not reversible

[alice wellintown]

"the modern automaton exists in the same sort of Bergsonian time as
the living organism; and hence there is no reason in Bergson's
considerations why the essential mode of functioning of the living
organism should not be the same as that of the automaton of this type.
Vitalism has won to the extent that even mechanisms correspond to the
time-structure of vitalism; but as we have said, this victory is a
complete defeat, for from every point of view which has the slightest
relation to morality or religion, the new mechanics is fully as
mechanistic as the old. Whether we should call the new point of view
materialistic is largely a question of words: the ascendency of matter
characterizes a phase of nineteenth-century physics far more than the
present age, and "materialism" has come to be but little more than a
loose synonym for "mechanism". In fact, the whole mechanist-vitalist
controversy has been relegates to the limbo of badly posed questions"
Norbert Wiener