R.U.R. and the Vision of Artificial Life

by Karel Capek, Jitka Cejkova (Editor)

Overview

A new translation of Karel Čapek’s play R.U.R.—which famously coined the term “robot”—and a collection of essays reflecting on the play’s legacy from scientists and scholars who work in artificial life and robotics.

Karel Čapek's “R.U.R.” and the Vision of Artificial Life offers a new, highly faithful translation by Štěpán Šimek of Czech novelist, playwright, and critic Karel Čapek’s play R.U.R.: Rossum’s Universal Robots, as well as twenty essays from contemporary writers on the 1920 play. R.U.R. is perhaps best known for first coining the term “robot” (in Czech, robota means serfdom or arduous drudgery). The twenty essays in this new English edition, beautifully edited by Jitka Čejková, are selected from Robot 100, an edited collection in Czech with perspectives from 100 contemporary voices that was published in 2020 to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the play.

Čapek’s robots were autonomous beings, but biological, not mechanical, made of chemically synthesized soft matter resembling living tissue, like the synthetic humans in Blade Runner, Westworld, or Ex Machina. The contributors to the collection—scientists and other scholars—explore the legacy of the play and its connections to the current state of research in artificial life, or ALife. Throughout the book, it is impossible to ignore Čapek’s prescience, as his century-old science fiction play raises contemporary questions with respect to robotics, synthetic biology, technology, artificial life, and artificial intelligence, anticipating many of the formidable challenges we face today.

Contributors
Jitka Čejková, Miguel Aguilera, Iñigo R. Arandia, Josh Bongard, Julyan Cartwright, Seth Bullock, Dominique Chen, Gusz Eiben, Tom Froese, Carlos Gershenson, Inman Harvey, Jana Horáková, Takashi Ikegami, Sina Khajehabdollahi, George Musser, Geoff Nitschke, Julie Nováková, Antoine Pasquali, Hemma Philamore, Lana Sinapayen, Hiroki Sayama, Nathaniel Virgo, Olaf Witkowski

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780262544504
Publisher:	MIT Press
Publication date:	01/16/2024
Pages:	312
Sales rank:	394,546
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.84(d)

About the Author

Karel Čapek (1890–1938) was a Czech novelist, short story writer, playwright, and essayist best known for his dystopian works. He was the author of War with the Newts, The Makropulos Affair, The Absolute at Large, The White Disease, and many other notable works.

Jitka Čejková is Associate Professor in the Chemical Robotics Laboratory at the University of Chemistry and Technology Prague. Her research focuses on how chemical engineers can contribute to artificial life research.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION ix
Jitka Čejková

R.U.R. (ROSSUM’S UNIVERSAL ROBOTS) 1
Karel Čapek, translated by Štěpán S. Šimek

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE 99
ESSAYS 

1 ROBOTS AND THE PRECOCIOUS BIRTH OF SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY 105
Julyan Cartwright 

2 ANOTHER METHOD WITH THE POTENTIAL TO DEVELOP LIFE 117
Nathaniel Virgo

3 HUMANS AND MACHINES: DIFFERENCES AND SIMILARITIES
121
Carlos Gershenson

4 R.U.R. AND THE ROBOT REVOLUTION: INTELLIGENCE AND LABOR, SOCIETY AND AUTONOMY 133
Inman Harvey

5 IT WASN’T WRONG TO DREAM: THE PARADISE OR HELL OF OUR JOBLESS FUTURE 147
Julie Nováková

6 R.U.R.: A SHREWD PLUTOCRAT, A GENIUS ENGINEER, AND AN ANTI-SUE WALK INTO A BAR 153
Lana Sinapayen



7 ARTIFICIAL PANPSYCHISM 161
George Musser

8 WHAT IS “THE SECRET OF LIFE”? THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM IN ČAPEK’S R.U.R. 169
Tom Froese

9 THE ROBOT 177
Jana Horáková

10 IS THE “SOUL” SYNONYMOUS WITH CONSCIOUSNESS? 193
Sina Khajehabdollahi

11 SCIENCE WITHOUT CONSCIENCE IS THE SOUL’S PERDITION 199
Antoine Pasquali

12 KAREL ČAPEK: THE VISIONARY OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND ARTIFICIAL LIFE 207
Hiroki Sayama

13 ROSSUM’S UNIVERSAL XENOBOTS 213
Josh Bongard

14 WHY ARE NO MORE CHILDREN BEING BORN? 217
Hemma Philamore

15 LOVE IN THE TIME OF ROOMBA 221
Seth Bullock

16 THE LESSON OF AFFECTION FROM THE WEAK ROBOTS 227
Dominique Chen

17 GENERATIVE ETHICS IN ARTIFICIAL LIFE 233
Takashi Ikegami

18 FROM R.U.R. TO ROBOT EVOLUTION 241
Geoff Nitschke and Gusz Eiben

19 ROBOTS AT THE EDGE OF CHAOS AND THE PHASE TRANSITIONS OF LIFE 251
Miguel Aguilera and Iñigo R. Arandia

20 ROBOTIC LIFE BEYOND EARTH 259
Olaf Witkowski



AFTERWORD: “THE AUTHOR OF THE ROBOTS DEFENDS HIMSELF” 265
Karel Čapek

CONTRIBUTORS 269
ILLUSTRATION CREDITS 275
NOTES 277
INDEX 289

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“This indispensable volume offers a new English translation of Čapek's influential play, restoring its original structure, as the accompanying array of essays provide valuable context and interpretation. Capek's prescient meditation on human-android relations is timely and necessary.”
— Mark Kingwell, Professor of Philosophy, University of Toronto; author of Singular Creatures

“More relevant now than ever, this is Karel Čapek’s fascinating and visionary story about (artificial) life, science, soul, and love. The play is complemented with modern reflections on creation and humanity by artificial life scientists.”
— Steen Rasmussen, Professor in Physics, University of Southern Denmark; coeditor of Protocells: Bridging Nonliving and Living Matter

“I was thrilled by this brilliant new translation of R.U.R., the original robot uprising tale, that is as relevant today as it was a century ago. This is a must-have book for anyone interested in the history of technology and its impact on politics and society.”
— Annalee Newitz, author of Autonomous and The Terraformers

Editorial Reviews

“R.U.R. is fascinating and bizarre. . . . The most important contribution of the volume is a new translation of the play by Štěpán Šimek . . . who manages to capture the surreal weirdness of Čapek's dark comedy of errors while making the text accessible to contemporary audiences. . . . Čapek's masterpiece reminds us first that just because we can does not mean we should.”
—Science

“[The essays] are full of surprising insights and together constitute a fascinating experiment in how scientists might cast new light on a literary classic. In the process, they confirm the prescience of the radical questions Čapek raised a hundred years ago. . . . In our age of ChatGPT . . . we may return to Čapek for his prescient sense of how market logic underwrites scientific certainty, and vice versa.” — Los Angeles Review of Books

“Makes for fascinating reading.”
—IEEE Spectrum

“A must-read for anyone interested in ALife.”
—Irish Times

“We are still reading [Čapek] today, and as R.U.R and the Vision of Artificial Life shows, finding new significance in everything that emerged from minds such as . . . Čapek’s.”
—Orwell Society

“The translation of the play, by Štĕpán Šimek, is a revelation. . . . The book is well worth buying and adding to reading lists on the basis of Šimek's achievement. . . . Fans of Čapek, and proponents of the possibilities of literature for investigating histories and philosophies of science, should be grateful to Jitka Čejková and Štĕpán Šimek for introducing his wonderful work to a new generation.”
—British Journal for the History of Science

"Čapek’s far-seeing tragicomic satire blurs the lines between the human and the biomechanical."
—Arts Fuse

From the Publisher