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Sublime Dreams of Living Machines : The Automaton in the European Imagination / Minsoo Kang.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2011]Copyright date: 2011Description: 1 online resource (386 p.)Content type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9780674059412
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 629.8/92094
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources:
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Introduction -- 1 The Power of the Automaton -- 2 Between Magic and Mechanics: The Automaton in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance -- 3 The Man-machine in the World-machine, 1637–1748 -- 4 From the Man-machine to the Automaton-man, 1748–1793 -- 5 The Uncanny Automaton, 1789–1833 -- 6 The Living Machines of the Industrial Age, 1833–1914 -- 7 The Revolt of the Robots, 1914–1935 -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Acknowledgments -- Index
Summary: Kang’s central contention is that the automaton, a machine that can move by itself (better known today as the robot), is one of the essential ideas with which people in the West have pondered the very nature of humanity itself. In Kang’s telling, automata are mirrors of the ideas, fears, and anxieties of a given era, in that attitudes towards the machines have always been indicative of a moment’s zeitgeist. The book is historically sweeping, but not comprehensive; the focus is on what Kang takes to be key changes in the representations of and responses to automata. His main interest is on how Europeans in different periods of the past thought about the very notion of a self-moving machine that acted as if it were alive and how they used it for various symbolic and intellectual purposes.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9780674059412

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Introduction -- 1 The Power of the Automaton -- 2 Between Magic and Mechanics: The Automaton in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance -- 3 The Man-machine in the World-machine, 1637–1748 -- 4 From the Man-machine to the Automaton-man, 1748–1793 -- 5 The Uncanny Automaton, 1789–1833 -- 6 The Living Machines of the Industrial Age, 1833–1914 -- 7 The Revolt of the Robots, 1914–1935 -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Acknowledgments -- Index

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

Kang’s central contention is that the automaton, a machine that can move by itself (better known today as the robot), is one of the essential ideas with which people in the West have pondered the very nature of humanity itself. In Kang’s telling, automata are mirrors of the ideas, fears, and anxieties of a given era, in that attitudes towards the machines have always been indicative of a moment’s zeitgeist. The book is historically sweeping, but not comprehensive; the focus is on what Kang takes to be key changes in the representations of and responses to automata. His main interest is on how Europeans in different periods of the past thought about the very notion of a self-moving machine that acted as if it were alive and how they used it for various symbolic and intellectual purposes.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 26. Aug 2024)