Gods and Robots. Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology

196 Chapter 9 After the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC, Rome was in turmoil. Marc Antony delivered the dramatic funeral ...

between myth and history 197 out of sight. Similar deus ex machina technology was used on the stage in classical Greek theatrica ...

198 Chapter 9 crucial to our understanding of artificial life and automata in antiquity, Callixenus’s works have vanished. But p ...

between myth and history 199 (estimated to have been about 3 miles long), the automaton mechanism, as modern engineers agree, mu ...

200 Chapter 9 dilute it with water (chapter 7). That self- moving mechanical woman of the third century BC has been hailed as th ...

between myth and history 201 string to activate a steadily descending lead weight in a sand clepsydra (a mechanism based on liqu ...

Fig. 9.4. Replica of the automated Theater of Heron of Alexandria, based on Philo’s de- signs. Top, the theater doors open to re ...

between myth and history 203 Empress Wu sought to emulate and surpass the veneration of Buddha’s relics in India by King Asoka, ...

204 Chapter 9 and distribute them among tens of thousands of shrines throughout the realm. King Asoka (304– 232 BC) ruled the po ...

between myth and history 205 on a rich store of ‘legends’ about Asoka,” a “large variety” of much older oral traditions and lost ...

206 Chapter 9 control the “Roman” robots. Emperor Asoka now commands a large robot army himself. In some versions, the whirling ...

between myth and history 207 and mutual influence in philosophy and art intensified after Alexander the Great’s campaigns in wha ...

208 Chapter 9 incense had been created by the engineers Xie Fei and Wei Mengbian for processions in about AD 340. A sixth- centu ...

The Arhats (Chinese Luohan), four original disciples of Buddha, were charged with defending the faith in early Indian sutras. La ...

bright line between original and replica, essence and copy. 58 Popular Japanese manga and anime ar- tistic and literary forms ar ...

between myth and history 211 When did the Buddhist tale of Asoka and the “Roman robots” first arise in India? The narrative appe ...

212 Chapter 9 machines? Were mythic narratives and scientific imagination inter- related? The AI historian and futurist George Z ...

213  EPILOGUE  AWE, DREAD, HOPE DEEP LEARNING AND ANCIENT STORIES Ancient myths articulated timeless hopes and fears about art ...

214 epilogue forebodings about divine and human manipulation of natural life, the mythical stories seem startlingly of our momen ...

awe, dread, hope 215 dreamed up by a culture that existed millennia before the advent of robots that win complex games, hold con ...