Stone to Silicon

Artificial intelligence · c. 1305

Llull's Ars Magna

Rotating paper wheels that combine concepts mechanically, an early dream of reasoning by procedure.

Ramon Llull built nested concentric discs labelled with basic attributes, so turning them produced every combination of premises. Leibniz later cited it as an inspiration for mechanising thought. It is the oldest well-documented attempt to generate conclusions by a fixed mechanical procedure.

See it in the living treeWikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 2