Impressions of Theophrastus Such

Answers

• Q13SUCCESSION

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

  Yes. machines may evolve. Speculates in dialogue that machines may come to evolve self-supply, self-repair and reproduction and so succeed humans.

  What I would ask you is to show me why, since each new invention casts a new light along the pathway of discovery, and each new combination or structure brings into play more conditions than its inventor foresaw, there should not at length be a machine of such high mechanical and chemical powers that it would find and assimilate the material to supply its own waste, and then by a further evolution of internal molecular movements reproduce itself by some process of fission or budding. This last stage having been reached, either by man’s contrivance or as an unforeseen result, one sees that the process of natural selection must drive men altogether out of the field; for they will long before have begun to sink into the miserable condition of those unhappy characters in fable who, having demons or djinns at their beck, and being obliged to supply them with work, found too much of everything done in too short a time.

  'Shadows of the Coming Race' · Chapter title and quotation confirmed (Wikipedia, Wikisource page scan, online-literature); Internet Archive copy listed.