Machine
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A Machine is a physical system that can perform tasks.
- AKA: Physical Machine.
- Context:
- It can range from being an Organic Machine to being a Mechanical Machine.
- It can range from being a Self-Organizing Machine to being a Designed Machine.
- It can range from being a General Machine to being a Task-Specific Machine.
- It can range from being a Simple Machine to being a Complex Machine.
- Example(s):
- a Biological Organism, such as a human.
- a Jacquard Loom.
- a Computer.
- a Robot, such as an intelligent digital assistant.
- a Radio, Tool, Steam Engine, Power Tool,
- Counter-Example(s):
- a Star, because it does not perform tasks(?).
- an Abstract Machine, such as a perpetual machine or a Turing machine.
- See: Machine Processable Artifact, Machine Created Artifact, Human Birth, Tool, Energy, Work (Physics), Thermal, Electronics, Vehicle.
References
2015
- (Wikipedia, 2015) ⇒ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/machine Retrieved:2015-11-29.
- A machine is a tool containing one or more parts that uses energy to perform an intended action. Machines are usually powered by mechanical, chemical, thermal, or electrical means, and are often motorized. Historically, a power tool also required moving parts to classify as a machine. However, the advent of electronics has led to the development of power tools without moving parts that are considered machines.
A simple machine is a device that simply transforms the direction or magnitude of a force, but a large number of more complex machines exist. Examples include vehicles, electronic systems, molecular machines, computers, television, and radio.
- A machine is a tool containing one or more parts that uses energy to perform an intended action. Machines are usually powered by mechanical, chemical, thermal, or electrical means, and are often motorized. Historically, a power tool also required moving parts to classify as a machine. However, the advent of electronics has led to the development of power tools without moving parts that are considered machines.
- http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/machine#Noun
- A device that directs and controls energy, often in the form of movement or electricity, to produce a certain effect.
1990
- (Searle, 1990) ⇒ John R. Searle. (1990). “Is the Brain’s Mind a Computer Program." Scientific American 262, no. 1
- QUOTE: Can a machine think? Can a machine have conscious thoughts in exactly the same sense that you and I have? If by “machine” one means a physical system capable of performing certain functions (and what else can one mean?), then humans are machines of a special...
1983
- (Miller, 1983) ⇒ Harlan B. Miller. (1983). “' Platonists’ and ‘Aristotelians'.” In: Ethics and Animals, pp. 1-14 . Humana Press,
- QUOTE: … that tradition in Western thought most sympathetic to the claims and to the standing of nonhuman animals. For Aristotle, as for Darwin, man is one animal among the others, different surely, primary perhaps, but animal certainly. … It was only a century from Descartes' 'demonstration' that animals are machines to La Mettrie's corollary that humans are machines in exactly the same way (1748). The Darwinian revolution consists in large part of stressing an 'aristotelian' view of nonhumans. ...
1748
- (Mettrie, 1748) ⇒ Julien Offray de La Mettrie. (1748). “L'Homme Machine (Man a Machine)."
- QUOTE: Man is so complicated a machine that it is impossible to get a clear idea of the machine beforehand, and hence impossible to define it.