There is an enduring link between familiar instruments and images of the body. The similarities implied by these analogies are potent – they become the way we understand and act on the body.
Music has an evident effect on the body. Renaissance courtiers and philosophers argued that the music of the stringed lute could move its listeners to love, passion and harmonious reflection.
Astronomers and philosophers, keen to design and improve telescopes and microscopes to extend the powers of human vision, worked out a close analogy between the optical systems of the human eye and their newfangled instruments.
Communication technologies such as telegraphy were often linked with the body’s nervous system and processes of thought.
The advent of mechanical and then electronic computing machinery helped scientists design powerful new ways of managing information. Computer designers were quick to argue that their machines were artificial brains and that the brain was the body’s computer.
The binary code that underlies computer programming has strongly influenced the imagery and language of genetics and heredity. A rough analogy between information technologies and genetic codes has become commonplace, with the human genome itself described as the chemical code of life.
