Daniel spent a while staring out the window at a point far away. Eventually his awareness came back into the coffee-house. He glanced, a bit furtively, at the arithmetical engine. 'There is a place in Micrographia where Hooke describes the way flies swarm around meat, butterflies around flowers, gnats around water – giving the semblance of rational behavior. But he thinks it is all because of internal mechanisms triggered by the peculiar vapors arising from meat, flowers, et cetera .In other words, he thinks that these creatures are no more rational than a trap, where an animal seizing a piece of bait pulls a string that fires a gun. A savage watching the trap kill the animal might suppose it to be rational. But the trap is not rational – the man who contrived the trap is. Now, if you – the ingenious Dr. Leibniz – contrive a machine that gives the impression of thinking – is it really thinking, or merely reflecting your genius?'