The Fourth Discontinuity: The Co-Evolution of Humans and Machines [Paperback]

Professor Bruce Mazlish (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 30, 1995

Discusses the relationship between humans and machines, pondering the implications of humans becoming more mechanical and of computer robots being programmed to think. He describes early Greek and Chinese automatons and discusses ideas of previous centuries and of individuals on this subject.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In Mazlish's heady scenario, combots (computerized robots), enjoying a symbiotic relation with humans, may transmogrify into a new species, while human beings, growing ever more mechanical in body and mind, also turn into "something like a new species . . . Homo comboticus ," who will replace "precomputer Man." People, asserts this MIT history professor, differ from machines only to a degree; the "fourth discontinuity"--our mental separation from the machines we create--will soon end, he predicts. This provocative study first assesses the shocks to the human ego administered by Copernicus, Darwin and Freud, who refuted our species' presumed discontinuities with the universe, with the animal kingdom and with our own subconscious minds. Ranging widely from Leonardo's inventions to genetic engineering, with excursions into ancient automata, Charles Babbage's prototype computers, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Samuel Butler's Erewhon , Mazlish ponders our ambivalent relationship to technology. Illustrated.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews

An often interesting and provocative--though sometimes obvious and, finally, unconvincing--historical exploration of humanity's relationship to machines. Mazlish (History/MIT; The Meaning of Karl Marx, 1984, etc.) says that the three great shocks to our conception of ourselves- -with each shock forcing us to relinquish another claim to uniqueness--have been the Copernican Revolution, removing Earth from its centrality; Darwin's placement of humanity within the animal kingdom; and Freud's excavation of the unconscious. Now, claims the author, ``we are now coming to realize that humans are not as privileged in regard to machines as has been unthinkingly assumed''--and thus the ``fourth discontinuity,'' between ourselves and machines, is eliminated. That people and machines have coevolved, each shaping the other, is demonstrable; that they are of the same essential nature is an idea that seems, at least as treated here, destined to remain a metaphor. To support his claim, Mazlish surveys an eclectic intellectual history, including a chronicle of automata, from the Jewish golem to Vaucanson's duck (once the talk of 18th-century Paris, said to have ``drank, ate, digested, cackled and swam'') to Blade Runner; the intellectual response to the Industrial Revolution; the work of Linnaeus and Darwin; the research of Freud and Pavlov, revealing mechanistic aspects of behavior; Babbage's Difference Engine, turning the power of machines to intellectual tasks, as well as Samuel Butler's Erewhon, which depicted machines in revolt; and the two revolutions of our own age--the coming of computers and of biogenetic technology. Too flat and meandering to germinate something as vital as a reassessment of the humanity/machine symbiosis. (For a more expansive and engaging treatment of a similar theme, see Gregory Stock's Metaman, reviewed below.) (Twelve illustrations) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 282 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (August 30, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300065124
• ISBN-13: 978-0300065121
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,094,128 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The human-machine relationship: history of an idea, September 13, 2003

By 

Govindan Nair (Vienna, VA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Fourth Discontinuity: The Co-Evolution of Humans and Machines (Paperback)

Are humans fundamentally different from machines? Can machines ever be human like? I read this book after watching the movie Artifical Intelligence starring Robin Williams as the automaton who become increasingly human. The movie reminded me that the ideas MIT history professor Bruce Mazlish discusses in this book will remain with us, if only in artistic imagination, even if you, like me, do not find his central thesis convincing. Roughly, Mazlish sees his ideas coming on the heels of three other breaks in intellectual dichotomies in histories - between the cosmos and the Earth through the Copernican revolution, between humans and the rest of the animal kindom, through the Darwinian revolution, and between the conscious and the sub-conscious through the Freudian revoltuion. Mazlish's contention is that there is no apparent limit to the expansion of intelligence of machines, to the point where he is willing to concede that computers will someday be endowed with emotions. Many might find these propositions outlandish. Even if you do, it should not detract you from the bulk of the book which is a good history of inventions and ideas, from Ancients Greeks and Chinese through the Renaissance and modern period, surrounding the capabilities of automatons or robots, and how these were also reflected in literature (for example, Frankenstein) and philosophy. This history of a set of ideas about the relationship between humans and the machines they create - but not necessarily the interpretation which Mazlish then gives them - is what this book should be valued for.