# 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 In *Erewhon*, Butler places a warning about machine dependence alongside an answering argument that machines are extensions of human embodiment. The voices should be read together. > “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]] > "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)