Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Polygenism: Machines Humans and Their Same Origin

Polygeny is the theory that different races of humans evolved from separate sets of ancestors. This theory came into mainstream use in the United States when slave owners used it to justify slavery. The idea that different races are from different origins, making their genetic make-up separate, is no longer used because it has been proven there is more genetic difference within race than between race. If machines are developed to act like humans, or even become humans through mixture of man and machine, the act of classifying them as different is not far off from polygenism used to justify slavery. 
Humans and machines are both made up of atoms and those atoms are made up of sub-atomic particles, therefore making their deepest of origins the same. I cannot think of a more precise way to trace a being's origins by looking at the smallest unit of what the being is made of. This idea can be stretched to say that everything is the same on the smallest base level therefore making the classification of different beings worthless.  I do not necessarily believe that classifying plants different from animals and humans from machines is pointless; what I do believe is that one must look at classification as a human invention that focuses on difference between species, allowing humans to avoid the idea of being just another substance, just the same as everything else. 
I couldn't find a machine versus human classification sheet to compare the above with but I imagine it wouldn't look much different than this.
 

1 comment:

  1. Perhaps not a chart but there are books. La Mettrie's Man a Machine for one

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