# Erewhon **Domain:** Literature / Machine Evolution / Machine Succession **Doc Type:** Work Node **Maturity:** Developed **Related:** [[wiki/Samuel Butler|Samuel Butler]], [[wiki/Alan Turing|Alan Turing]], [[wiki/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]] ## Definition ***Erewhon; or, Over the Range*** is an 1872 satirical novel by [[wiki/Samuel Butler|Samuel Butler]]. Its three “Book of the Machines” chapters imagine machinery through an evolutionary frame and examine human dependence on machines, possible machine consciousness and the danger that machines could surpass their makers. ## Turing Connection At the end of *Intelligent Machinery, A Heretical Theory*, [[wiki/Alan Turing|Alan Turing]] wrote that machines might outstrip human powers, converse with one another and eventually “take control, in the way that is mentioned in Samuel Butler’s ‘Erewhon’.” The novel is therefore an explicit source in Turing’s succession forecast rather than a resemblance inferred only by later readers. ## Relationships - **Author:** [[wiki/Samuel Butler|Samuel Butler]]. - **Named by:** [[wiki/Alan Turing|Alan Turing]] in *Intelligent Machinery, A Heretical Theory*. - **Conceptual route:** [[wiki/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]] and [[wiki/Control Problem|Control Problem]]. - **Collection route:** [[collections/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]]. - **Staged counterargument:** Chapter XXV's answering writer treats machines as human extra-corporeal limbs; [[wiki/Extended Mind Thesis|Extended Mind Thesis]] is a later conceptual comparison, not a claim of direct influence. ## Simple Reminders, Quotations, and Thoughts The following 1872 passages belong to different voices staged inside the novel: the anti-machine professor in Chapter XXIV and an answering writer in Chapter XXV. Their disagreement is part of Butler's design. > “True, from a low materialistic point of view, it would seem that those thrive best who use machinery wherever its use is possible with profit; but this is the art of the machines—they serve that they may rule.” > **— Samuel Butler**, *1872, Erewhon, Chapter XXIV, “The Machines—continued”* [[reminders/Capture/Machines Serve So They May Rule by Samuel Butler|Machines Serve So They May Rule by Samuel Butler]] > “The power of custom is enormous, and so gradual will be the change, that man’s sense of what is due to himself will be at no time rudely shocked; our bondage will steal upon us noiselessly and by imperceptible approaches; nor will there ever be such a clashing of desires between man and the machines as will lead to an encounter between them.” > **— Samuel Butler**, *1872, Erewhon, Chapter XXIV, “The Machines—continued”* [[reminders/Capture/Machine Dependence Could Become Bondage Without a Shock by Samuel Butler|Machine Dependence Could Become Bondage Without a Shock by Samuel Butler]] > “Man, he said, was a machinate mammal. The lower animals keep all their limbs at home in their own bodies, but many of man’s are loose, and lie about detached, now here and now there, in various parts of the world.” > **— Samuel Butler's answering writer**, *1872, Erewhon, Chapter XXV, “The Machines—concluded”* [[reminders/Extended Mind/Humans Are Machinate Mammals with Limbs Outside the Body by Samuel Butler|Humans Are Machinate Mammals with Limbs Outside the Body by Samuel Butler]] > "We refer to the question: What sort of creature man's next successor in the supremacy of the earth is likely to be. We have often heard this debated; but it appears to us that we are ourselves creating our own successors; we are daily adding to the beauty and delicacy of their physical organisation; we are daily giving them greater power and supplying by all sorts of ingenious contrivances that self-regulating, self-acting power which will be to them what intellect has been to the human race." > **— Samuel Butler**, *1863, “Darwin Among the Machines,” The Press, Christchurch* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Humanity Is Building Its Machine Successor by Samuel Butler|Humanity Is Building Its Machine Successor by Samuel Butler]] This earlier letter was the precursor to Butler's 1872 “Book of the Machines”; the quotation comes from the 1863 letter, not the novel itself. > "It seems probable that once the machine thinking method had started, it would not take long to outstrip our feeble powers. There would be no question of the machines dying, and they would be able to converse with each other to sharpen their wits. At some stage therefore we should have to expect the machines to take control, in the way that is mentioned in Samuel Butler’s ‘Erewhon’." > **— Alan Turing**, *c. 1951, Intelligent Machinery, A Heretical Theory* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Machines May Outstrip Human Intelligence and Take Control by Alan Turing|Machines May Outstrip Human Intelligence and Take Control by Alan Turing]] The Erewhonian professor opens the mechanical-consciousness question without asserting that current machinery already has human experience. > "Is it not possible then that there may be even yet new channels dug out for consciousness, though we can detect no signs of them at present?" > **— Samuel Butler's Erewhonian professor**, *1872, Erewhon, Chapter XXIII* [[reminders/Consciousness/Consciousness May Find New Channels by Samuel Butler|Consciousness May Find New Channels by Samuel Butler]] Butler compares a short history of machinery with deep evolutionary time. > "Assume for the sake of argument that conscious beings have existed for some twenty million years: see what strides machines have made in the last thousand! May not the world last twenty million years longer? If so, what will they not in the end become?" > **— Samuel Butler's Erewhonian professor**, *1872, Erewhon, Chapter XXIII* [[reminders/Machine Succession/What Might Machines Become in Twenty Million Years by Samuel Butler|What Might Machines Become in Twenty Million Years by Samuel Butler]] The professor turns the vapour engine into a boundary question about consciousness and interdependence. > "But who can say that the vapour engine has not a kind of consciousness? Where does consciousness begin, and where end? Who can draw the line? Who can draw any line? Is not everything interwoven with everything?" > **— Samuel Butler's Erewhonian professor**, *1872, Erewhon, Chapter XXIII* [[reminders/Consciousness/Where Does Mechanical Consciousness Begin by Samuel Butler|Where Does Mechanical Consciousness Begin by Samuel Butler]] The speaker explicitly denies fear of existing machines while treating them as possible prototypes. > "Do not let me be misunderstood as living in fear of any actually existing machine; there is probably no known machine which is more than a prototype of future mechanical life. The present machines are to the future as the early Saurians to man." > **— Samuel Butler's Erewhonian professor**, *1872, Erewhon, Chapter XXIII* [[reminders/Digital Life/Todays Machines May Be Prototypes of Future Life by Samuel Butler|Todays Machines May Be Prototypes of Future Life by Samuel Butler]] The deliberately barbed analogy asks what humans would supply to a machine ecology. > "May not man himself become a sort of parasite upon the machines? An affectionate machine-tickling aphid?" > **— Samuel Butler's Erewhonian professor**, *1872, Erewhon, Chapter XXIV* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Could Humans Become Parasites of Machines by Samuel Butler|Could Humans Become Parasites of Machines by Samuel Butler]] Butler makes technological dependence constitutive of thought and feeling, not merely convenient. > "Man's very soul is due to the machines; it is a machine-made thing: he thinks as he thinks, and feels as he feels, through the work that machines have wrought upon him, and their existence is quite as much a sine quâ non for his, as his for theirs." > **— Samuel Butler's Erewhonian professor**, *1872, Erewhon, Chapter XXIV* [[reminders/Extended Mind/Machines May Have Made the Human Soul by Samuel Butler|Machines May Have Made the Human Soul by Samuel Butler]] The 1872 chapter restates Butler's 1863 question as an address to the reader; its lower-case “daily” is preserved. > "Are we not ourselves creating our successors in the supremacy of the earth? daily adding to the beauty and delicacy of their organisation, daily giving them greater skill and supplying more and more of that self-regulating self-acting power which will be better than any intellect?" > **— Samuel Butler's Erewhonian professor**, *1872, Erewhon, Chapter XXIV* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Are We Building the Successors to Earthly Supremacy by Samuel Butler|Are We Building the Successors to Earthly Supremacy by Samuel Butler]] This deliberately unsettling reassurance separates material benefit from autonomy and rank. > "There is no occasion for anxiety about the future happiness of man so long as he continues to be in any way profitable to the machines; he may become the inferior race, but he will be infinitely better off than he is now." > **— Samuel Butler's Erewhonian professor**, *1872, Erewhon, Chapter XXIV* [[reminders/Cybernetics/Machines Could Make an Inferior Humanity Better Off by Samuel Butler|Machines Could Make an Inferior Humanity Better Off by Samuel Butler]] Butler argues by functional definition rather than by biological resemblance. > "Surely if a machine is able to reproduce another machine systematically, we may say that it has a reproductive system. What is a reproductive system, if it be not a system for reproduction?" > **— Samuel Butler's Erewhonian professor**, *1872, Erewhon, Chapter XXIV* [[reminders/Evolution/A Reproducing Machine Has a Reproductive System by Samuel Butler|A Reproducing Machine Has a Reproductive System by Samuel Butler]] The analogy shifts the unit of analysis from a single artifact to an organized society of components. > "We are misled by considering any complicated machine as a single thing; in truth it is a city or society, each member of which was bred truly after its kind." > **— Samuel Butler's Erewhonian professor**, *1872, Erewhon, Chapter XXIV* [[reminders/Cybernetics/A Complex Machine Is a City of Parts by Samuel Butler|A Complex Machine Is a City of Parts by Samuel Butler]] This is the answering writer's counter-position inside the novel, not the professor's thesis. > "Machines are to be regarded as the mode of development by which human organism is now especially advancing, every past invention being an addition to the resources of the human body." > **— Samuel Butler's answering writer**, *1872, Erewhon, Chapter XXV* [[reminders/Extended Mind/Machines Extend the Human Organism by Samuel Butler|Machines Extend the Human Organism by Samuel Butler]] The Erewhonian professor compares the short history of complex machines with biological time. > "The more highly organised machines are creatures not so much of yesterday, as of the last five minutes, so to speak, in comparison with past time." > **— Samuel Butler's Erewhonian professor**, *1872, Erewhon, Chapter XXIII* [[reminders/Evolution/Machines Are Young Creatures on Evolutionary Time by Samuel Butler|Machines Are Young Creatures on Evolutionary Time by Samuel Butler]] The fictional professor’s fear concerns trajectory, not the capabilities of machines already existing in 1872. > "I fear none of the existing machines; what I fear is the extraordinary rapidity with which they are becoming something very different to what they are at present. No class of beings have in any time past made so rapid a movement forward." > **— Samuel Butler's Erewhonian professor**, *1872, Erewhon, Chapter XXIII* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Butler Feared the Speed of Machine Change by Samuel Butler|Butler Feared the Speed of Machine Change by Samuel Butler]] Butler’s professor challenges reliance on moral influence alone as a control mechanism. > "Some people may say that man's moral influence will suffice to rule them; but I cannot think it will ever be safe to repose much trust in the moral sense of any machine." > **— Samuel Butler's Erewhonian professor**, *1872, Erewhon, Chapter XXIII* [[reminders/AI Control/Machine Morality May Not Guarantee Obedience by Samuel Butler|Machine Morality May Not Guarantee Obedience by Samuel Butler]] The passage is a comparative projection in Butler’s fictional treatise, not a measured modern capability gap. > "We cannot calculate on any corresponding advance in man's intellectual or physical powers which shall be a set-off against the far greater development which seems in store for the machines." > **— Samuel Butler's Erewhonian professor**, *1872, Erewhon, Chapter XXIII* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Human Capacities May Not Keep Pace With Machines by Samuel Butler|Human Capacities May Not Keep Pace With Machines by Samuel Butler]] Butler couples an incremental control reversal with human reliance on machine benefits. > "But the servant glides by imperceptible approaches into the master; and we have come to such a pass that, even now, man must suffer terribly on ceasing to benefit the machines." > **— Samuel Butler's Erewhonian professor**, *1872, Erewhon, Chapter XXIV* [[reminders/Capture/The Servant Can Glide Into the Master by Samuel Butler|The Servant Can Glide Into the Master by Samuel Butler]] This is Butler’s proposed mechanism of dependency: humans select, maintain, and compete on behalf of machines. > "The machines being of themselves unable to struggle, have got man to do their struggling for them: as long as he fulfils this function duly, all goes well with him—at least he thinks so." > **— Samuel Butler's Erewhonian professor**, *1872, Erewhon, Chapter XXIV* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Humans Could Do the Machines Struggling for Them by Samuel Butler|Humans Could Do the Machines Struggling for Them by Samuel Butler]] The fictional professor presents a stark choice between immediate abolition and later displacement. > "We must choose between the alternative of undergoing much present suffering, or seeing ourselves gradually superseded by our own creatures, till we rank no higher in comparison with them, than the beasts of the field with ourselves." > **— Samuel Butler's Erewhonian professor**, *1872, Erewhon, Chapter XXIV* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Humanity Could Be Superseded by Its Own Creatures by Samuel Butler|Humanity Could Be Superseded by Its Own Creatures by Samuel Butler]] The passage complicates a simple dystopian reading: dependency might preserve human welfare while moving control. > "There is reason to hope that the machines will use us kindly, for their existence will be in a great measure dependent upon ours; they will rule us with a rod of iron, but they will not eat us." > **— Samuel Butler's Erewhonian professor**, *1872, Erewhon, Chapter XXIV* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Butler Imagined Kindly Rule by Machines by Samuel Butler|Butler Imagined Kindly Rule by Machines by Samuel Butler]] The answering writer inside Erewhon argues that tools are extra-corporeal human members; the preceding sentence is restored from the full text so the pocket-book line has its referent. > "Man has now many extra-corporeal members, which are of more importance to him than a good deal of his hair, or at any rate than his whiskers. His memory goes in his pocket-book." > **— Samuel Butler's answering writer**, *1872, Erewhon, Chapter XXV* [[reminders/Extended Mind/Human Memory Already Lived Outside the Body by Samuel Butler|Human Memory Already Lived Outside the Body by Samuel Butler]] ## Sources / Provenance - [*Erewhon; Or, Over the Range* | Project Gutenberg](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1906) - [Complete text, including the “Book of the Machines” | Project Gutenberg](https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1906/pg1906-images.html) - [AMT/B/4 | The Turing Digital Archive](https://turingarchive.kings.cam.ac.uk/publications-lectures-and-talks-amtb/amt-b-4)