[Sci-tech-public] Colloquium - October 26th with Jessica Riskin

[Bianca Singletary]

 "The Subway Series"

A Joint Colloquium Between Harvard History of Science and MIT Program in
Science, Technology, and Society

 

The Adventures of Mr. Machine, with Morals

Jessica Riskin, Stanford University 

 

Abstract:

 

The Enlightenment man-machine expressed a moral impulse: to tame the
rational self unleashed by Descartes and his contemporaries.  Reacting
against the disembodiment of the human self, Enlightenment materialists
snatched the soul from the heavens and drove it into the earth, making it a
"soul of mud."  Thrusting the arrogant human "I" into the material continuum
of nature, the man-machine opened a conversation about just where and how it
fitted in.  Embarking on this conversation, Julien Offray de La Mettrie,
author of the definitive man-machine, produced some of the first glimmers of
a modern (but deeply contingent, non-progressive) theory of evolution. 


 

 

Monday, October 26, 2009

4pm

Located at MIT Building E51-095

 

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