Genesis Redux

(edited by Jessica Riskin)

ISBN 10: 0226720810 / ISBN 13: 9780226720814

Published by University of Chicago Press, 2007

About this Item

Since antiquity, philosophers and engineers have tried to take life's measure by reproducing it. This title collects seventeen essays from distinguished scholars in several fields. It is intended for historians and philosophers of science and technology, scientists and engineers working in artificial life and intelligence, and others. Num Pages: 336 pages, 57 halftones, 10 line drawings. BIC Classification: PDX; TBX; UYQ. Category: (P) Professional & Vocational. Dimension: 228 x 153 x 23. Weight in Grams: 554. . 2007. Illustrated. paperback. . . . . Books ship from the US and Ireland.

Seller Inventory # V9780226720814

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Genesis Redux
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication Date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226720810
• ISBN 13: 9780226720814
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Since antiquity, philosophers and engineers have tried to take life’s measure by reproducing it. Aiming to reenact Creation, at least in part, these experimenters have hoped to understand the links between body and spirit, matter and mind, mechanism and consciousness. Genesis Redux examines moments from this centuries-long experimental tradition: efforts to simulate life in machinery, to synthesize life out of material parts, and to understand living beings by comparison with inanimate mechanisms.

Jessica Riskin collects seventeen essays from distinguished scholars in several fields. These studies offer an unexpected and far-reaching result: attempts to create artificial life have rarely been driven by an impulse to reduce life and mind to machinery.  On the contrary, designers of synthetic creatures have generally assumed a role for something nonmechanical. The history of artificial life is thus also a history of theories of soul and intellect.

Taking a historical approach to a modern quandary, Genesis Redux is essential reading for historians and philosophers of science and technology, scientists and engineers working in artificial life and intelligence, and anyone engaged in evaluating these world-changing projects.

About the Author

Jessica Riskin is Professor of History at Stanford University and author of Science in the Age of Sensibility: The Sentimental Empiricists of the French Enlightenment, also published by the University of Chicago Press, and winner of the American Historical Association's J. Russell Major Prize.

Riskin received her Ph.D from the University of California, Berkeley.