In Artificial Love, he argues that architecture – under which label he includes machines and sculpture – is a component of the natural world. The argument has been made before. But where George Dyson, following a similar line in Darwin Among the Machines, studied the artefacts, Shepheard prefers to study the people around him&colon; how they respond to the environment, and how their responses change with age. Shepheard’s material springs from his own life, from the banter of his students, and from the air&colon; where memoir leaves off and fiction begins hardly seems to matter.