At any given point in history, it seems like humans try to explain life and consciousness by comparing it to whatever is the most complex thing we understand at the time. Descartes used to think the brain was a hydraulic pump, during the Industrial Revolution people thought of the steam engine, and today the metaphor it’s a computer. What is it that makes live things, well, alive? Riskin’s book discusses the analogies that we’ve used to explain this idea as a way to navigate the history of science, and the history of our thought about ourselves.
I am fascinated by the history of automata. This episode talks about how the King of Spain commissioned a clockmaker to make a bot to pray for him, in order to save his son. The mix of religion and technology makes for a good episode.