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Contents 1 Robots - Evolution and Etymology 1.1 Etymology of the Robot 1.2 Golems – The Earthly Robot 1.3 Automatons – The Clockwork Robots 1.4 Frankenstein – Humility, Hubris, and the Organic Robot 1.5 Robots – The History of the Future 1.6 References

[edit] Robots - Evolution and Etymology

[edit] Etymology of the Robot

Although the various incarnations of robots (and by invoking the mythical Golem the word incantation might be more appropriate) are virtually limitless, our etymological understanding of the word comes from Czech playwright, Karel Čapek in his 1921 play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) where he first coined the term. Čapek’s creations however, were an organic blending of a “chemical synthesis to imitate the living matter known as protoplasm” (9). This is in direct opposition to the mechanistic assemblage of wires and circuit boards that constitutes our contemporary perception of the robot. Hans Moravec’s simply states that Čapek’s “universal robot was an artificial human being built to do drudge work” (93).

[edit] Golems – The Earthly Robot

While the designation of robot is certainly less than a century old, the Jewish legend of the Golem, an animated construct of clay created by Rabbi Loew in the 16th Century, was more magical than mechanical, and cogently illustrates that robots were not entirely a 20th Century obsession. The Golem was fashioned in the image of man, and in one particular instance, successfully defended the Jews of Prague. In this regard, perhaps the Golem is more of an android, and less of a clay construct as androids are an amalgam of “the Greek eidos, shape, and andros, of a man” (Chapuis 379). Nevertheless, Golems were equally as mindless as they were destructive, mainly operating as itinerant siege engines. Taking their instructions quite literally, and often at the expense of their conjurer/creator, by harnessing the vast elemental powers of the earth they were more (mere?) juggernauts rather than finely crafted tools of finesse.

[edit] Automatons – The Clockwork Robots

Automata or automatons are self-operating (and not to be confused with perpetual motion machines) “artificially made creatures” (Chapuis 10) differing from their magically invoked primitive predecessor the Golem. Automata were remarkably graceful often employing a complex array of clockwork mechanisms, such as gears and cogs to mimic natural movement and in spite of their limited ambulatory range served as the transitory vanguards between the mythic construct and the scientific robot. The Golem was a magically clumsily constructed creation, whereas automata were meticulously crafted machines representing the synergy between artistry and the mechanical sciences of the 17th and 18th century. Automata were all the rage and wealthy patrons often paid handsomely to have such precision instruments built for them. The truth is that many automata built during this epoch still work to this very day and are a testament to the artisans (and mechanics) of the day.

[edit] Frankenstein – Humility, Hubris, and the Organic Robot

In contrast Capek’s robots were “artificial life forms” (9) that could readily be “sewn up or mixed together” (10) resembling Frankenstein’s monster, who inherently keeping with the conventions of the Gothic tradition, was grafted together out of human remains collected from charnel houses and pillaged gravesites. In both texts however, these organic creations run amok and turn against their creators. With the exception of a solitary clerk and in observing the continuous polemic between hubris and science, Rossum’s robots secure the immanent destruction of humankind. The two remaining robots Primus and Helena must procreate in order to perpetuate the species. In fact, the closing lines of the last human and clerk Alquist are “Go, Adam – Go, Eve” (101) plainly mirrors Mary Shelley’s (and by extension the monster’s) Biblical allusion of Adam, when Milton’s Paradise Lost is explicitly referenced by author and monster.

Similarly, the monster attacks Victor Frankenstein and kills his fiancée Elizabeth, when he denies the monster’s request to ‘craft’ a mate for him to allay his loneliness and more importantly “to save it through a restoration of the garden; that is, through the fabrication of a heterosexual mate” (Haraway). Frankenstein not only dreads the gruesome ‘ritual’ of re-creating a monster all over again, his greatest fear is that the monster and his mate will produce “a race of devils” (Shelley). Notice that the monster is more of a he, and less of an it, as his overt sexuality serves a significant function in the narrative. Unlike James Whale’s cinematic rendition, where Frankenstein’s monster is more of a caricature, more akin to a Golem, as the monster’s reasoning and verbal abilities are severely hampered – Shelley’s textual monster is without a doubt more articulate. Both Shelley and Capek underscore the dangers of transformational (and trangressive) scientific hubris (hubridity perhaps?) when knowledge not only contests but also defies the Natural. Of this very hazard, Elaine Graham posits in Post/Human Conditions that, “Creation is [both] gift and grace, guarding against the hubris of too much power, of our seeking to ‘play God’” (25).

[edit] Robots – The History of the Future

From an historical perspective, robots have been part of our collective consciousness well before Capek penned his anti-Capitalist play and by all accounts, pro-Marxist diatribe. In fact, notions of robots have been around for hundreds of years albeit in corporeal manifestations such as constructs - the previously alluded to Golem applies here - automatons and other erstwhile mechanical brood, although none bearing the robot appellation until Capek’s R.U.R. In a relatively short span of time, the ubiquity of robot became tacitly established (in this sense, Richard Dawkins might consider the robotic term a scientific as well as a linguistic meme) to signify – a mindless, mechanistic/electronic organism, or from the literal Czech translation – a slave. It is important to note that organism in this context implies a system(s) of non-human independent parts; as opposed to a ‘traditional’ human being - whatever/whoever that might be, the post-humanist might ask.

The epithet robot is essentially a pejorative term, one where ‘unnatural’ modern polymeric membranes, silicon chips, and fibre optic wiring supplant ‘naturalised’ flesh. However, the contentiousness of the ‘natural’ successor to the robot, artificial intelligence (A.I.), at least contentious to those who subscribe to a liberal humanistic epistemology, is that A.I. is slowly eroding the distinctions - one might say boundaries - between what constitutes a sentient “living” being in terms of cybernetic organisms (cyborg) and the conventional Cartesian dualistic model of mind and body. From an ontological standpoint, questions of our own being have almost become irrelevant; instead, questions of their being have not only surfaced, but without doubt, have obtained cultural dominance.

[edit] References

Čapek, Karel. R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots). London: Oxford University Press, 1951.

Chapuis, Alfred and Edmond Droz. Automata: A Historical and Technological Study. Neuchatel: Éditions du Griffon, 1958.

Graham, Elaine. “Post/Human Conditions.” Theology and Sexuality, 2004. Vol. 10, No. 2, pp 10-32.

Haraway, Donna. “A Manifesto for Cyborgs” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent Leitch. New York: W. W. Norton and Company. 1985. 2269- 2299.

Moravec, Hans. Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. 1818.