Automata

[Cross-posted from philosophymodsquad.]

In preparing to talk about Descartes on machines and animals and human beings the other day, I set out looking for information about seventeenth-century automata.

One really interesting thing is Jessica Riskin’s article “Machines in the Garden” in Republics of Letters. This has a lot of information about “lifelike machines” of two sorts: religious ones – “the muttering Christs, the horn-playing angels, the eye-rolling devils, the teeth-chattering heads” – and a great variety of hydraulic machinery in the gardens of the rich and powerful.

There are also multiple online versions of Salomon de Caus’s 1615 book, Les raisons des forces mouvantes, avec diverses machines tant utiles que plaisantes, auxquelles sont adjoints plusieurs dessings de grotes & fontaines. The image below is one example of the machines illustrated, and is described as a machine “Pour faire representer le chant d’un oyseau en son naturel, par le moyen de l’eau”.

One online version of the book is at http://cnum.cnam.fr/SYN/FDA1.html. For another version, and more description of the book’s contents, see http://architectura.cesr.univ-tours.fr/traite/Notice/Caus1615.asp?param=en. Or alternatively, for just the illustrations, see http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b2100042f/f1.planchecontact.