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Title: Do Medieval and Renaissance Androids Presage the Posthuman? (Critical Essay)
Author : CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
Release Date : January 01, 2010
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
Pages : * pages
Size : 96 KB

Description

The factual and fictional literature of the Renaissance contains references to the creation of artificial humanoids-somewhat remarkable for an era that predates not only the era of cloning and robotics, but also the era of industry. These figures range from images in fictional literature of talking brass heads to discussions of the homunculus by Renaissance natural philosophers and to Jewish legends of the golem. What all of these figures have in common is an association with medieval alchemy. The brass heads in Robert Greene's two plays, The Honorable History of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay and Alphonsus, Prince of Aragon have their roots in Arabic sources, and the former derives specifically from legends concerning the thirteenth-century alchemist and philosopher Roger Bacon. Also, both the homunculus and golem appear to be extreme, mystical adaptations of medieval alchemy. For example, these creations are both depicted as being conceived in an alchemical vessel-the glass retort. This article is an attempt to trace the associations between literary images of artificial humans associated with medieval alchemists and alchemy, their modified reemergence in the Renaissance, and implications such images of androids may have for the idea of a posthuman subjectivity. The Elizabethan writer Robert Greene wrote two plays in which talking brass heads figure fairly prominently. As I have discussed elsewhere, these two robot-like heads have important symbolic value and important ancient roots ("The Talking Brass Head"). In the first play, Alphonsus, Prince of Aragon, a brass head of unknown origin, which can spit fire and utter oracular proclamations, sits in a palace where its owner can consult with it about the future. In a later play, The Honorable History of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, there is another talking brass head whose origin, unlike that of the first, is clear. It has been assembled by the medieval alchemist Roger Bacon with some help from enslaved daemons, who lend their services as smiths to "hammer out" the shape of the piece. The brass head, once animated, will, Bacon hopes, make him a renowned figure in both scholarly and popular circles. Like a modern computer, the automaton will enable the scholar to do his work faster and to do work that would be impossible for the unaided human. The head is to explain difficult intellectual questions, give philosophical lectures, and it will enable Bacon to build a defensive brass wall around all of England (Greene, ii, 25-30). The conceptual roots of these contraptions lie in the Middle Ages. Bacon's presence as a central character in Greene's play and his creation of a talking brass automaton are not accidental: By the early 1500s this Friar had become an icon for alchemy's dangerous social effects, and had come to be seen as a wizard more than a natural philosopher. This was due to a combination of his prodigious and advanced scientific writings--especially in the field optics, for example--his mention of wondrous mechanical automata in his writings, and his censure by the Catholic Church--a censure which has been attributed, at least in part, to the unorthodoxy of his scientific views. It has been long thought (although not without controversy) that Bacon's opinion that mathematics and experiment were much more valuable to science than accepted textual authority was a chief source of his troubles with the Franciscan hierarchy, troubles which culminated with the declaration of his work as heretical in 1278. In fact, many of the opinions that he based on his own research, especially in optics, had no equivalent in traditional sources. Rather, he relied on brilliant but simple experiments of his own, such as using prisms and water vapor to show how rainbows are formed. He was also fascinated with mechanical marvels, and discussed them in at least one of his books, De nullitate magiae (translated as Roger Bacon's Letter Concerning the Marvellous Power of Art and of Nature and Con