Organism a Machine

Abstract

The title of this chapter is a deliberate echo of La Mettrie’s Man A Machine. Such resonance is appropriate as La Mettrie and other think-ers, as briefly set out in Chapter 3, had provocatively proclaimed that man, the most developed of all organisms (at least in terms of its brain), is a machine. This proclamation contributed to the philosoph-ical foundations for the emergence of modern medicine. However, it was no more than a proclamation. The hard work in three related aspects remained to be carried out in the intervening four centu-ries, between the seventeenth century and the present. These three aspects are at the level of (a) technology, (b) basic science, (c) theory and ontology, which together work towards transforming the organ-ism to become an artefact, ultimately, a machine.¹ On all these fronts, the development of the ontological notion of organism as machine reaches its apogee by the last quarter of the twentieth century. This chapter is devoted to outlining some of the highlights in this series of development.