the engine of the mind

This is a post that I originally published on April 12, 2016, which I've lightly edited. I retrieved it through the magic of the 'wayback machine'. 

Is artificial intelligence as novel as we think it is?

I found out recently that the words 'grammar' and 'glamour' are related and they both derive from a word that means magic. Think of the word grimoire, which is a book of magic - a book of spells. And the word 'spell'. We spell words and we cast spells.

The idea that words are magic is an old one. Wasn't that why Plato wanted to banish the poets - because they could use language to transform things, which is dangerous? But poets don't actually change things, they just seem to, which is probably worse.

In today's world, magicians perform tricks and witches cast spells. So, magicians are kind of like grammar and witches are like glamour. Witches and magicians are two different things, even though, if we take those words back to their original meanings, they ought not to be. Magic is trickery. Witchcraft is sorcery.

When I look up the etymology of the word 'sorcery' I find this: 'From Middle French sorcerie, ultimately derived from Latin sors ‎(“fate”), from Proto-Indo-European *seh₁- ‎(“to sort, lineup”)' To sort....interesting. So, 'grimoire', 'spell' and even 'sorcery' all had ordinary everyday meanings not associated with witchcraft. 

The etymology of the word trickery is really hard to find but I found a reference to trickery in the etymology of the word, 'engine'. Now this is really interesting, and again we are led back to systematic, concrete things, not esoteric, mysterious things. Engine.....around the year 1300, 'engine' meant a mechanical device (as it still does) but then it gets interesting because we can see from the other meanings that that word had, that it wasn't called that because of what we would regard as its 'engine like' qualities - how it's mechanical and systematic and concrete...no, it was called that because it was mysterious and kind of magical! And it's true when you think about it - new advances in technology are magical.

So, in the twelfth century, 'engine' also meant "skill, craft, innate ability; deceitfulness, trickery," It was derived from the Latin, ingenium, which meant 'inborn qualities or talent'. Ingenium to engine...amazing. 

What about the word 'machine'? The first thing that comes to my mind, before even looking at the etymology is the word 'machinations', which means plotting and scheming and has a slight connotation (I think) of deception. And again - very interesting - we find the word 'trick'. 'Machine' comes from the Latin Machina, which meant "machine, engine, military machine; device, trick, instrument"

......and now, it get's even more interesting:

'from Greek makhana, Doric variant of mekhane "device, means," related to mekhos "means, expedient, contrivance," from PIE *maghana- "that which enables," from root *magh- (1) "to be able, have power" (cognates: Old Church Slavonic mogo "be able," Old English mæg "I can;"....old English mæg! So there's a clear link between 'machine' and 'magic'. The old words 'magh' and 'mæg', meaning to be able to do something, represent the roots of both 'magic' and 'machine'. 

When I look up the etymology of the word 'magic' it says, among other things, that it 'probably derived from Proto-Indo-European *meh₂gh- ‎(“to be able to, to help; power, sorcerer”).'

When you think about how the word 'engine' and the word 'genius' are derived from the same source, it makes you realize that actually, artificial intelligence isn't as new as we think it is. It seems that, in the twelfth century, any kind of machine or mechanical device was regarded as embodying a kind of artificial intelligence.