| 释义 |
automaton|ɔːˈtɒmətən|
Also 7–8 automatum. Pl. automata, -atons.
[a. Gr. αὐτόµατον, neut. of adj. αὐτόµατος acting of itself, also adopted in L. as automaton, -atum. See also automa, automate, autome.]
1. lit. Something which has the power of spontaneous motion or self-movement.
a1625Beaum. & Fl. Bloody Bro. iv. i, [It] doth move alone, A true automaton. a1797Burke Ess. Drama Wks. X. 153 The perfect Drama, an automaton supported and moved without any foreign help, was formed late and gradually.
Thus applied also to:
2. A living being viewed materially.
1645Digby Nat. Bodies xxiii. (1658) 259 Because these parts [the mover and the moved] are parts of one whole; we call the intire thing automatum, or se movens, or a living creature. 1686Boyle Notion Nat. 305 These living Automata, Human bodies. 1713Guardian (1756) II. 186 To be considered as Automata, made up of bones and muscles, nerves, arteries and animal spirits. 1880Huxley Cray-Fish iii. 127 And such a self-adjusting machine, containing the immediate conditions of its actions within itself, is what is properly understood by an Automaton.
3. A piece of mechanism having its motive power so concealed that it appears to move spontaneously; ‘a machine that has within itself the power of motion under conditions fixed for it, but not by it’ (W. B. Carpenter). In 17–18th c. applied to clocks, watches, etc., and transf. to the Universe and World; now usually to figures which simulate the action of living beings, as clock-work mice, images which strike the hours on a clock, etc.
1611Coryat Crudities, The picture of a Gentlewoman whose eies were contrived..that they moved up and down of themselves..done by a vice which the Grecians call αὐτόµατον. 1645Evelyn Mem. (1857) I. 205 Another automaton strikes the quarters. 1660H. More Myst. Godl. ii. iii. 37 God will not let the great Automaton of the Universe be so imperfect. c1790J. Imison Sch. Art I. 284 Those automata..do by little interstices, or strokes, measure out long portions of time. 1832Babbage Econ. Manuf. v. 38 Automatons and mechanical toys moved by springs.
4. A living being whose actions are purely involuntary or mechanical.
1678Cudworth Intell. Syst. i. i. §41. 50 Consequently that themselves were but machines and automata. 1691Ray Creation i. (1777) 165 Nor can it well consist with his veracity to have stocked the earth with divers sets of automata. 1777Priestley Matt. & Spir. (1782) I. §22. 283 Descartes..made the souls of brutes to be mere automata.
5. A human being acting mechanically or without active intelligence in a monotonous routine.
1785E. Sheridan Jrnl. (1960) 72 Mrs. Dexter..says the Goths in her neighbourhood had the impudence to think of your playing second to that Automaton Mrs Kennan. 1796Stedman Surinam I. ix. 200 The whole party [of slaves] was a set of scarcely animated automatons. 1844Disraeli Coningsby iv. xi. 167 ‘Do you think so?’ said the Princess..‘Have these automata, indeed, souls?’ 1873Symonds Grk. Poets v. 140 How could a Spartan, that automaton of the state..excel in any fine art?
6. Comb. and attrib., as in automaton figure, automaton lips, etc.; automaton-like a. and adv. resembling or like an automaton.
1770T. Jefferson Corr. Wks. 1859 I. 194 Your periagua..will meet us, automaton-like, of its own accord. 1801Strutt Sports & Past. iii. ii. 149 Automaton figures made of wood. 1866G. Macdonald Ann. Q. Neighb. xxvi. 451 Her lips, with automaton-like movement, uttered the words.
Sense 6 in Dict. becomes 7. Add: 6. Computing. A (real or imaginary) machine whose responses to all permissible inputs are specified by a set of states and a set of rules for passing from one state to another.
1951J. von Neumann in L. A. Jeffress Cerebral Mechanisms in Behavior 15 We are very far from possessing a theory of automata which deserves that name, that is, a properly mathematical-logical theory. 1953Proc. IRE XLI. 1234/1 This paper reviews briefly some of the recent developments in the field of automata and nonnumerical computation. 1961Adv. Computers II. 380 It is necessary to begin with some sort of definition of ‘automaton’... An automaton is a device of finite size at any time with certain parts specified as inputs and outputs, such that what happens at the outputs at any time is determined, or at least its probability distribution function is determined, by what has happened at the inputs. 1966M. Gross in Automatic Transl. of Lang. (NATO Summer School, Venice, 1962) 130 This non-deterministic automaton is equivalent to a recognition routine that would look for one ‘most probable’ solution. 1974Encycl. Brit. Macropædia II. 498/2 The class of general automata includes all-purpose, electronic digital computers the memory-storage units of which are of fixed..size.
[7.] automata theory Computing, the study of formalized automata (in sense *6 above).
1964Information & Control VII. 485 (title) Pair algebra and its application to *automata theory. 1974Encycl. Brit. Macropædia II. 497/2 Original work on the neurophysiological aspect of automata theory was done by Warren S. McCulloch and Walter Pitts at the Research Laboratory of Electronics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology starting in the 1940s. |