The University of Pittsburgh's Program in Medieval and Renaissance Studies and the Pittsburgh Consortium for Medieval and Renaissance Studies present the following lecture:<br><br>JONATHAN SAWDAY<br>(Chair of English Studies at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow)
<br><br>"Calculating Engines: Minds, Bodies, Sex and Machines on the Eve of the Enlightenment"<br><br>Thursday, September 27th at 4:30 in the Adamson Wing of Baker Hall (first<br>floor) at Carnegie Mellon University*
<br><br>*See the campus map, where Baker Hall is building #3:<br><a href="http://www.cmu.edu/oldhome/visitors/map/">http://www.cmu.edu/oldhome/visitors/map/</a><br><br>The lecture explores the fascination with the idea of creating artificial life and 'thinking machines' in the pre-enlightenment period. It concentrates on the pertinent ideas of Descartes, Hobbes, Pascal, and Leibniz, but ends by exploring the 'anti-machine' of the late seventeenth century,
i.e., the malfunctioning sex machines of the notorious John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. Professor Sawday's major publications include "The Body Emblazoned: Dissection and the Human Body in Renaissance Culture" (Routledge, 1995), and (with Neil Rhodes) "The Renaissance
<br>Computer: Knowledge Technology in the First Age of Print" (Routledge, 2000).<br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Nothing stays hidden under the sun.<br>Lady Margretha La Fauvelle<br>mka Margarita T. Rankin<br>Deputy Mininster A&S, BMDL
<br> \ | /<br>--( )--<br> / | \