MÁS ALLÁ DEL RELOJ COMO MODELO DEL SER VIVO: LA DISTINCIÓN MÁQUINA NATURAL Y MÁQUINA ARTIFICIAL EN LEIBNIZ

ABSTRACT During the seventeenth century, the clock seems the most appropriate model for thinking about living beings. The German philosopher G. W. Leibniz (1646-1716), is part of the mechanical tradition that conceives living beings from the clock or the automata’s model, but he establishes an essential distinction between natural and artificial machines. This distinction shows the limits of the mechanical model. The machines of nature are infinitely complex machines, machines within machines ad infinitum; the artificial machines, instead, reach a limit of complexity. This distinction forces...