He also invented the binary numeral system and envisioned a universal calculus of reasoning ( alphabet of human thought) by which arguments could be decided mechanically. Gottfried Leibniz improved the earlier machines, making the Stepped Reckoner to do multiplication and division. īlaise Pascal invented the mechanical calculator, the first digital calculating machine. He wrote ".for reason is nothing but reckoning". Thomas Hobbes published Leviathan and presented a mechanical, combinatorial theory of cognition. This will be the first of five unsuccessful attempts at designing a direct entry calculating clock in the 17th century (including the designs of Tito Burattini, Samuel Morland and René Grillet). Wilhelm Schickard drew a calculating clock on a letter to Kepler. Sir Francis Bacon developed empirical theory of knowledge and introduced inductive logic in his work The New Organon, a play on Aristotle's title The Organon. René Descartes proposed that bodies of animals are nothing more than complex machines (but that mental phenomena are of a different "substance"). Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel of Prague is said to have invented the Golem, a clay man brought to life. Paracelsus claimed to have created an artificial man out of magnetism, sperm and alchemy. The method would be developed further by Gottfried Leibniz in the 17th century. Ramon Llull, Spanish theologian, invents the Ars Magna, a tool for combining concepts mechanically, based on an Arabic astrological tool, the Zairja. Īl-Jazari created a programmable orchestra of mechanical human beings.
Geber developed the Arabic alchemical theory of Takwin, the artificial creation of life in the laboratory, up to and including human life. Porphyry of Tyros wrote Isagogê which categorized knowledge and logic. Heron of Alexandria created mechanical men and other automatons.
Īristotle described the syllogism, a method of formal, mechanical thought and theory of knowledge in The Organon. Yan Shi presented King Mu of Zhou with mechanical men. by discovering the true nature of the gods, man has been able to reproduce it." Mosaic law prohibits the use of automatons in religion. Hermes Trismegistus would write "they have sensus and spiritus. Sacred mechanical statues built in Egypt and Greece were believed to be capable of wisdom and emotion. Greek myths of Hephaestus and Pygmalion incorporated the idea of intelligent robots (such as Talos) and artificial beings (such as Galatea and Pandora).