Unnatural

Book excerpt: In Unnatural, Philip Ball delves beneath the surface of the cultural history of 'anthropoesis' - the creation of artificial people - to explore what it tells us about our views on life, humanity, creativity and technology, and the soul. He argues that to call something 'unnatural' is to make a moral judgement that has its origins in religious thought. Unnatural traces the threads that link the legendary inventor Daedalus to Goethe's tragic Faust, the automata-making magicians of E. T. A. Hoffmann, the first robots, and of course to Mary Shelley's Victor Frankenstein.