Artifice and the Mimetic Powers of Nature

The origin story is familiar. You have probably heard it before. In 1921, Karel Čapek’s play Rossum’s Universal Robot (R.U.R.) premiered at the National Theatre in Prague. It told of a mad scientist who had discovered an alternative chemical composition of matter that could replicate life. Although he could have grown anything, “a jellyfish with the brain of Socrates, or a fifty-yard-long earthworm,” the inventor Old Rossum was compelled to “scientifically dethrone God” and mould a creature in his own image. The play opens on an island factory where an army of androids, devoid of a “soul,” are being bred as slave labour. By the end, the robots awaken, rebel against their creators, and wipe out the human race. It was an instant success, and versions of the story have been repeated many times. Today, the play is remembered as the genesis of the term “robot.”