Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. CONTENTS vii
3. List of Contributors ix
4. List of Illustrations xiii
5. Acknowledgments xvii
6. 1. Introduction: The Sistine Gap 1
7. ONE. Connections
8. 2. The Imitation of Life in Ancient Greek Philosophy 35
9. 3. The Devil as Automaton: Giovanni Fontana and the Meanings of a Fifteenth-Century Machine 46
10. 4. Infinite Gesture: Automata and the Emotions in Descartes and Shakespeare 63
11. 5. Abstracting from the Soul: The Mechanics of Locomotion 85
12. 6. The Anatomy of Artificial Life: An Eighteenth-Century Perspective 96
13. TWO. Emergence
14. 7. The Homunculus and the Mandrake: Art Aiding Nature versus Art Faking Nature 119
15. 8. Sex Ratio Theory, Ancient and Modern: An Eighteenth- Century Debate about Intelligent Design and the Development of Models in Evolutionary Biology 131
16. 9. The Gender of Automata in Victorian Britain 163
17. 10. Techno-Humanism: Requiem for the Cyborg 196
18. 11. Nanobots and Nanotubes: Two Alternative Biomimetic Paradigms of Nanotechnology 221
19. 12. Creating Insight: Gestalt Theory and the Early Computer 237
20. THREE. Interactions
21. 13. Perpetual Devotion: A Sixteenth-Century Machine That Prays 263
22. 14. Motions and Passions: Music-Playing Women Automata and the Culture of Affect in Late Eighteenth-Century Germany 293
23. 15. An Archaeology of Artificial Life, Underwater 321
24. 16. Booting Up Baby 334
25. 17. Body Language: Lessons from the Near-Human 346
26. Index 375