy of the Newberry Library, Ambroise Paré, The Works of Ambrose Parey
Image courtesy of the Newberry Library, Ambroise Paré, The Works of Ambrose Parey
‘If reasoning can be reduced to arithmetic…then is mechanism capable of reasoning?’ So, George Dyson, author of the best-selling Darwin amongst the Machines (1997) began his account of how human beings and computers are evolving into a ‘symbiotic relationship’, which, he argued, is ‘unprecedented’ in human history.
But is it? In this lecture, Jonathan Sawday traces the pre-history of the relationship between humans and their artificial devices in seventeenth-century London. In the years after the restoration of Charles II in 1660, London was a city dedicated to mechanism. It was also the setting for a startling series of enquiries into the possibility of manufacturing what would come to be known as ‘the second Adam:’ a creature formed not by God, but by human reason. Pre-dating the creation of Mary Shelley’s monster by 150 years, the philosophers of mechanism – Hobbes, Leibniz, Hooke Boyle, and their contemporaries – debated how such a device might be fabricated. And their earnest enquiries would also come to entrance (and appal) writers and poets such as the notorious ‘obscene’ poet, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, and his contemporary apologist for the failed political revolution of seventeenth-century England, John Milton.
Jonathan Sawday is professor of English Studies at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland. He is the author of The Body Emblazoned (1995) and co-editor of Literature and the English Civil War (1990), and of The Renaissance Computer (2000). As well as writing many articles and essays on Renaissance literature and culture, in the UK he broadcasts regularly on the BBC. This lecture introduces some of the ideas that he traces in his new book, Engines of the Imagination: Renaissance Culture and the Rise of the Machine (New York and London Routledge, 2007).
This lecture will be sponsored by the Newberry Library's Center for Renaissance Studies.
While there is no fee to attend the Lecture with Jonathtan Sawday, participants should register in advance. To register to attend this lecture, please call the Center for Renaissance studies at 312.255.3514, or send an e-mail to renaissance@newberry.org.
Funds may be available for graduate students and faculty of Consortium institutions to travel to the Lecture with Joanathan Sawday. If you have any questions, please contact the Center for Renaissance Studies.