Friday, February 11, 2005

Neal Stephenson on Robert Hooke's Micrographia

When Neal Stephenson was recently interviewed by Reason he said about Robert Hooke's Micrographia:
He cites the way that flies are drawn to the smell of meat, which seems like intelligent behavior. But then he cites the counterexample of a trap that kills an animal. To a primitive person who didn’t know that the trap had been invented by a person, it might seem that the trap itself possessed intelligence and will. Of course, this isn’t really the case; it’s just a dumb mechanism reflecting the intelligence of him who created it. But, Hooke says, who are we to say that a fly isn’t just a more complicated mechanism that is designed to fly toward the smell of meat? In which case it isn’t being intelligent at all, only reflecting the intelligence of the Creator.
I think it has interesting parallels with "intelligent software".

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