Literary notes about automaton (AI summary)
The term "automaton" in literature is often employed to evoke a sense of mechanical precision and the loss of human spontaneity. In certain contexts, it represents the danger of becoming overly mechanistic—a musician achieving perfect execution at the cost of creativity [1] or a human figure reduced to mere programmed movement, much like a marionette prepared by fate [2]. At the same time, detailed accounts of automatons underscore their technical artistry and exactitude, as described through anatomically precise constructions [3] or the deliberate, calculated moves of a chess-playing machine [4][5]. Moreover, the word frequently serves as a metaphor for individuals exhibiting a detached, unthinking demeanor in their actions, reinforcing the contrast between human agency and mechanical determinism [6][7].
- The good musician must strive to play perfectly, but, alas, we are told, if he succeeded he would have become an automaton.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana - Man would be a marionette or an automaton, like Vaucanson's, prepared and wound up by the Supreme Artist.
— from The Critique of Practical Reason by Immanuel Kant - Every bone in the real duck had its representative In the automaton, and its wings were anatomically exact.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition by Edgar Allan Poe - The game now commences—the Automaton taking the first move.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition by Edgar Allan Poe - Let us, for example, imagine the Automaton to play with his right arm.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition by Edgar Allan Poe - Mr. St. John spoke almost like an automaton: himself only knew the effort it cost him thus to refuse.
— from Jane Eyre: An Autobiography by Charlotte Brontë - He had, no longer, any heart in his business; and worked in it more like an automaton than a live human being.
— from After a Shadow and Other Stories by T. S. (Timothy Shay) Arthur
