A short while ago I read the essay ‘The Bird and the Machine‘ by Loren Eiseley, a naturalist. I thought that the material consisted of fairly interesting reading. Eiseley skillfully incorporated a story with informative information that really taught me about the differences between life and machines no matter how refined machines are. I thought that the story really illustrated the ways that birds and just life in general could have feelings, ranging from sorrow and loss to joy and love. I really enjoyed reading the essay, which is part of ‘The Star Thrower,’ a compilation of Eiseley’s essays. While I enjoyed reading the story about how Eiseley captured a bird, but let it go because of its mate, I also liked the part about how machines were becoming intelligent and learning how to do things faster and more accurately than humans. The two were woven together cleverly so that the story about the birds made me wonder about whether machines would ever be able to feel emotions instead of simply doing what humans told them to. Eiseley suggests that they won’t, and because of that, will never actually become better than humans. Humans, after all, are more complex than simply being the energy that makes up cells, which are combined to create humans. I would rate this essay a 9/10 and recommend it for anyone who’s interested in learning about nature. While it may, at first, seem like dense reading, it’s actually quite interesting.
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