'Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus' : Mary Shelley's Prescient, 1821 Novel of Humankind's Attempt to Understand the Meaning of Life and the Soul

Note: "Frankenstein, the Monster..." (1821) should be a primer for every modern student and researcher in Artificial Intelligence. The tortured musings of the cobbled-together monster (Ai components) give clues two hundred years later to applying the (Alan) Turing Test for self awareness and developing algorithms for modern artificial intelligence machines.
-----------
This was written in response to a request for comment regarding Mary Shelley, the early 1800's author of Frankenstein: or the Modern Prometheus, (1818) and Shelley's place in the evolving thinking about the meaning of life and the soul. Although Shelly might not to be significant in a discussion of 19th century tinking on these subjects, this blogger (Pericles21) feels Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein' is very important and played a central if not initiating part in framing the thinking about the soul, life and even artificial intelligence from 1818 to the Transhumanism movement of today. Mary Shelley wrote 'Frankenstein' on a dare in 1818 when she was very young and lacking a formal higher education especially technical (although home schooled by very well educated and devoted parents, the Godwin's) who were well known at the time in European intellectual and salon circles. Mary's father was the political philosopher William Godwin, and her mother was the philosopher and feminist, Mary Wollstonecraft. In addition to Mary Shelley's own varied literary works, she edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley and even is rumored to have assisted in editing the works of the great Romantic poet, Byron. But Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein' still ranks as a leader in establishing a new literary frontier in human imagination that explores the most sacred areas of human thought, life and the soul.
--------------
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was a product of her times, circa 1800. She participated in the thinking and discussions of her times about the nature of life and the soul. Remarkably for such a young person (age 19 at the time she wrote her first work, 'Frankenstein' in 1818) and a woman without formal education much less technical education, she was at the forefront of thinkers of her time (though unknowingly at first) about these topics. In particular, Shelley was caught up in the excitement of new scientific concepts in physiology, i.e., 'animal electricity' ala (Galvani, and discoveries in higher mathematics and science that would lead to the Riemann mathematical lectures in 1854, James Clerk Maxwell's 'Electromagnetic Relationships' in 1865, and eventually to Albert Einstein's Special Relativity Theory (1905), and along the same path of thought and imagination to great works in technical fiction and even art, e.g, the Cubist movement begun around 1905 and exampled by the painters, Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, Fernand Leger and Paul Cezanne.

Mary Shelley's intellectual world generated fictional works that expressed the excitement of new science which expanded the boundaries of human ingenuity and imagination. This new territory of the imagination based on scientific discovery led to the 1865 rendering of nascent quantum mechanical tenets of Uncertainy and other quantum principles in the fantasy worlds authored by Oxford mathematics professor (1855-81), Charles Dodgson (nome-de-plume, Lewis Carroll), notably his 'Alice in Wonderland' (1865) and 'Through the Looking Glass' (1871). And also in the works of Jules Verne, aka 'The Father of Science Fiction'- '20 Thousand Leagues Under the Sea' (1870) and   'Around the World in 80 Days' (1873); in the breakthrough science fiction works of HG Wells (biologist) -  'The Time Machine' (1895), 'The War of the Worlds' (1898) a truly out-of-this-world vision of non-earth (extraterrestrial life forms) and 'The Island of Dr Moreau' (1896) which must be placed as the inheritor of Mary Shelly's earlier 'Frankenstein'of 1818. 

Although Mary Shelley was not a scientist nor formally educated, she was home-schooled by very well educated and sophisticated parents. And her parents' home was an important intellectual scene of the very important 'Salon' phenomenon of 17th and 18th century Europe.  In the scene, Mary was  'taken up' as a teen age girl by the famous poet Percy Shelly and was introduced and immersed into the company of leading figures of 'forward' thinking in Europe, including the mentoring 'attention' from the poet and intellectual, George Gordon Lord Byron.  In this company, on an idyllic Swiss lake vacation, Mary Shelley shyly accepted a 'dare' to write a story about some important or interesting theme of the day.  Venturing forth from in this game, Mary wrote 'Frankenstein: or the Modern Prometheus' (1818). 'Frankenstein' put into narrative words the questions raised but not clearly stated from the serious scientific thinking of the time about the nature of the soul and life, and following on from there, race and species which in 1839 surfaced through the  biology field work of Charles Darwin, 'The Voyage of the Beagle', and  Darwin's later great breakthrough,'The Origin of the Species' (1859).

Despite Mary Shelley's lack of formal education, especially technical,  Mary's 'Frankenstein'  was at the leading edge of the wave of emotion among Europe's salon intellectuals who pondered the place (and meaning) of humanity in the midst of rapidly advancing 'new science'. A principal focus of those salon debates was, 'what are the biological and/or yet undiscovered principles of life and especially the soul'?

Following from her immersion in the leading salon discussions of her time, Mary Shelly explored what might be the consequences of mankind's 'tampering' with the sacredness of life and soul. In this context, Dr Frankenstein's creation is much more than a 'put-together monster' but a representation of  humanity itself, stumbling along blindly and naively into new realms not completely understood and loaded with potential risks and dangers.

Of great 'prescience' in 'Frankenstein' is how Mary Shelley writes about the monster's musings (and laments) about his physiological incompleteness despite his self-awareness, his worries about who could love him, his search for love and his thoughts about what to do with himself. These are concepts of man-made intelligence that Mary Shelley rendered into words in 1818 but would not be addressed seriously until the 1940's mathematical work of Alan Turing's 'Turing Test', an algorithmic method of determining whether an artificial intelligence is self-aware, i.e., sentient. Interestingly, in the context of this discussion, Alan Turing turned his mathematical prowess into developing a theory for the chemical basis of morphogenesis.

More modern examples of Mary Shelley's legacy of exploring the meaning of life and soul would include Philip K Dick's, 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep' (1962) (also made into the film hit, 'Blade Runner'  (1982), and  Ursula Le Guinn's ('The Left Hand of Darkness' (1969), Samuel Delaney's 'Babel-17' (1966)  and Walter Moseley's 'Blue Light' (1998) and 'Futureland: Nine Stories of an Imminent World' (2001).

Mary Shelley's inquiring spirit lives on  today. Modern (current, 2015) science is the most recent chapter of her legacy (and of her contemporary fantasy authors, e.g.,Wells, Verne, et al) of  imagination- become-real, e.g., organ transplants, genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), and the looming 'trans-human singularity' ( Neal Stephenson, Ray Kurzweil, Jody Turner, Vladimir Mayakovsky, et al).

Is The Great Singularity Still Coming?

Much has been said about an approaching 'Singularity' in human cultural organization and behavior, and even in the nature of human existence at its core, i.e. should/will 'we' cast aside our bio-bodies and go-fearlessly (or somewhat fearlessly) into a #GreatNebulo of new existence defined as a world of virtuality wherein humanity will exist as cyber imprints within vast but nanoscale arrays of massive-memory-quantum-computing-systems (#MMQCS).

One major voice predicting the approach of a Singularity is Ray Kurzweil.

I laud Kurzweil. Though retired as a practicing (materials and quantum) scientist, I've diligently followed the scientific journals and have developed 'hobbies' in advanced technologies such as energy and nanotech.

I discovered 'Kurzweil' long after coming to my own opinion that humankind was headlong racing to a #techno-cultural-conjointure that will be marked by an explosive utilization of massively rapid technological advancement resulting in a complete transformation of humankind - its signatures such as culture, cities, and even human formats. By 'human formats', I mean body shapes, functions or even the future need for bodies. In short, I felt 10 years ago and more so today from looking out at our American culture as perhaps the prime example of techno-cultural change, humanity has not long to go before experiencing a 'Great Transformation' which will be advented by crossing a technological threshold most likely in bio-cyber areas. This will lead fairly overnight to 'going cyber', virtual existence, or #LivingInTheCloud. The technologies will be the combination of:
#SentientArtificialIntelligence (#SAI),
#NanoTechMassiveMemoryAssemblies (#NTMMA), #NanoscaleQuantumComputing (utilizing #ExtendedCubitQuantumScaling (#ECQS),
and nano-engineering, including #Nanoscale-Space-Temporal-Propulsion (#NSTP) which will require immensely less energy (10exp-15 factor?) than human scale space craft. Others might estimate different ratios but the general picture is painted.

These breakthroughs will mean unlimited lifetimes and opportunities to investigate the universe via ultimately #NanoArkAssemblies ( millions of personalities contained in nanoscale-memory-computing systems).

Kurzweil and others speak of the 'Singularity' happening in terms of several hundred years. I believe, knowing a little of how DARPA works, 100 years or less will be required. I would not be shocked if DARPA (or international combine of cooperating government agencies despite lower level disagreements) has already progressed well along this general technological route.

In summary, I feel Kurzweil and others show a maybe more-than-mild degree of obsolescence in their predicted timeline for the occurrence of The Singularity. (And once real threshold-crossing occurs, there will be a succession of Singularities marked, and caused, by technologies and implemented-cyber-concepts well beyond what we can fantasize about today.

The Singularity Cometh: Is Writing Science Fiction Still Possible?

This is a brain spark built on an article in the I09.com site, offering a POV on the anticipated Confluence of new and life-changing technology 25 years or so hence, and the resultant social challenges for us mere humans. The article looks at the problem of the SINGULARITY.

Thesis: how can we now write about the future when the Singularity cometh and will change everything by leaps and bounds?

Is it becoming impossible to write about a relatively near-future that will likely be so different, none or very few current authors (in his or her right mind...hmmm) can even fantasize? By most expectations, this historical threshold of a new human spurt in techno-socio evolution (the Singularity) will happen in a few decades. But apart from literature, what about the real changes themselves? Will our physical bodies become passe’, self-regenerating, unnecessary? So far any changes can only be surmised in terms of magnitude and generality, not specifics. Current writers and thinkers can’t imagine or dream what our lives will be after the Singularity, although some new vocabulary has come to be, e.g. “post-human” and “trans-human”, which suggest ...…what these words try to grapple with, I suppose.

The Singularity? “Wha” you might say? Well, lets educate ourselves broadly. First, to set current context, there are two meanings of “Singularity” floating around the Culture these days and both carry lots of weight, so "Singularity" is a double Meme. For the nerdy-nerds who visit my “other” blog, The Singularity refers to the fearful “Naked Black Hole”, a cosmic-physics predicted artifact in the form of an infinitely small point in space-time with such immense gravity it chug-a-lugs planets, stars and galaxies at a phenomenal rate…and supposedly spits them back out but into a different space-time universe. The NBH has less likelihood of existing in our sector of the universe than a Jack Russell terrier beating all the Vegas and Monte Carlo black jack tables every play, every day for several years…but since the whole universe is so large, such odds are not so bad. Let’s say most scientists are hoping this is one prediction that is not detected in our corner of the universe. Get the point?

But the Singularity about which we speak here is a tamer (maybe)event that is human-significant, tho involving and driven by human technology. This Singularity will affect our culture and how we will live. This Singularity defines and is defined by a sort of threshold in human affairs (cultural history). Human cleverness will finally whole hog get away from us,hopefully just for a while, and we will need all the species intelligence and cooperation we can muster to come out the other side with sanity, though we will be morphed in many ways. But, again maybe we will finally do the Job and just evolve away.

Our Singularity, 20-30 years from now, will be a confluence of several or more major technical advances, already conceptualized and under research, which will pop into being and “presto-whamo” there you are: newness abounding, sentient artificial intelligent machines (AI), DNA tinkering leading to centuries-long life spans, energy surpluses from harnessing fusion, no limits to pretty much everything of consequence even those we can’t now imagine such as a myriad of delightful quantum devices and toys among other things like teleportation (we’ve already demo’d it in the lab over a meter’s distance tho with just molecules).. Our human-made Singularity will challenge us in many exciting and difficult ways.

Our evolved monkey curiosity will have finally confronted us with an unavoidable door opening and consequences of our own making. We will have to step through that door and develop new paradigms for our lives, our social interactions and our vision of the “future”. Our “bodies” will have new meanings in themselves and to us personally. At base level, there will be artificial intelligence (AI): AI will very likely be poly-modal - it will take the forms of being external to us (near- thinking cyber-robots, cyborgs), internal within us (souped up brains, super hearing and vision, etc), and hybrid - e.g., a true organic internet with brain implants, enhanced human bio-traits via more genetic tinkering and further paradigm shifting advances. In short, we might be presented with the choice, for real this time, of keeping, artificially enhancing or just leaving behind our physical bodies. The meaning of being human will change, hence the terms trans-human and post-human.

Perhaps most importantly, what will we do with ourselves? The Hunter-gatherer mode will be gone as a survival need, but it might hang around as a nagging itch. Maybe it will mean we can choose what “life form” suits our fancy. Personalities perhaps can be uploaded into vastly large memory quantum-multibit arrays on a microchip (VLQMA), or confined in a gaseous bubble (possessing infinitely large quantum degeneracies). Anyone for Self-Aware-Plasmoidal-Sentient-Entity? SAPS!!

Although it's argued that since we can't imagine life after The Singularity, it's almost impossible to write about it. On the other hand, some posit, with good reason, that you could bring Socrates forward in time and show him the Singularity World and he would understand!?!?! But then again, imho so would Phillip K. Dick (1968, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” which was made into the movie “Blade Runner”, 1982). Is it truly becoming impossible to write about the future? The recent sci-fi/cultural-commentary movie, “District 9”, presents an alternative view that ultra-advanced technology might co-exist with unsolved human-life trivialities such as slums, unsolved garbage disposal, prejudice, etc. Message? The road to Nirvana is long and winding. [more recent authors on this topic: C.Stross, The Glasshouse (2006)and Singularity Sky (2003); J.McDevitt is another post singularity thinker.

Post script. For further interest and reading, Forbes presents coverage of the October 3-4,2009, 4th Annual Transhumanist Summit in NYC ("Calling All Transhumanists", Courtney Boyd Meyers). Here is a brief taste of the thinking of the Summit president, Michael Vassar:

Michael Vassar, the president of the institute, gives the Singularity just under a 25% chance of happening by 2040 and a 70% chance by 2060. When we do cross that line, Vassar says nothing will be the same. "Humans living in the post-Singularity world will be as powerless as jellyfish are in today's world," he says. His odds don't take into account the chances of the world plunging into rapid technological decline due to a nuclear war or a worldwide collapse into barbarism.

Vassar's six staffers at the Singularity Institute, including Kurzweil, publish papers with titles such as, "Uncertain Future Project," "Global Catastrophic Risk Project" and "Economics and Machine Intelligence," and have developed software that supposedly predicts technology's trajectories and generates odds on the occurrences of global catastrophes like nuclear war and global warming.

We can expect a flurry of Singularity discussions and conferences as time moves along.