We Are Not Machines

In "The Bird and the Machine" by Loren Eiseley, Eiseley gives his opinion on the new, modern idea that people are just machines, and to an extent, that the entire world is a machine made of smaller machines. Humans, upon the discovery of the cell, began being seen as a machine made of billions of tiny machines, obviously cells. Eiseley sees that there's something different about the human machine: whenever it changes, it's because it changed itself. Eiseley goes on to say that before he learned that life separated humans, mice, and birds from machines, he learned in the dessert that time "is a series of panes existing superficially in the same universe" (Eiseley 603). In this same desert, Eiseley captured a hawk in an abandoned house. This hawk had a mate who frantically waited until Eiseley returned the hawk he'd taken. This is where Eiseley learned the difference between beings with life and machines. A machine wouldn't wait around for hours for another machine, a machine wouldn't hurt for another, a machine wouldn't care about another machine, a thing with life does, setting itself apart from machines.

"It is a funny thing what the brain will do with memories and how it will treasure them and finally bring them into odd juxtapositions with other things, as though it wanted to make a design, or get some meaning out of them, whether you want it or not, or even see it" (Eiseley 601).
The idea that specific memories come back when our brain makes new, specific connections to teach us something is interesting. Sometimes certain memories are shoved aside when they come back because they're painful to remember, but they're a reason for those memories coming back, to teach something crucial.

"It's life I believe in, not machines" (Eiseley 602).
Eiseley sums up his entire argument fairly well with this one, simple phrase. Eiseley acknowledges that machines are smarter and can complete similar tasks like creatures with life can, but that there is something fundamentally different about creatures with life and machines.

"... if the electronic brain changes, it will be because of something man has done to it" (Eiseley 602).
People say, at least in sci-fi movies, that machines will one day start improving and building themselves when this simply isn't true. Machines will only change when people, who have something they don't, change them.

"I learned there that time is a series of planes existing superficially in the same universe. The tempo is a human illusion, a subjective clock ticking in our own kind of protoplasm" (Eiseley 603).
How does this connect to the previous paragraph? How does this relate to the rest of the story?

"I stood on a rock a moment looking down and thinking what it cost in money and equipment to capture the past" (Eiseley 604).
What else does it cost to capture the past?

(I did not know how to cite this source without the copyright page of the original book.)