Adrienne Mayor

Adrienne Mayor is a research scholar in Classics and the History of Science, and a Berggruen Fellow 2018-19, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University.

Her newest book is Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology.

From Mayor's Q&A with James Pethokoukis for AEIdeas:

Pethokoukis: I often think about how science fiction stories seem to inspire actual inventions. One case is the Star Trek communicators, the design of which may have inspired the early flip phone. Did we see any of that in ancient Greece? Were things the Greeks tried to build inspired by stories, or did this work the other way around? Do the myths inspire actual attempts to create devices for the ancient Greeks?

Mayor: I think there is some evidence for that with real artisans and craftsmen and engineers, especially in what you might call the Silicon Valley of antiquity — the city of Alexandria in Egypt.

After the time of Alexander in the fourth Century BC up through about the first century AD, that city was a center of inventions that included self-moving devices, and robots, and automatons, some of them quite large and some of them miniaturized. So I found that many of the real inventions from that time period did actually feature mythological characters and situations. So, I think that the myths actually did inspire real technicians and engineers to build real self-moving devices and automatons.

Pethokoukis: You mentioned Alexandria as the Silicon Valley of the time. Given how much the Greeks focused on hubris, you know, arrogance gone wild in the cautionary tales, what would the Greeks have thought about Silicon Valley today? I mean, you work at Stanford University — what would they have made of the modern technologists?

Mayor: I think they would have thought back to the myth of Pandora, and I mentioned Prometheus. Prometheus was the guy who brought the gift of fire, actually the gods’ technology of fire, to the vulnerable humans. He was really worried about humanity and their survival. I mentioned that Pandora was brought down to earth to insinuate herself into human society. She was given as a bride to Prometheus’ brother, Epimetheus, and I think the Greeks had a sense of humor about these myths.

I mean, the name Prometheus means “foresight,” and the name of his brother Epimetheus, it means “hindsight,” the inability to look forward. And I think that the ancient Greeks today, if they traveled to Silicon Valley, would say...[read on]

The Page 99 Test: Gods and Robots.

--Marshal Zeringue