# Samuel Butler **Domain:** Literature / Evolutionary Thought / Machine Intelligence **Doc Type:** Thinker Node **Maturity:** Developed **Related:** [[wiki/Erewhon|Erewhon]], [[wiki/Alan Turing|Alan Turing]], [[wiki/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]] ## Definition **Samuel Butler (1835–1902)** was an English author whose 1872 satirical novel *Erewhon* incorporated the “Book of the Machines,” a speculative treatment of machine evolution, machine dependence and the possibility that machinery could exceed human control. ## Corpus Function Butler supplies a nineteenth-century literary ancestor for the machine-succession question. Alan Turing explicitly invoked *Erewhon* when he projected that learning machines could outstrip human powers, communicate with one another and eventually take control. The connection is a documented citation by Turing, not evidence that Butler and Turing described technically identical systems. ## Relationships - **Authored work:** [[wiki/Erewhon|Erewhon]] contains Butler’s “Book of the Machines.” - **Documented reception:** [[wiki/Alan Turing|Alan Turing]] named Butler and *Erewhon* in *Intelligent Machinery, A Heretical Theory* around 1951. - **Collection route:** [[collections/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]]. - **Source article:** [[articles/AI Escape Is the Wrong Metaphor|AI Escape Is the Wrong Metaphor]]. ## Simple Reminders, Quotations, and Thoughts > "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]] ## Sources / Provenance - [Samuel Butler’s *Erewhon* | Project Gutenberg](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1906) - [AMT/B/4 | The Turing Digital Archive](https://turingarchive.kings.cam.ac.uk/publications-lectures-and-talks-amtb/amt-b-4)