Talk:Darwin among the Machines

Article lacks coherence
i don't know where to put this but this all makes no fcking sense. it's a fcking computer. not life. it well never evolve like in the terminator or the matrix. it is a machine. it has no will to live. it's not life. these arguments are ridiculous. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.190.94.157 (talk) 04:47, 19 October 2014 (UTC)
 * This Wikipedia article needs major changes in order to make any sense. The title is the name of an 1863 essay, or news article. That's what the intro is about. The rest of it is a lot of overly lengthy verbatim excerpts from "Darwin among...", and other contemporaneous publications. The overall intent is to demonstrate that 21st century concepts of artificial intelligence can be traced to 19th century or earlier writers... I think? So, a sort of unencyclopedic history of artificial intelligence, I guess? It isn't an encyclopedic entry on its own though.--FeralOink (talk) 23:50, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

Cellarius
Pseudonym Cellarius once linked to Cellarius disambiguation page, but was piped to Samuel Butler (novelist), and the thoroughly ambiguous statement: "...signed Cellarius, which can be construed as his name in Latin...." The dab adds it is Latinized "Keller."

Cellar is the English equivalent, which butlers sometimes visit, but it is a real stretch to say that was how Butler construed it, absent a contemporary Authority who says so. The authors of the Federalist Papers used the pseudonym "Publius", in honor of Roman consul Publius Valerius Publicola, and there is a citation for that. Absent a citation for Butler's usage, the next best thing is the dab page. In chronological order above Butler's entry, it lists Weimar classical scholar Christoph Keller, 1638-1707, who signed himself Christoph Cellarius. His Universal History Divided into an Ancient, Medieval, and New Period popularized this tripartite division, which then became a standard, and which would have been known to Butler's more scholarly contemporary readers, and adds scholarly panache to Butler's theme. As a Wiki'd editor, I'm forbidden to construe that Butler similarly honored that particular historical user of the name; but as a Wiki'd user, I may jump to that conclusion. I would that other readers be given the same opportunity.

I changed the author's entry to, and this one to Cellarius (q.v.,) --Pawyilee (talk) 07:41, 27 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Created Cellarius (name) with template #REDIRECT Cellarius to redirect to Cellarius  disambiguation page, which does not include "(disambiguation)" in its name. --Pawyilee (talk) 10:53, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Cellarius (name) redirects to Cellarius (disambiguation), for the usage as pseudonym by Samuel Butler (novelist) in his letters to the editor of The Press is ambiguous.--Pawyilee (talk) 15:29, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Source required
This statement
 * This article, along with later writings by Butler on "machine evolution", was probably largely satirical in intent, although he may have been using these fanciful writings to explore some real philosophical issues like the question of whether biological life and evolution can be explained in purely mechanical terms (see the discussion at the end of the 'Book of the Machines' section below).

seems to me to be an opinion and it is not sourced. I have no objection to this material here with a source but strongly oppose its inclusion unsourced so have deleted for the moment. We either can source the claims or we cant. Thanks, ♫ SqueakBox talk contribs 02:00, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Use of Long Quotations
I'm unhappy with the use of such long quotations in this article - we might just as well reprint the entire book. Perhaps this could be discussed here. RomanSpa (talk) 08:42, 6 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I am unhappy with so many long quotations in this article too, RomanSpa. I am surprised that it doesn't trigger any of the copyvio tools that are supposed to control for it. I think "Darwin among the Machines" is an article, or essay, not even a book. That makes it even more inexcusable to blockquote huge swathes with minimal explanatory annotations. Somewhere, maybe in a tag, suggested this belongs in Wikisource, assuming that it isn't under copyright. Also, I don't even know if it is sufficiently notable to have a Wikipedia article of its own. I'll look into it. If you're still actively editing, feel free get involved. If not, thank you for making your observation back in 2014!--FeralOink (talk) 23:34, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

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Merge suggestion
Darwin among the Machines is the title of an 1863 New Zealand newspaper article by Samuel Butler, which he expanded into 3 chapters of a book in 1872. It introduces the idea of machine intelligence. A very brief mention of this could be merged into History of Artificial Intelligence. The rest of the article consists of paragraph-long blockquotes from the 3 chapters of the 1872 book, about sentient machines, self-replicating machines, and machine rule of humanity. A few sentences of content summary could be merged (in highly condensed form) into a history section of either AI Takeover or Technological singularity articles. See above in talk page for other discussions about these issues with the article.--FeralOink (talk) 01:03, 4 July 2021 (UTC)


 * Darwin among the Machines is the first published essay that combines the Industrial Revolution idea of advanced machines with Darwin's ideas of evolution, to envisage the possibility that machines (robots and AI) might one day be able to reproduce, evolve, and eventually supplant humankind. I wrote about it at some length in a book published last year ("Rise of the Self-Replicators: Early Visions of Machines, AI and Robots that can Reproduce and Evolve" by Tim Taylor and Alan Dorin, Springer, 2020) and it was also discussed - and lent the title to - the book "Darwin Among the Machines" by George Dyson (Penguin, 2012). It is certainly notable, and, I believe, notable enough to warrant its own page. But I agree that the current page is very poorly structured. I would be in favour of keeping it as a separate page but in pushing for a major revision of the page structure. I might be able to contribute to that, maybe later this year. DrTimTaylor (talk) 09:22, 4 July 2021 (UTC)