Golem

מאמר זה דן בטקס במוזרותו החידתית של ריטואל יצירת הגולם אצל המקובלים הראשונים. בריטואל זה נוצר הגולם דמוי האדם באמצעות אדמה ושמות קדושים, בטכניקה הנגזרת מ"ספר יצירה". בחלקו הראשון של המאמר מוצג ההיסוס הפרשני בדבר טבעו של ריטואל הגולם כאירוע מיסטי-אקסטטי או מאגי-אונטולוגי, תוך התמקדות בכתבי גרשם שלום. בחלק השני מובהר כי ההיסוס בין המיסטי למאגי (השואל האם הגולם אכן מונפש באמת או שהנפשתו היא אירוע נפשי אקסטטי) נובע מטבעה היסודי של דמות הגולם כדמות טקסטואלית לימינלית ופנטסטית. החלק המסכם מפרש את מיפגן ריטואל יצירת הגולם כאירוע אמנותי תיאו-פואטי, בהתאם לתפיסת האמנות של מרטין היידגר בספרו "מקורו של מעשה האמנות".

This is a review of the study "Restraining Golem and Harnessing Pygmalion in the Classroom". The experiment took place over a four-year period (2001-2004), and the treatments were directly applied to students. First, they were invited by the course instructor to take a so-called “management acumen assessment”, which was indeed a logical test. Next day, students were divided into three groups, in fact randomly, but both students and support instructors were made to believe that this was based on test scores. To the first support-instructor, it was told that her students were a high-performing group and were expected to perform high in the other tests. To the second, it was told that her students scored very low and were likely to perform low in the future. To the third support-instructor, it was given no such information. Later on, students took two other tests: one similar to the first and a second that assessed their non-cognitive skills.

In this review, I seek to scrutinise ethical challenges of the experiment and analyse how are those identified and addressed. I draw on the interpretation of several ethical codes  and work of some established scholars on ethical principles, such as voluntary informed consent and the participant’s right to withdraw from an experiment, the researcher’s responsibility to minimize harms, the participant’s right to privacy, anonymity and confidentiality, and  openness and disclosure of the research to the research community. With this in mind, it might be necessary to point that we are not talking about some rules to be followed as from a legal perspective, but rather for some standards which represent the best ethical practice that guides the research in education.

ABSTRACT
In medieval Jewish folklore, golems are man-shaped automata, usually formed of clay, and activated by magic words written on or hidden within their heads. They are activated by magic, but generally do not have magical powers. Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series uses golems as inexhaustible energy sources—untiring, immensely strong, and able to function in environments fatal to other beings. They thus function as simultaneous metaphors for two components of the Industrial Revolution: the steam that powered the machines, and the disposable human labor that ran them. They play a major role in Pratchett’s “technology” sub-series, in which Discworld equivalents of the telegraph, the printing press, modern postal services and banking and so on threaten the power of the wizards and the balance of social class and international relations. But what happens when these self-aware beings begin to purchase themselves and become owners of the means of production? In this series, Pratchett offers an interesting and nuanced critique of the socially transformative power of technological innovation.

KEYWORDS
Pratchett, Terry
Golems
Robots
Industrial Revolution
Marxism
Science fiction

This essay examines a prevalent tale, attributed posthumously, to historical  "learned" men from the early middle ages on up: the construction of a speaking robot. It attempts to understand why it is that THIS particular story should adhere to famous men of letters, even Virgil, and extend as far as Thomas Edison (in Villiers de Lisle-Adam's novel _L'Eve future_.

The Babylonian Talmud contains a tale about the creation of an artificial calf by two sages who dealt with hilkhot yetzirah, or laws of formation (b. Sanhedrin 65b). Already in the eleventh century CE the phrase "Laws of Formation" was being used to refer to the short, enigmatic, and influential treatise Sefer Yetzirah (Book of Formation), which depicts the creation of the world by means of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The connection between hilkhot yetzirah and Sefer Yetzirah is of great consequence in determining the period in which the latter was edited, as well as its reception history.

Medieval Talmudic legends and Qur’anic commentary explain that Asmodeus (a demon) usurped the throne of King Solomon and led the world astray as a fraudulent son of David. Contemporary Jews and Muslims dismiss these events as mere folklore, having little relevance to the time at hand. On the contrary, this meticulous etymological-based investigation of Jewish, Christian, Islamic and Freemasonic texts, details several of Asmodeus' many incarnations throughout history. The results of which provide compelling, multi-faceted evidence of a template from which Asmodeus will reemerge as the apocalyptic False Messiah.

Medieval Talmudic legends and Qur’anic commentary explain that Asmodeus (a demon) usurped the throne of King Solomon and led the world astray as a fraudulent son of David. Contemporary Jews and Muslims dismiss these events as mere folklore, having little relevance to the time at hand. On the contrary, this meticulous etymological-based investigation of Jewish, Christian, Islamic and Freemasonic texts, details several of Asmodeus' many incarnations throughout history. The results of which provide compelling, multi-faceted evidence of a template from which Asmodeus will reemerge as the apocalyptic False Messiah.

Uno de los objetivos fundamentales de esta tesis es el de investigar las diferentes fuentes filosóficas y místicas presentes en la obra de Borges (sobre todo Heráclito, Platón, Plotino, Berkeley, Hume, Schopenhauer y, a través de él, el hinduismo y el budismo, Nietzsche, la cábala etc.) y, paralelamente, observar de qué manera el autor efectúa su dramatización literaria de diferentes conceptos procedentes de estos sistemas filosóficos. 

A continuación se efectúa una mirada sintética hacia el conjunto de las fuentes filosóficas, que lleva a la conclusión de que prevalecen las vertientes idealistas por encima de las materialistas y objetivistas. Ello, sin embargo, no significa que a Borges se puede llamar “idealista”. El idealismo, que sin duda ejerce una poderosa atracción estética sobre Borges, sin embargo, no es para él más que una etapa mental en su itinerario especulativo, que le sirve para superar el materialismo pero que, posteriormente, también se ve superada por un creciente nihilismo y escepticismo.

Between 1724 and 1760, in the frontier area of the Habsburg empire waves of a hitherto unknown epidemic disease emerged: vampirism. In remote villages of southeastern Europe, cases of unusual deaths were reported. Corpses did not decay and, according to the villagers, corporeal ghosts were haunting their relatives and depriving them of their vital force. Death occurred by no later than three to four days. The colonial administration, alarmed by the threat of an epidemic illness, dispatched military officers and physicians to examine the occurrences. Soon several reports and newspaper articles circulated and made the untimely resurrection of the dead known to the perplexed public, Europe-wide. ‘‘Vampyrus Serviensis’’, the Serbian vampire, became an intensively discussed phenomenon within academe, and thereby gained factual standing. My paper depicts the geopolitical context of the vampire’s origin within the Habsburg states. Secondly, it outlines the epistemological difficulties faced by observing physicians in the field. Thirdly, it delineates the scholarly debate on the apparent oxymoron of the living dead in the era of enlightened reason. Fourthly, the early history of vampirism shows that ghosts and encounters with the undead are not superstitious relics of a pre-modern past, or the Enlightenment’s other, but intimate companions of Western modernity.

This essay is an extension of my other, "The Legend of the Learned Man's Android," in that I query whether the posthumous attribution of robot-making to living persons just stops in the nineteenth-century, or emerges in different ways in the twentieth. The story attaches, it seems, to individuals who are prominent enough to have acquired cult status, like Descartes. The legend fractures, though, and emerges differently with famous men like Stephen Hawking (who appeared on a Star Trek episode as a holograph of himself). Why have the Learned Man and his robot disappeared?

"¿Qué puede llegar a tener que ver el mito con el cine?, ¿con la televisión? ¿con el cómic? Dice el autor de este texto que “la palabra mito nos suena a algo alejado, ajeno, exótico, pasado de moda y que poco tiene que ver con nosotros. Le sobrevuela el fantasma del dogma y entonces lo descartamos de manera casi automática, lo desestimamos en virtud de su aparente carencia de racionalidad, de su primitivismo estereotipado.” Los defensores del valor y poder del mito parecen, señala el autor, como unos seres anticuados, cuasi primarios, que intentan sostener una forma de pensamiento tan arcaica que nada tiene que ver con el individuo contemporáneo, el hombre de la era de los medios de comunicación masiva y el auge de la tecnología.

En este artículo, Javier Mazza propone que existe una carencia de novedad en el pensamiento y en las representaciones artísticas modernas y posmodernas. Y, además, que es inconcebible pensar en una evolución del tipo moderno en el pensamiento, que es imposible creer en el cambio de un paradigma a otro como un proceso de ruptura y reconstrucción, sino que en realidad lo que tiene lugar es un proceso de adaptación y reelaboración de contenidos arquetípicos permanentes. Para ello, el autor analiza las figuras y los patrones mitológicos presentes en los medios de comunicación masiva, y muestra de qué manera podemos poner de manifiesto la conexión que existe entre los héroes mitológicos y los de los mass media. "

The Rabbinic Sages explicitly attested that the canon of Scripture and the Ark of the Covenant  “defiled the hands” by sancta contagion.  A sacred object elicited holiness or deadly defilement through physical contact, depending on the sanctification of the person. The intersection of holiness and defilement seem contradictory.  The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that bones implicitly defile the hands. Contact with bones elicited the same paradoxical holiness and uncleanness as Scripture and the Ark.  Approaching the topic of “bones” through defiling the hands may be instructive to understand the almost mystical properties of bones in Scripture, and to engender a greater reverence for the resurrected bodies to come.

What can the Jewish myth of the Golem teach us about artificial intelligence? This article explores the Golem as one of the earliest AI prototypes and a myth that became a foundational story of sci-fi cinema. The Golem sets the parameters of opposition between men and intelligent or sentient machines, and at the same time points to possible third options beyond the dialectic of control.

This contribution to the contemporary figure of monstrosity looks for a common feature that may characterize and explain what we recognize as monster in the West. The article takes into account the rebel robot that must be destroyed because it threatens humanity: prevailing in the imaginary of popular culture, this story is the resumption of the myth of the Golem, endlessly reproduced in novels and movies, since Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The Golem, intelligent and humanoid creature is monstrous because it lacks a soul, a spiritual and transcendental principle that defines human being...

After The weeping woman on the streets of Prague (1994) by Sylvie
Germain, The Golem by Elie Wiesel (2001), Golems (2004) by Alain Delbe, The Kabbalist of Prague (2010) by Marek Halter and The Olive Trees of Négus (2011) by Laurent Gaudé, Pierre Assouline rewrote the old Jewish legend in his own version of Golem (2016). Based on a meditation between Kabbalah and neuroscience, his text raises a number of disturbing questions concerning the emerging figures of the human.

The article discusses some key conceptual differences and similarities between past Golem-creation and present day A.I and synthetic life. One operates in an atmosphere of the great chain of being where the order of things is challanged by the human creation of artificial life. In contrast, artificiality is the hallmark of modern technological oriented research.
However some similarities remain and new Information-Age contexts revive older modes of the idea of a Golem.

Tags: Golem, Science, Information, Judaism, Talmud, Kabbala

The creation of Golem recapitulates the creation of Adam. Like a recursively iterated formula, a Fibonacci series spiraling out into the unknown, God's knowledge leads to the genesis of man's knowledge, which leads to the genesis of golem. Like Adam, golem is shaped from a piece of the original chaos: massa confusa, unformed matter, the prima materia or transformative substance, a protean clay, fizzing with infinity. This is a pure potentiality, an undifferentiated volume swirling with intensive difference, a homogenous blob criss-crossed by gradients, an elastic egg writhing with topological transformations. It is no wonder that biotechnology and genetic engineering, as well as cybernetics, have appropriated the myth as an origin story – golem is sculpted from an embryonic tissue, a jelly of programmable stem cells, capable of becoming anything and utterly subservient to the whim of the master scientist. Golem is alpha and omega: origin and destiny. The Talmud tells of how the fourth century sage Rava 'made a man', but that Rabbi Zeira upon reception of the entity, found that it could not speak and so commanded it: 'Return to your dust!'. It is only later, in the thirteenth century, with the onset of modern science, that golem is understood as an artificial man, an automaton, subject to command. In this time there is a transition from the magical understanding of nature, in which language acts on objects directly; to the techno-scientific understanding of nature, where objects are transformed via mind-independent manipulations of matter and energy. That the myth expresses a patriarchal conception of creation is clear when one learns that unmarried women could be called golems – the virgin is understood as raw material, waiting to be animated by the seminal word of a learned man, activated by a tap of his magic wand. Carved on its forehead in the manner of a slave-owner, or written on paper and inserted in its mouth, its orifice forcefully penetrated and the code planted like a seed, impregnated by the sticky sauce of a sorcerer, this word is 'truth', which in Hebrew is one letter away from 'death'. Though Golem is in some stories deactivated by the removal of this letter, it is conversely the case that only one letter must be added to activate the dead. Golem is the confluence of two incommensurable timescales – the entirely mechanistic, deterministic, and reversible time of the automaton; and the non-linear indeterminism of the living, whose irreversible historicity the golem blunders into. Dust is both the origin and the ultimate end of computing, as it is for man; dust to nano-computational dust, silicon to qubit. In Hebrew the letters stand both for consonants and for numbers. The kabbalistic power to create a Golem is revealed to the wise man by studying the name of God and learning

First things first: this is not a course in science fiction. There’s nothing wrong with science fiction, but this course is going to look at the subject of hybrid humanity from a different angle. Some of the works on our list have often (and rightly) been characterized as science fiction, but we’re going to look at them not as speculative works that offer a revised version of the present and future, but rather as works that philosophically question some of the fundamental presumptions of the boundary between the human and the superhuman along the lines of the Jewish folkloric figure of the golem. We’ll begin by reviewing the history and development of the golem, particularly as in relation to the mythic history surrounding Rabbi Judah Loew in sixteenth-century Prague. Then we’ll move forward in time to look at how recent writers have incorporated artificial humans into their fictions at moments when “ordinary” humanity is perceived as inadequate and also at the consequences that they suggest follow hard upon the heels of such attempts at transcending our nature

Artykuł nawiązuje do innych felietonów popularnonaukowych publikowanych przez autora i przybliżających wiedzę o robotach. Jednak w tym przypadku nie sięga się do wiedzy technicznej tylko do różnych legend (głównie mitologii greckiej), w których mówi się o budowaniu urządzeń, które dziś byśmy za roboty, przez Hefajstosa - boga kowala. Wzmiankowana jest także przygoda Pigmaliona a także historia Golema.

I argue that psychic complexity, and attempts to reduce it to mechanism, are typical not only of philosophy of mind but also of narrative art, whether visual, literary, or filmic, when it aims to portray minds. It is no surprise then that monsters and automatons are among narrative art's most distinctive products: representation is fated to produce ersatz consciousnesses, whether its object is to depict real or artificial minds.

This is the first webinar by Marco Pasi in the Infinite Fire Webinar series, produced by the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica (Embassy of the Free Mind) in collaboration with the Centre for the History of Hermetic philosophy and related currents. This webinar focuses on the Austrian author and occultist Gustav Meyrink (1868-1932). Meyrink is known for his esoteric novels, such as The Golem (1915), which created sensation upon publication and became a best-seller. His novels are pervaded by an aura of mystery, with intricate plots that move on different temporal planes at the same time, and characters with shifting or multiple personalities.

Musta ruusu-satuni taustalla on useita lähteitä, joista merkittävimpiä lienevät Aimo Viherluodon Musta ruusu-tangon sanoitus, Gustav Meyrinkin Der Golem(1915)-romaani,  Grimm-veljesten Lumikki-satu ja William Shakespearen Romeo and Juliet-näytelmä. Sadun runot ovat omaa käsialaani Musta ruusu-tangon sanoitusta lukuunottamatta.





2011.