A new history of human intelligence that argues that humans know themselves by knowing their machines.
We imagine that we are both in control of and controlled by our bodies—autonomous and yet automatic. This entanglement, according to David W. Bates, emerged in the seventeenth century when humans first built and compared themselves with machines. Reading varied thinkers from Descartes to Kant to Turing, Bates reveals how time and time again technological developments offered new ways to imagine how the body’s automaticity worked alongside the mind’s autonomy. Tracing these evolving lines of thought, An Artificial History of Natural Intelligence offers a new theorization of the human as a being that is dependent on technology and produces itself as an artificial automaton without a natural, outside origin.
"“An impressive and important book. Readers will learn much from the author’s sensitive and insightful readings of the scientific and philosophical literature . . . But that does not mean that it is only for academic readers. The topic is too important. . . . As David W. Bates shows, we cannot remove ourselves from the world of technology; it is our world. But we can try to guide its evolution to protect the things we value. This is something we all need to think about, and An Artificial History of Natural Intelligence provides essential tools for the task.”" - Times Literary Supplement
"In this book, the history of human versus artificial intelligence begins with such figures as Descartes, Leibniz, and other thinkers of the seventeenth-century who wondered if thought could be mechanized and how machines could be designed to mimic human thought. . . Then come nineteenth-century developments with Babbage, Lovelace, machines with 'memory,' and early studies of the brain when a reductionist biology enters the picture. . . . Drawing on Wittgenstein, Turing, and Leroi-Gourhan, among many others, the author discusses the 'immateriality' of thought, ideas form cybernetics, and recent interpretations of the mind-body problem." - Choice
