https://blog.georgefabish.com/tags/nature_as_automata/ Recent content in Nature_as_automata on George's Blog Hugo en-US Fri, 16 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.georgefabish.com/reviews/notes-from-the-underground/ Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:31:04 -0500 https://blog.georgefabish.com/reviews/notes-from-the-underground/ <p>In 1864, Russia and the Western world was experiencing a philosophical reversal with reverberations that can still be felt almost two hundred years later. One by one “unquestionable” truths were being placed in the dust bin by a cold rationality. The attack on humanity’s placement of itself in the universe started over three hundred years earlier, when a polymath named Copernicus rediscovered the forgotten truth that we are not the center of the universe. Ever since then, the more scientific details that are catalogued about the world, the further man is pushed from that once prized and secure position. There are two main ideas that the underground man (UM) simultaneously seems to prove by his actions and disapprove of by his words. First is man as nature, the second is man as automata, and by extension nature as automata. It had only been five years since Charles Darwin had written ‘On the Origin of Species’ and already Dostoyevsky has incorporated his theory and worked out what he sees as its possible ramifications. Chiefly that of an alienated human that is horrified to look in the mirror and see no-thing looking back. In an opening note to the book Dostoevsky makes clear that the UM is an inevitable product of the spread of these two ideologies. The book opens with the memorable&hellip;</p>