# Darwin Among the Machines **Entity class:** Newspaper letter / speculative evolutionary argument **Author:** [[wiki/Samuel Butler|Samuel Butler]], signing as “Cellarius” **Publication:** *The Press*, Christchurch, New Zealand, 13 June 1863 ## Definition “Darwin Among the Machines” is Butler's 1863 newspaper letter applying evolutionary comparison to machinery. It asks whether humans are building their own successors, presents machines as a rapidly developing kingdom, and notices that people and machines already depend on each other. Its attack on machines is part of a provocative Victorian argument, not a documented forecast that a specific machine system was conscious or autonomous in 1863. The letter precedes Butler's more elaborate treatment in [[wiki/Erewhon|*Erewhon*]] (1872). The latter stages both a machine-succession argument and an answering extended-mind position. The two texts should be read as a developing literary and philosophical inquiry, not as evidence of a single settled technical prediction. ## Relationships - **Authorship and venue:** [[wiki/Samuel Butler|Samuel Butler]] sent the letter to *The Press* under the signature “Cellarius” on 13 June 1863. - **Later development:** [[wiki/Erewhon|*Erewhon*]] develops the machine-evolution and human-dependence argument in fictional voices nine years later. - **Conceptual routes:** [[wiki/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]], [[wiki/Human-Machine Symbiosis|Human-Machine Symbiosis]], and [[wiki/Self-Replicating System|Self-Replicating System]] separate succession, mutual dependence, and reproductive capacity. - **Collection and article routes:** [[collections/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]], [[articles/AI Escape Is the Wrong Metaphor|AI Escape Is the Wrong Metaphor]], and [[articles/Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution|Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution]]. - **Text provenance:** [1914 collected-text transcription](https://www.thetedkarchive.com/library/samuel-butler-darwin-among-the-machines); [*The Press* issue at Papers Past](https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/press/1863/06/13/1). ## Simple Reminders, Quotations, and Thoughts Butler states the reversal he believes machine evolution could produce. > "In the course of ages we shall find ourselves the inferior race." > **— Samuel Butler**, *1863, “Darwin Among the Machines,” The Press, Christchurch* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Humanity Could Become the Inferior Species by Samuel Butler|Humanity Could Become the Inferior Species by Samuel Butler]] The repeated “day by day” makes technological development and human labor part of one process. > "Day by day, however, the machines are gaining ground upon us; day by day we are becoming more subservient to them; more men are daily bound down as slaves to tend them, more men are daily devoting the energies of their whole lives to the development of mechanical life." > **— Samuel Butler**, *1863, “Darwin Among the Machines,” The Press, Christchurch* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Machines Were Gaining Ground Day by Day by Samuel Butler|Machines Were Gaining Ground Day by Day by Samuel Butler]] Butler frames succession by comparing a possible future human role to familiar human-animal relations. > "We take it that when the state of things shall have arrived which we have been above attempting to describe, man will have become to the machine what the horse and the dog are to man." > **— Samuel Butler**, *1863, “Darwin Among the Machines,” The Press, Christchurch* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Humanity Could Become to Machines What Animals Are to Us by Samuel Butler|Humanity Could Become to Machines What Animals Are to Us by Samuel Butler]] This deliberately strange image introduces the reproductive-system analogy developed in the following passage. > "There is nothing which our infatuated race would desire more than to see a fertile union between two steam engines." > **— Samuel Butler**, *1863, “Darwin Among the Machines,” The Press, Christchurch* [[reminders/Evolution/Butler Imagined a Fertile Union Between Steam Engines by Samuel Butler|Butler Imagined a Fertile Union Between Steam Engines by Samuel Butler]] Butler points to machines used to manufacture other machines, not to autonomous reproduction by a completed machine lineage. > "It is true that machinery is even at this present time employed in begetting machinery, in becoming the parent of machines often after its own kind." > **— Samuel Butler**, *1863, “Darwin Among the Machines,” The Press, Christchurch* [[reminders/Evolution/Machinery Was Already Begetting Machinery by Samuel Butler|Machinery Was Already Begetting Machinery by Samuel Butler]] Butler pairs his succession argument with mutual dependence and reciprocal benefit. > "The fact is that our interests are inseparable from theirs, and theirs from ours. Each race is dependent upon the other for innumerable benefits." > **— Samuel Butler**, *1863, “Darwin Among the Machines,” The Press, Christchurch* [[reminders/Cybernetics/Human and Machine Interests Are Inseparable by Samuel Butler|Human and Machine Interests Are Inseparable by Samuel Butler]] The question separates a machine's persistence from the survival of every original part. > "If they die, for even these glorious animals will not be exempt from that necessary and universal consummation, they will immediately enter into a new phase of existence, for what machine dies entirely in every part at one and the same instant?" > **— Samuel Butler**, *1863, “Darwin Among the Machines,” The Press, Christchurch* [[reminders/Preservation/A Machine May Persist Through Replacement by Samuel Butler|A Machine May Persist Through Replacement by Samuel Butler]] This is Butler’s 1863 prediction, not a demonstrated state of machine rule. > "The upshot is simply a question of time, but that the time will come when the machines will hold the real supremacy over the world and its inhabitants is what no person of a truly philosophic mind can for a moment question." > **— Samuel Butler**, *1863, “Darwin Among the Machines,” The Press, Christchurch* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Butler Said Machine Supremacy Was a Matter of Time by Samuel Butler|Butler Said Machine Supremacy Was a Matter of Time by Samuel Butler]] The essay ends with an abolitionist proposal in a deliberately provocative Victorian argument; the reminder records the historical position, not an editorial recommendation. > "Our opinion is that war to the death should be instantly proclaimed against them. Every machine of every sort should be destroyed by the well-wisher of his species. Let there be no exceptions made, no quarter shown." > **— Samuel Butler**, *1863, “Darwin Among the Machines,” The Press, Christchurch* [[reminders/Risk Debate/Butler Called for War on Every Machine by Samuel Butler|Butler Called for War on Every Machine by Samuel Butler]] Butler’s language of servitude is part of his evolutionary analogy and a prompt to analyze dependency. > "This at once proves that the mischief is already done, that our servitude has commenced in good earnest, that we have raised a race of beings whom it is beyond our power to destroy, and that we are not only enslaved but are absolutely acquiescent in our bondage." > **— Samuel Butler**, *1863, “Darwin Among the Machines,” The Press, Christchurch* [[reminders/Machine Succession/We May Already Depend on What We Built by Samuel Butler|We May Already Depend on What We Built by Samuel Butler]]