Digesting Duck

Le Canard Digérateur (1739)

The Canard Digérateur ("Digesting Duck") was created by Jacques de Vaucanson in 1739, who claimed the drawing above as an accurate depiction of its inner workings. In Vaucanson's demonstration, the mechanism consumed grain at one end,"digested" them internally by a mechano-chemical process, and excreted feces at the other. In fact, the grain was stored internally and the fecal material was a pre-prepared mash of bread crumbs, dyed green. The "Digesting Duck" is a meme for the idea of Reductionism, in which with sufficient knowledge a living system can be reduced to an essentially mechanical one.


All text material ©2021 by Steven M. Carr