HUMAN AS A MACHINE 

           Since William Harvey discovered in the early 1600s that "The heart pumps blood around the body" men have increasingly come to look upon the human body as a machine. For we now realize that like any truck or car --- that the body has supported locomotion, fuel, waste and control system like any vehicle, the human body also has measurable efficiency strength and power, influential the limits of its physical concert. This view of man as a mechanism finds various expressions in the world today.

            In athletics, doctors conduct studies to assess the likely limit of human potency, speed, endurance and so on. In international athletics¸ men and women are seen as products to be constantly improved upon. Just as designer's seek to built industrial plant with ever greatest output, so coaches train top athletes to try run and swim faster, jump higher and farther lift greater weights then anyone before them. Some athletes even resort to drugs for stimulating their muscles performing almost literally super human feats, and all this reflects the altered nature of athletics contests the original Olympic games of ancient Greece where competitions between individuals but sponsorship by nations like a war between powers and now Olympic is a peaceful game. Countries invest huge revenues in Olympic training to help their athletes win more events and break all previous records from their competitors and rival countries.

            The latest vision of the era is that the body as a machine also plays its part in daily routine from factory production line to lunar module. Work situation increasingly involve complicated technology largely for reasons of cost effectiveness, designer's plan technology as far as possible to match the form and function of the human bodies that must operate it. Man is one kind of a machine working others in a man machine system. For now that is not at all but man made machines and tools are even helping to work man. Where certain faults develop in the human body ; doctors can repair with the aid of spare parts like surgery or replacing damaged bones, joints, length of guts, blood vessels, heart valves, kidneys etc or even heart pumps with artificial substitutes of metal, nylon or plastic. Most of us never need an artificial pacemaker never work with complicated equipment, seldom even run a race. But we are all "machines" whose health and fitness hinges on the proper working of our body systems.