It has been a fundamental question of the relative importance of the precesses of thinking versus crafting. Whether there is any such superiority relation at all, and on what basis can we say so if it exists. Here I discuss Babbage's idea of intelligence being located in the Mind, and not in the attentive crafting body with reference to Simon Schaffer's article "Babbage's Intelligence".
Introduction :
To understand the scope and radicality of Babbage's idea, we must first understand the socio-economical situation of his time. In Babbage's Victorian England, the traditional thinking was such that skill was recognized as a property inherent in the workers themselves. Skill was reckoned to be scarcely communicable outside the restricted sphere of worksmen, which was designed to remain opaque to the surveillance of the managers and inspectors. In this light, I would say that Babbage's idea was revolutionary and hence quite controversial.
Babbage's own struggle :
Babbage's strong belief in this idea is very clearly demonstrated with his quote regarding the intellectual rights over the difference engine :
Also, the deep-rooted opposite belief in the society comes into light with the fact that although the design of engine was totally Babbage's, he had to fight legal battle for almost a decade to gain the rights over the engine.
The difference engine :
In Babbage's time, the word "computer" had a totally different meaning than that of now. Computers were workers employed to do mathematical calculations for observatories ect. They were workers who, instead of doing physical labor, were paid for the intellectual work they did. Himself having done the job of a computer, Babbage knew the process envisioned a machine which will do the calculations instead of humans. Thus, the difference engine was born. And "computer" became anthropomorphism of of the (human) computer.
And there came the real difficulty : getting acceptance. It was time when England was going through industrial revolution, and physical labor was getting mechanized, but the challenge was accepting the fact that even intellectual labor like calculating can also be mechanized. That is, precisely what difference engine was going to do.
Difference engine can be looked at as the materialization of the idea which Babbage so dearly nurtured - "Intelligence is not in body, but in mind." It is the very idea on which the the whole concept of the engine is based on : In order to create a thinking (calculating) machine, there is no need to simulate how the body functions, rather the process of thinking itself can be simulated. This would not have been possible if the intelligence and body were not separable.
Consequences :
A very important concept which finds its roots in the idea of intelligence-body separation is the idea of an industrial "Panopticon". Once we separate the intelligence from the body, it immediately follows that in order to get maximum productivity from a factory setting, the 'unintelligent' and crafting 'bodies of workers' must be supervised. To put it in Babbage's words,
Babbage also emphasized on concealing of labor and work force in order for the intelligence to get noticed.
Babbage's idea shows his mechanistic viewpoint of looking at things. It emphasizes the belief that even intelligence can be mechanized. The question is that where are we now? Have we mechanized intelligence? It is true that we have come a long way from Vaucanson's defecating duck, then Babbage's engines, to todays modern "Intelligent" robots like Kismet. But we have still long way to go before we capture all forms of intelligence into machine and only then the idea of separation of body and intelligence would stop being an 'idea' and become 'fact'.
Introduction :
To understand the scope and radicality of Babbage's idea, we must first understand the socio-economical situation of his time. In Babbage's Victorian England, the traditional thinking was such that skill was recognized as a property inherent in the workers themselves. Skill was reckoned to be scarcely communicable outside the restricted sphere of worksmen, which was designed to remain opaque to the surveillance of the managers and inspectors. In this light, I would say that Babbage's idea was revolutionary and hence quite controversial.
Babbage's own struggle :
Babbage's strong belief in this idea is very clearly demonstrated with his quote regarding the intellectual rights over the difference engine :
"My right to dispose, as I will, of such inventions cannot be contested; it is more sacred in its nature than any hereditary or acquired property, for they are the absolute creations of my own mind."
Also, the deep-rooted opposite belief in the society comes into light with the fact that although the design of engine was totally Babbage's, he had to fight legal battle for almost a decade to gain the rights over the engine.
The difference engine :
In Babbage's time, the word "computer" had a totally different meaning than that of now. Computers were workers employed to do mathematical calculations for observatories ect. They were workers who, instead of doing physical labor, were paid for the intellectual work they did. Himself having done the job of a computer, Babbage knew the process envisioned a machine which will do the calculations instead of humans. Thus, the difference engine was born. And "computer" became anthropomorphism of of the (human) computer.
And there came the real difficulty : getting acceptance. It was time when England was going through industrial revolution, and physical labor was getting mechanized, but the challenge was accepting the fact that even intellectual labor like calculating can also be mechanized. That is, precisely what difference engine was going to do.
Difference engine can be looked at as the materialization of the idea which Babbage so dearly nurtured - "Intelligence is not in body, but in mind." It is the very idea on which the the whole concept of the engine is based on : In order to create a thinking (calculating) machine, there is no need to simulate how the body functions, rather the process of thinking itself can be simulated. This would not have been possible if the intelligence and body were not separable.
Consequences :
A very important concept which finds its roots in the idea of intelligence-body separation is the idea of an industrial "Panopticon". Once we separate the intelligence from the body, it immediately follows that in order to get maximum productivity from a factory setting, the 'unintelligent' and crafting 'bodies of workers' must be supervised. To put it in Babbage's words,
"One great advantage which we may derive from machinery is from the check which it affords against the inattention, the idleness, or the dishonesty of human agents."
Babbage also emphasized on concealing of labor and work force in order for the intelligence to get noticed.
"To make machines look intelligent it was necessary that the sources of their power, the labor force which surrounded and ran them, be rendered invisible."Conclusion :
Babbage's idea shows his mechanistic viewpoint of looking at things. It emphasizes the belief that even intelligence can be mechanized. The question is that where are we now? Have we mechanized intelligence? It is true that we have come a long way from Vaucanson's defecating duck, then Babbage's engines, to todays modern "Intelligent" robots like Kismet. But we have still long way to go before we capture all forms of intelligence into machine and only then the idea of separation of body and intelligence would stop being an 'idea' and become 'fact'.
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