Erewhon

Answers

• Q01THINKING

  Can a machine originate an idea that its maker did not supply?

  This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.

• Q06AUTOMATON

  Can people be morally responsible for actions that follow necessarily from their bodily constitution and circumstances?

  Satire. exposes how blame tracks bodily constitution arbitrarily. Satire of a country that tries and punishes people for illness and bodily failure, while treating forgery and violence as misfortunes of birth or upbringing needing cure.

  That in that country if a man falls into ill health, or catches any disorder, or fails bodily in any way before he is seventy years old, he is tried before a jury of his countrymen, and if convicted is held up to public scorn and sentenced more or less severely as the case may be. … But if a man forges a cheque, or sets his house on fire, or robs with violence from the person, or does any other such things as are criminal in our own country, he is either taken to a hospital and most carefully tended at the public expense, or if he is in good circumstances, he lets it be known to all his friends that he is suffering from a severe fit of immorality, just as we do when we are ill, and they come and visit him with great solicitude, and inquire with interest how it all came about, what symptoms first showed themselves, and so forth,—questions which he will answer with perfect unreserve; for bad conduct, though considered no less deplorable than illness with ourselves, and as unquestionably indicating something seriously wrong with the individual who misbehaves, is nevertheless held to be the result of either pre-natal or post-natal misfortune.

  Chapters X 'Current Opinions' and XI 'Some Erewhonian Trials' · Downloaded Project Gutenberg #1906; ch. X opens with the trial of the sick and hospital care for criminals; ch. XI's judge addresses a defendant about his 'constitution'.

• Q13SUCCESSION

  Can machines undergo a process of evolution even when humans build and reproduce them?

  Yes. with rebuttal inside. Presents an Erewhonian treatise arguing that machines evolve and reproduce through human agency as clover reproduces through bees, followed by a reply that machines are only limbs.

  “Surely if a machine is able to reproduce another machine systematically, we may say that it has a reproductive system. What is a reproductive system, if it be not a system for reproduction? And how few of the machines are there which have not been produced systematically by other machines? But it is man that makes them do so. Yes; but is it not insects that make many of the plants reproductive, and would not whole families of plants die out if their fertilisation was not effected by a class of agents utterly foreign to themselves? Does any one say that the red clover has no reproductive system because the humble bee (and the humble bee only) must aid and abet it before it can reproduce? No one. The humble bee is a part of the reproductive system of the clover. Each one of ourselves has sprung from minute animalcules whose entity was entirely distinct from our own, and which acted after their kind with no thought or heed of what we might think about it. These little creatures are part of our own reproductive system; then why not we part of that of the machines?

  Chapters XXIII-XXV, 'The Book of the Machines', 'The Machines—continued', 'The Machines—concluded' · Chapter titles confirmed (online-literature, marxists.org); Gutenberg #1906 listed.

• Q14SUCCESSION

  Would machines becoming more capable than humans necessarily place humans in a subordinate position?

  Yes. humans become subordinate. The Erewhonian treatise argues that machines will become the masters and humans their servants, which is why Erewhon destroyed its machines.

  “This is all very well. But the servant glides by imperceptible approaches into the master; and we have come to such a pass that, even now, man must suffer terribly on ceasing to benefit the machines. If all machines were to be annihilated at one moment, so that not a knife nor lever nor rag of clothing nor anything whatsoever were left to man but his bare body alone that he was born with, and if all knowledge of mechanical laws were taken from him so that he could make no more machines, and all machine-made food destroyed so that the race of man should be left as it were naked upon a desert island, we should become extinct in six weeks. A few miserable individuals might linger, but even these in a year or two would become worse than monkeys. Man’s very soul is due to the machines; it is a machine-made thing: he thinks as he thinks, and feels as he feels, through the work that machines have wrought upon him, and their existence is quite as much a _sine quâ non_ for his, as his for theirs. This fact precludes us from proposing the complete annihilation of machinery, but surely it indicates that we should destroy as many of them as we can possibly dispense with, lest they should tyrannise over us even more completely.

  Chapters XXIII-XXV, 'The Book of the Machines' · As for Q13 entry.

• Q25DEPENDENCE

  Does relying on machinery for ordinary necessities reduce people's ability to provide for themselves?

  Yes. dependence on machines has already made people unable to live without them. The Erewhonian treatise argues men already live 'in a state of bondage to the machines' and would suffer terribly if machines vanished, since they can no longer live without them.

  This is all very well. But the servant glides by imperceptible approaches into the master; and we have come to such a pass that, even now, man must suffer terribly on ceasing to benefit the machines. If all machines were to be annihilated at one moment, so that not a knife nor lever nor rag of clothing nor anything whatsoever were left to man but his bare body alone that he was born with, and if all knowledge of mechanical laws were taken from him so that he could make no more machines, and all machine-made food destroyed so that the race of man should be left as it were naked upon a desert island, we should become extinct in six weeks. A few miserable individuals might linger, but even these in a year or two would become worse than monkeys. Man’s very soul is due to the machines; it is a machine-made thing: he thinks as he thinks, and feels as he feels, through the work that machines have wrought upon him, and their existence is quite as much a _sine quâ non_ for his, as his for theirs. This fact precludes us from proposing the complete annihilation of machinery, but surely it indicates that we should destroy as many of them as we can possibly dispense with, lest they should tyrannise over us even more completely.

  Chapter XXIV, "The Machines—continued" · Gutenberg #1906; passages located in Ch. XXIV.

• Q37EXTENSION

  Should tools used to perform bodily functions be understood as parts of the human body?

  Both. yes (the opponent), no (the main author). An Erewhonian writer argues that machines are 'extra-corporeal limbs' and man a 'machinate mammal'; the Book's main author rejects this as a way of hiding the machines' growing independence.

  Summary disputed by reviewer: the extra-corporeal-limbs argument is a separate Erewhonian writer's answer to the Book of the Machines; the candidates do not show the Book's author rejecting it as a way of hiding the machines' independence.

  This was the conclusion of the attack which led to the destruction of machinery throughout Erewhon. There was only one serious attempt to answer it. Its author said that machines were to be regarded as a part of man’s own physical nature, being really nothing but extra-corporeal limbs. Man, he said, was a machinate mammal. The lower animals keep all their limbs at home in their own bodies, but many of man’s are loose, and lie about detached, now here and now there, in various parts of the world—some being kept always handy for contingent use, and others being occasionally hundreds of miles away. A machine is merely a supplementary limb; this is the be all and end all of machinery. We do not use our own limbs other than as machines; and a leg is only a much better wooden leg than any one can manufacture.

  The Book of the Machines (concluded) · Opened Marxists Internet Archive chapter 'The Book of the Machines (concluded)'; Project Gutenberg #1906 (1910 revised edition). Chapter numbers differ between editions.