Garden of MachinesGarden of Machines

Georges Canguilhem, 1952

Biologist, science philosopher and teacher of Michel Foucault in this brilliant text traces the history of interplay between mechanic metaphors to understand organisms and biological metaphors by which the workings of machines was understood.

Bruno Latour, 1999

Latour, one of the most original contemporary thinkers in this field, Latour leaves behind both the concept of nature as an objective entity that obeys its own laws and scientists who claim a privileged authority to represent the facts of this external realm and to interpret their implications for our lives. He invites us instead to imagine ourselves as living in a world in which facts and values, reality and morality, science and politics, and causal necessity and freedom are seen not as dichotomous but as inseparable aspects of the same things, processes, choices and actions.

Samuel Butler, 1863

Already in 1863, four years after Darwin published The Origin of Species, Samuel Butler formulates join this article that machines could be seen as a sort go mechanical life that could, through evolutionary selection, ultimately replace humankind as dominant species.

George Dyson, 1997

In this still topical book from 1997, science historian George Dyson explores the recent history and the front line of the Darwinian evolution of technology. Software and worldwide networks together create an evolutionary theatre in which the borders between the technological and the natural become increasingly hazy. This text is a documentation of a presentation by Dyson on his book.

Timothy Morton, 2010

Morton argues that all forms of life (and on-life) are connected in a vast, entangling mesh. This interconnectedness penetrates all dimensions of life. No being, construct, or object can exist independently from the ecological entanglement, Morton contends, nor does "Nature" exist as an entity separate from the uglier or more synthetic elements of life. Realizing this interconnectedness is what Morton calls the ecological thought.