Abstract
Automata and self-moving mechanisms have a long history – part of which, namely the medieval chapter, remains largely unexplored in any systematic fashion – and have articulated not only issues of technology and mechanical explanation of the world but also ideas of foreigness and cunning intelligence, to say nothing of the deep-ranging political significance that these instruments served in Mediterranean diplomacy. If the Industrial Revolution reflected on robots as a threat to human civilization, the Age of the Enlightenment used automata to think about the complex cultural function of bodily motion and performances.
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Gulizia, S. (2022). Automata, Renaissance. In: Sgarbi, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14169-5_900
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14169-5_900
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