at the dawn of the modern era, rene descartes theorized that animals were machines
while human beings had a soul and free will, but debates about his theory were anachronistic because we have come to think of machines in very different terms. 
for descartes and his contemporaries the paradigmatic machine was the watch-characterized by jerky motion, hypnotic repetition, perfectibility, and absolute subordination to the agenda of its owner. throughout most of the industrial era, the 18th through the early 20th centuries, philosophers constantly imagined the deity as a divine watchmaker. the paradigmatic machine of today is the computer, which can be as unpredictable as any mad genius in a laboratory.



a cultural history of animals in the modern age.