Hello everyone and welcome to the Minescape Podcast. I'm your host Sean Carroll.

Back in 1747, Julian Afroy De La Metrie wrote an influential book called Man a Machine.

This is, I think, in the Enlightenment period in Europe, one of the first works to come

out strongly in favor of being an atheist. There were hints by various people that maybe

God wasn't all used cracked up to be, but still this was absolutely clear, man a machine,

but God didn't exist. We human beings are more like machines than embodied spirits. The

18th century was a big time for machines in France and the rest of Europe, so this is a

vivid metaphor at the time. And De La Metrie was not one of the world's great philosophers,

but he was more like a pundit, I guess we would say, in these days. He had very vivid

metaphors and language and examples. He put his case in a very clear way for people to

understand. I remember one of the points that he made. I'm paraphrasing now his pen years

since I read it, but basically he was arguing against René Descartes' idea of mind-body

dualism. That a human being is a body, but then there's also a mind that is disembodied

and somehow they talk to each other and that makes the person. So De La Metrie didn't

buy this. He basically would say that the human being is a physical object and the mind

is emergent in our modern language. But the example he used was he says, look, when I

have had my cup of coffee or not had my cup of coffee, I'm a different person. Depending

on whether that's happened or not, how can you possibly believe that the mind is completely

separate from the body when it's perfectly clear that my mind is deeply affected by

what happens to my body? It's a very good point, really. And of course, the people who don't

believe him have answers to it, etc. But nevertheless, the example lingers in your mind.

These days, when we know even more about how the brain works, how the body works, how

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