machine (n.)
1540s, "structure of any kind," from Middle French machine "device, contrivance,"
contrive: to form or create in an artistic or ingenious manner
According to these definitions a machine is something that humans create.
We understand what we create. When trying to understand complex things, we form metaphors based on our actual understanding.
Whichever is the most advanced thinking of the age is used at a metaphor to describe life and nature. When it was steam, we used popularly understood concepts of steam engines to describe life. When it was electricity, we used electrical metaphors. Now that it is computers, we use those concepts.
We are also very overconfident regarding how well we understand and control the world. Having achieved smashing success in some areas, we then think we have total control. Chronological snobbery, if you will: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronological_snobbery
The danger is then, at a popular level, we take the metaphor literally and turn it around to be something reductive: "Life is no more than a machine." That is frankly not true: this is where the metaphor falls apart & it's the danger the article describes. Life is more than a steam engine, it's more than electrical circuits, and it's also not a computer.
Life may be a purely material phenomenon (i.e. no more than atoms, void, and time), but that does not mean it is "just a steam engine / computer" etc.
machine (n.) 1540s, "structure of any kind," from Middle French machine "device, contrivance,"
contrive: to form or create in an artistic or ingenious manner
According to these definitions a machine is something that humans create.
We understand what we create. When trying to understand complex things, we form metaphors based on our actual understanding.
Whichever is the most advanced thinking of the age is used at a metaphor to describe life and nature. When it was steam, we used popularly understood concepts of steam engines to describe life. When it was electricity, we used electrical metaphors. Now that it is computers, we use those concepts.
We are also very overconfident regarding how well we understand and control the world. Having achieved smashing success in some areas, we then think we have total control. Chronological snobbery, if you will: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronological_snobbery
The danger is then, at a popular level, we take the metaphor literally and turn it around to be something reductive: "Life is no more than a machine." That is frankly not true: this is where the metaphor falls apart & it's the danger the article describes. Life is more than a steam engine, it's more than electrical circuits, and it's also not a computer.
Life may be a purely material phenomenon (i.e. no more than atoms, void, and time), but that does not mean it is "just a steam engine / computer" etc.