作者:
Jessica Riskin 出版社: University Of Chicago Press 副标题: A History of the Centuries-Long Argument Over What Makes Living Things Tick 出版年: 2016-3-10 页数: 544 定价: USD 40.00 装帧: Hardcover ISBN: 9780226302928
Today, a scientific explanation is not meant to ascribe agency to natural phenomena: we would not say a rock falls because it seeks the center of the earth. Even for living things, in the natural sciences and often in the social sciences, the same is true. A modern botanist would not say that plants pursue sunlight. This has not always been the case, nor, perhaps, was it inevit...
Today, a scientific explanation is not meant to ascribe agency to natural phenomena: we would not say a rock falls because it seeks the center of the earth. Even for living things, in the natural sciences and often in the social sciences, the same is true. A modern botanist would not say that plants pursue sunlight. This has not always been the case, nor, perhaps, was it inevitable. Since the seventeenth century, many thinkers have made agency, in various forms, central to science. The Restless Clock examines the history of this principle, banning agency, in the life sciences. It also tells the story of dissenters embracing the opposite idea: that agency is essential to nature. The story begins with the automata of early modern Europe, as models for the new science of living things, and traces questions of science and agency through Descartes, Leibniz, Lamarck, and Darwin, among many others. Mechanist science, Jessica Riskin shows, had an associated theology: the argument from design, which found evidence for a designer in the mechanisms of nature.
Rejecting such appeals to a supernatural God, the dissenters sought to naturalize agency rather than outsourcing it to a "divine engineer." Their model cast living things not as passive but as active, self-making machines. The conflict between passive- and active-mechanist approaches maintains a subterranean life in current science, shaping debates in fields such as evolutionary biology, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence. This history promises not only to inform such debates, but also our sense of the possibilities for what it means to engage in science-and even what it means to be alive.
作者简介
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Jessica Riskin is professor of history at Stanford University and author of Science in the Age of Sensibility: The Sentimental Empiricists of the French Enlightenment, also published by the University of Chicago Press.
目录
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List of Illustrations
Introduction: Huxley’s Joke, or the Problem of Agency in Nature and Science
1 Machines in the Garden
2 Descartes among the Machines
3 The Passive Telescope or the Restless Clock
4 The First Androids
· · · · · ·
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List of Illustrations
Introduction: Huxley’s Joke, or the Problem of Agency in Nature and Science
1 Machines in the Garden
2 Descartes among the Machines
3 The Passive Telescope or the Restless Clock
4 The First Androids
5 The Adventures of Mr. Machine
6 Dilemmas of a Self- Organizing Machine
7 Darwin between the Machines
8 The Mechanical Egg and the Intelligent Egg
9 Outside In
10 History Matters
（上海书评，22.10.08） 《永不停歇的时钟》的中译本副标题是“机器、生命动能与现代科学的形成”。相比之下，英文原版的副标题很是艰涩拗口：A History of the Centuries-Long Argument over What Makes Living Things Tick，“一段关于有生之物动力为何的跨越几个世纪的争论...
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5 有用 PEAR 2018-01-13 11:14:46
过誉了，argument是通过非常含糊地定义“agency”和“passivity”来实现的。在每个章节中具体涉及到关于主题的讨论都没用好好阐释具体context的agency是什么具体意思，而是用非常类似的含混论据一概而论。让人怀疑这些人物和事件的连贯性是不是仅仅建立在模糊的定义上。另外词藻又华丽，让人读得摸不着头脑。
0 有用 joyce 2022-02-14 23:25:01
excellent
2 有用 L 2021-12-24 08:23:58
总的来说想论述一个科学史观：在以机械论为象征的现代科学的开端，有一个悖论；悖论中的两股力量直到今天都在影响生命科学、人工智能的发展。这个悖论并不是宗教和科学之间的，而是关于agency：如果世界和人就像一台精密的机械仪器，这台仪器到底是被外在的力（god）驱动，还是机械本身也可以感知、感应？可能因为太想把agency当成论述的线索，定义反而比较模糊。但这本书最大的帮助是给之前关注的很多问题提供了语... 总的来说想论述一个科学史观：在以机械论为象征的现代科学的开端，有一个悖论；悖论中的两股力量直到今天都在影响生命科学、人工智能的发展。这个悖论并不是宗教和科学之间的，而是关于agency：如果世界和人就像一台精密的机械仪器，这台仪器到底是被外在的力（god）驱动，还是机械本身也可以感知、感应？可能因为太想把agency当成论述的线索，定义反而比较模糊。但这本书最大的帮助是给之前关注的很多问题提供了语境：比如这个悖论就是17世纪眼睛～望远镜这个比喻的语境；传教士曾向康熙展示宗教主题的机器人，而莱布尼茨则读到由他们翻译并带回欧洲的儒家思想，并在此基础上论述机械和能动性共存的可能性（于是产生了不同于牛顿atom的monad）。谭嗣同用以太解释“仁”可以说是可感物质在现代中国的回响。 (展开)
2 有用 鸟上飞 2022-05-07 17:18:04
通过这本科学史帮助打通了理解哲学源头的任督二脉
0 有用 吴派派 2024-10-28 05:25:35 瑞士
molecular clock hopothesis