The restless clock

The Restless Clock explores the philosophical and scientific arguments from the seventeenth century to the present about what animates living beings, challenging the dominance of mechanistic views.

Jessica Riskin traces the tension between automata models and notions of vital, self-sustaining life, drawing on thinkers from Descartes to contemporary biology.

The book won the 2021 Patrick Suppes Prize in the History of Science from the American Philosophical Society.