During the breakaway from religious (Christian) world many philosophers loved to compare our world to a giant clockwork driven by natural principles instead of following a divine plan.
This is attitude is quite understandable, since the new scientific approach seemed to promise an explanation for everything - everybody expected a perfect system that made sense for anything and everything.
Plus it was also the beginning of the machine age - the production and ever more precise machinery like clocks was all the rage in Europe. So no surprise that the clockwork was the symbol for science and progress - just like we use the computer analogy for how the brain works.
We humans love simplistic analogies to make "stuff" more understandable. Neither religions nor modern mass media likes complexity - they both love simple slogans.
Although Darwin has introduced us to the ideas and evolution and expanded biology into a new realm we still love our "mechanical" images to understand it. For example we love the computer analogy to explain functions of the human brain.
The idea that the universe and everything in it can be explained someday holds the eternal temptation to play Gods ourselves someday. Machines can be easily fixed - at least that implies the analogy.
Biology and Machines alike have to operate in the limited sandbox of physics. But that doesn’t make biological beings like machines. Especially random mutations and natural selection are special "mechanisms" of nature that constantly twist the rules without breaking them.
There is also the ideological struggle if the (human) mind can be explained by a mechanical rule set and recreated in form of artificial intelligence.
Some scientists believe that we humans are predictable machines: we are biological automatons (or Turing Machines) with no real free will at all.
As much as I agree that there are limits to human imagination and the so called "Free Will" - but I very much doubt that creativity and humor can be programmed or recreated.
Machines rules can be adapted to include random elements and have mutations, but mutation is not evolution - just a part of it. And rules for "playing" nice machine music or creating "pleasing" computer art is a simulation of creativity.
All these experiments to make teach machines art and creativity is the back channel: our emotions and thoughts while being artistic or watching a piece of art.
Unless machines are inspired, impressed, confused and disgusted by the creativity of others their works will only be mechanical simulations - "soulless" or "without emotions" so to say.
By experimenting with artificial intelligence we have certainly learned a lot about ourselves - so it’s worth exploring. But let’s get rid of the stupid mechanistic analogies and try to think a bit more complex.
It’s worth the extra effort.
We shouldn’t be afraid of the complexities of the universe and that there is no God or (scientific) creator behind it. Just because we don’t understand everything (yet) doesn’t mean we need to mystify it. Let’s just enjoy it the way it is - and learn more on the way …
Our science and mental models are as much driven by science as they are by our attitudes.
More? Mechanism @ Wikipedia
