Abstract

What is a machine? What distinguishes a machine from a tool or a simple instrument—for example, a knife, a hammer, an ax, or a pencil? Tools are technical objects that can be seen as extending or continuing a bodily action. They augment its efficiency. To push, hit, tear, pierce, crush, grasp, or throw: tools and simple instruments allow us to do better what, to some extent, we can already do without them. They enhance our performance, make the action easier, more precise, they push back the limits of what we can do. What is done with difficulty and imperfectly with our bare hands, teeth, or nails can be done better and more easily using a tool, or with the help of a stone, a leaf, a stick, or of any natural object...