CHAPTER I. CULTURAL PREPARATION 1: Machines L'titilies, and "The Machine" Durinji the last century the automatic or se^ni automatic machine has iimie to occupy a large place in our daily routine; and we have tended to attribute to the physical instrument itself the whole complex of habit- and methods that created it and accompanied iu Almost every <1 ivi u~-ion of technology Írom Marx onward has tended to overemphasize the part played by the more mobile and active pail- ot our industrial equipment, and has flighted other equally critical elements in our technical heritage. WTiat is a machine? Apart ÍTom the simple machines oi classic mechanics, the inclined plane, the pulley, and so forth, the subject remains a contused one. Many ot the writers who have discussed the machine age have treated the. machine as if it were a very recent phenomenon, and as it' the technology of handicraft had employed only tools tu transform the environment. These preconceptions axe baseless. For the la-l three thousand years, at least, machines have been an cs-cnlial part of our older technical heritage. Reuleaux's definition of a machine has remained a classic: "A machine is* combination of resistant bodies so arranged that by their means the mechanical forces of nature can be compelled to do work accompanied by certain* determinant motions"; but it does not take v very far. Its place is due to his importance ** the first great morphologist of machine*, for it leaves out the large cJnss of ma* chines operated by man-power. Machines have developed out of a complex of Don-organic ageA for converting energy, for performing work, for enlarging the ■** 9 10 technics and civilization chanieal or sensory capacities of the human body, or for reducing to a mensurable order and regularity the processes of lift1. The automaton j> the last step in a process that began wilh the use of one part or another of the human body as a tool. In back of the development of tools and machines lies the attempt to modify the environment in such a way as to fortify and sustain the human organism: the effort is either to extend the powers of the otherwise unarmed organism, or to manufacture outside of the body a set of conditions more favorable toward maintaining its equilibrium and ensuring its survival. Instead of a physiological adaptation to the cold, like the growth of hair or the habit of hibernation, there is an environmental adaptation, such as that made possible by the use of clothes and the erection of shelter The essential distinction between a machine and a tool lies in the degree of independence in the operation from the skill and motive power of the operator: the tool lends itself to manipulation, the machine to automatic action. The degree of complexity is unimportant: for, using the tool, the human hand and eye perform complicated actions which are the equivalent, in function, of a well developed machine; while, on the other hand, there are highly effective machines, like the drop hammer, which do very simple tasks, with the aid of a. relatively simple mechanism. The difference between tools and machines lies primarily in the degree of automatism they have reached: tiie skilled tool-user becomes more accurate and more automatic, in short, more mechanical, as his originally voluntary motions settle down into reflexes, and on the other hand, even hi the most completely automatic machine, there must intervene same-where, at the beginning and the end of the process, first in the original design, and finally in the ability to overcome defects and to make repairs, the conscious participation of a human agent. Moreover, between the tool and the machine there stands another class of objects, the machine-tool: here, in the lathe or the drill, one has the accuracy of the finest machine coupled with the skilled attendance of the workman. When one adds to this mechanical complex an external source of power, the line of division becomes evert more difficult to establish. In general, the machine emphasizes specialist)- cultural preparation n tion of function, where... the tool indicates flexibility: „ phtninc machine performs only one operation, whereas a knife can be used to smooth wood, to carve it. to split it, or to pry open « lock or to drive in a screw. The automatic machine, then, is a very speeialiied kind of adaptation; it involves the notion of an external smm;e 0{ pgvrer, a niorL- or less complicated inter-relation of parts, and u limited kind of activity. From the beginning the machine was a sort of minor organism, designed to perform a single sK funeliimk. Along with these dynamic elements in technology there is another set, more static in character, but equally important in function. While the growth of machines is the most patent technical fact of the last thousand years, the machine, in the form of the fire-drill or the potter's wheel, lias been in existence since at least neolithic times. During the earlier period, some of the most effective adaptation* of the environment came, not front the invention of machines, but (mm the equally admirable invention of utensils, apparatus, and utilities. The basket and the pot stand for the first, the dye vat and the brickkiln stand for the second, and reservoirs and aqueducts and rouds and buildings belong to the third class. The modern period has finally given us the power utililv, like the railroad track or the electric transmission line, which functions only through the operation of power machinery. While tools and machines transform the environment by changing the shape and location of objects, utensils and apparatus have been used to effect equally necessary chemical transformations. Tanning, brewing, distilling, dyeing Imvc been as important in man's technical development as smithing or weaving. But most of these processes remained in their traditional state till the middle of the nineteenth century, and it is only since then that they have been influenced in any large degree by the same set ol scientific forces and human interests that were developing the modern power-machine. In the series of objects from utensils to utilities there is ™eta™ relation between the workman and the process that on* notes hi the series between tools and automatic machines: difference in tn« degree of specialisation, the degree of impemnalhy. But since people's attention is directed most easily to the w«.er and more vp l>p«»n ii.llinMi.cil in anv lame degree \>\ cue nam* U TECHNICS AND CIVILIZATION active pari* of the environment, the role of the utility and the apparatus has been neglected in most discussions of the machine, or, what is almost as bad, these technical instrument.'? have all been clumsily grouped as machines. The point to remember is that both have played an enormous part in the development of the modem environment; and at no stage in history can the two means of adaptation he split apart. Every technological complex includes both: not least our modern one. When I use the word machines hereafter I shy 11 refer to specific objects like the printing press or the power loom. When I use the term "the machine" I shall employ it as a shorthand reference to the entire technological complex. This will embrace the knowledge and skills and arts derived from industry or implicated in the new technics, and will include various forms of tool, instrument, apparatus and utility as well as machine* proper. 2; The Monastery and the Clock Where did the machine first take form in modem civilization? There was plainly more than one point of origin. Our mechanical civilization represents the convergence of numerous habits, ideas, and modes of living, as well as technical instruments; and some of these were, in the beginning, directly opposed to the civilization they helped to create. But the first manifestation of the new order took place in the general picture of the world: during the first seven centuries of the machine's existence the categories of time and space underwent an extraordinary change, and no aspect cf life was left untouched by this transformation. The application of quantitative methods of thought to the study of nature had its first manifestation in the regular measurement of time; and the new mechanical conception of lime arose in part out of the routine of the monastery. Alfred Whitehead has emphasized the importance of the scholastic belief in a universe ordered by Cod as one of the foundations of modern physics: but behind that belief was the presence of order in the institutions of the Church itself. The technics of the ancient world were still carried on from Constantinople and Baghdad to Sicily and Cordova: hence the early CULTURAL PREPARATION 13 \n nart *-»ilf g\\ Im* mill tt\P of the monastery. i lend taken by Salerno in the scientific and medical advances of the Middl-- Age. ll was, however, in the monasteries of the West that the desire for Drder anil power, other than that expressed in the military domination of weaker men. fir-l manifested il-rlf after the long (uncertainty and bloody confusion that attended the breakdown of the Roman Empire. Within the wall- of the monastery was sanctuary: under the rule "i the Order surprise and doubt and caprice and irregularity were put at bay. Oppo-cd to the erratic fluctuations and pulsation- i'l tin- worldly lib- was the iron discipline of the rule. Benedict added a seventh period to the devotions of the day, and in the seventh century, by a bull of Pope Sahinianus, it was decreed that the bell1- <->l l'"' niona-lery be rung seven times in the twenty-four hours. These punctuation marks in the day were known as ihecanoni-cil hours, and some means of keeping count of them and ensuring their regular repetition be«.nne necessary. According i<> a no* discredited legend, the first modern mechanical clock, worked by falling weights, was invented by the monk named Gerbert who afterwards became Pope Sylvester II near the close of the tenth century. This clock was probably only a water clock, one of lho«e bequests of the ancient world either left over directly from the days of the Romans, like the water-wheel ibelf, or coming b.uk again into the West through the Arabs. But the legend, as so often happens, is accurate in its implications if not in its facts. The munastcn was the seal of a regular life, arid an instrument for striking the hours at intervals or for reminding the bell-ringer tbnt it was lime to Mi ike the bells, was an almost inevitable product of this life. If the mechanical clock did not appear until the cities of the thirteenth century demanded an orderly routine, the habit of order ttseli and the earnest regulation of time-sequences had become almost second nature in the monastery. Coulton agrees with Somlwrt in looking upon the Benedictine* the great working order, as perhaps the original founders of modem capitalism: their rule certainly took the CUTJM off work and their vigorous engineering enterprises may «ven have robbed warfare of some "f its glamor. So one is nnt strum-'"g the facts when one suggests that the monastcrie*-** one time tin-re were 40.000 under the Benedictine rule-^hclped to give huamn second nature m Hie monastery. coui'Mii a&YxtV H TECHNICS AND CIVILIZATION enterprise the regular collective beat and rhythm of the machine; for the clock is not merely a means of keeping track of the hours, but of svnehronizing the actions of men. Was it by reason of the collective Christian desire to provide for the welfare of souls in eternity by regular prayers and devotions that time-keeping and the habits of temporal order took hold of men's minds: habits that capitalist civilization presently turned to good WBOUlit? One must perhaps accept the irony of this paradox. At all events, by the thirteenth century there are definite records oi mechanical clocks, and by 1370 a well-designed "modern'* clock had been built by Heinrich von Wyek at Paris. Meanwhile, bell towers had come into existence, and the new clocks, if they did not have, till the fourteenth century, a dial and a hand that translated the movement of time into a movement through space, at all events struck the hours. The clouds that could paralyze the sundial, the freezing that could stop the water clock on a winter night, wen no longer obstacles to time-keeping: summer or winter, day or night, one was aware of ihe measured clank of the dock. The instrument presently spread outside the monastery; and the regular striking of the bells brought a new regularity into the life of the workman and the merchant. The bells of the clock tower almost denned urban existence. Time-keeping passed into time-serving and time-accounting and time-rationing. As this took place, Eternity ceased gradually to serve as the measure and focus of human actions. The clock, not die steam-engine, is the key-machine of the modern industrial age. For every phase of its development the clock is both the outstanding fact and the typical symbol of tlie machine: even today no other machine is so ubiquitous. Here, at the very beginning of modem technics, appeared prophetically the uccuraie automatic machine which, only after centuries of further effort, was also to prove the final consummation of this technics in every department of industrial activity. There had been power-machines such as the water-mill, before the clock; and there had also been various kinds of automata, to awaken the wonder of the populace in the temple, or to please ihe idle fancy of some Moslem caliph: machines one find* illustrated in Hero and Al-WL But here was a new kind of CULTURAL PREPARATION 15 power-machine, in which the source of power and the transmission were of such a nature as to ensure the even flow of energy throughout the works and to make possible regular production and a standardized product. In its relationship to determinable quantities of energy, to standardization, to automatic action, and finally to its own special product, accurate timing, die clock has been tin? foremost machine in modern technical and at each period it has remained in die lead: it marks a per lection toward which other machines aspire. The dock, moreover, served as a model for many other kinds of mechanical works, and the analysis of motion that accompanied the perfection of the clock, with the various types of gearing and transmission (hat were elaborated, contributed to the success of quite different kinds of machine. Smiths could have hammered thousands of suit- of armor ot thousands of iron cannon, wheelwrights could have shaped thousands of great water-wheel* or crude gears, without inventing any of the spot ij 1 types of movement developed in clockwork, and without am <>| die accuracy f medieval spare nn^t be noted: space and t. i nit form two relatively independent systems. First: the medieval r11-t introduced other time* within his own spatial world, as when he projei ted the events of Christ's life within a contemporary Italian i-itv. without the slightest feeling that the passage of lime has made a dill reiice, just a> in Chancer the classical legend of Tmilus and Cresaida la related as if it were a contemporary story, When a medieval < hronicler mention- the King, as the author of The Wander-ing Scholars remarks, it is sometimes a little difficult to find out whelhei he is talking about Caesar or Alexander the Great or his own monan h: each is equally near to him. Indeed, the word anachronism is meaning! eis when applied to medieval art: it is only when one related events to a co-ordinated frame of time and space that ln'ing out of time or being untrue to lime became disconcerling. r Similarly, in Boiiicelli's The Three Miracles of St. Zenobius, three different tunc* an presented upon a single siagc. Běi AUK of this separation of lime and space, things could appear and disappear suddenly, unaccountably: the dropping of a íhípbeluw the horizon no more needed an explanation than the dropping oi a demon down the chimney, There was no mystery about the past from which ihej had emerged, no speculation as to the future toward which they were bound: objects swam into vision and sank out of it willi something of ihe same mystery in which the coming and going of adults iff nets the experience of young children, whose first graphic efforts so much resemble in llieir organization the world oi the medieval artist. In this symbolic world of space and tunc everything was either a mystery or a miracle. The connecting link between TECHNICS AND UVUUATION events was the cosmic and religious order: tin- true order of nliia, wast Heaven, even as the true order of time was Eternity. Between the fourteenth mid the seventeenth century a revolt tionary change in the conception of space took place in W«iom Europe. Space as a hierarchy of values wan replaced by space a* q system of magnitudes. One of the indications of tins new orientation was the closer study of the relations of objects in space and the discovery of the laws of perspective and the systematic organization of pictures within the new frame fixed by the foreground, tin-horizon and the vanishing point. Perspective tinned the symbolic relation of objects into a visual relation: the visual in turn became a quantitative relation. In the new picture of the world, size meant not human or divine Importance, "out distance. Bodies did not exist separately as absolute magnitudes: they were co-ordinated with Other bodies within the same Frame of vision and must be in scale, To achieve this scale, there must be an accurate representation of the object itself, a point for point correspondence between the picture arid the image: hence a fresh interest in external nature and in questions of fart. The division of the canvas into squares and the accurate observation of the world through this abstract checkerboard marked the new technique of the painter, from Paolo Ucello onward. The new in tares) in perspective brought depth into the picture and distance into the mind. In the older pictures, one's eye jumped from one part to another, picking up symbolic crumbs as laste and fancy dictated: in the new pictures, one's eye followed the lines of linear perspective alurig streets, buildings, tessellated pavements whose parallel lines the painter purposely introduced in order to make the eye itself travel. Even the objects in the foreground were sometimes grotesquely placed and foreshortened in order 1o create the-same illusion. Movement became it new source of value: m< ment for its own sake. The measured space of the picture re-enfori die measured time of the clock. Within this new ideal network of space and time all events n> took place; and the most satisfactory event within this system was uniform motion in a straight line, for sin h motion Ifnt itself lq accurate representation within die system of spatial and tempo) CULTURAL ľItEľAHATiON 21 co-ordinates. One further consequence of this spatial tinier moil be noted: to pbne a thing and to lime it became essential to one's understanding of it. In Retias.ce.nee space, the existence of íihject* must be accounted for: their passage through time and space i* a clue to their appearance at any particular moment in any parlirsular place. The unknown is therefore no less determinate dun die known* given the roundness of the globe, the position of the Indies ctmld lie assumed and the time-distance calculated. The very existence of such an order was an incentive to explore it and to fill up the parts that were unknown. What the painters demonstrated in their application of perspective, the cartographers established in the same century in their new maps. The Hereford Map of 1314 might have been ibme by a child: it was practically worthless for navigation. That of L'eclto's coo, temporary, Andrea Banco, 1436, was conceived on rational line:., and represented a gain in conception as well a.- in practical accuracy. By laying down the invisible lines of hiiilnde and longitude, the cartographers paved the way for later explorers, like Columbus: a* with the later scientific method, the abstract system gave rational expectation^ even if on the basis of inaccurate knowledge. No longer was it necessary for the navigator to hug the shore line: lie could launch out into the unknown, sei his course toward an arbitrary point, and return approximately to Uie pkjce of departure. Both Eden and Heaven were outside the new sjliue: and though they lingered on as tlie ostensible subjects ni painting, the real subject* were Time and Space and Nature and Man. Presently, mi the basis laid down by the painter and the cartographer, an interest in space as such, in movement as *ucli, in iow-motion n- such, arose. In back nf this interest were of atom man concrete alterations: roads had become mori; secure, vessels »etn being built more soundly, above all. new inventions—the magnetic needle, die astrolabe, the rudder—had made it possible to chart and to hob! a more accurate course at sea. The gold of the Indies and die fabled fountains of ynnUi and (he happy isles of cmll«a senauaJ delight doubtless beckoned too: but the presence of lllWS Wngu* __f .1__I__u TECHNICS AND CIVILIZATION goals does not lessen the importance of the new schemata. The categories of time and space, once practically dissociated, had herome uniled: and the attractions of measured time and measured space undermined the earlier conceptions of infinity and eternity, since measurement must begin with an arbitrary here and now even if space and time he empty. The itch to use space and time had broken out: and once they were co-ordinated with movement, they could be contracted or expanded: the conquest of space and time had begun. (It is interesting, however, to note that the yetj concept of acceleration, which is part of our daily mechanical experience, was not formulated till the seventeenth century.) The signs of this conquest are many: they came forth in rapid succession. In military arts the cross-bow and the ballista were re-vived and extended, and on their heels came more powerful weapons for annihilating; distance—the cannon and later the musket. Leonardo conceived an airplane and built one. Fantastic project! for flight were canvassed. In 1120 Fontána described a velocipede: in 1589 Cilles de Bom of Antwerp apparently built a man-propelled wagon: ic.-tless preludes to the vast efforts and initiative- of the nineteenth century. As with so many element-, in our culture, the original impulse was imparted to this movement by the Arab-: as cans .1- Will Aim I-(,tá-im had attempted Sight, and in 1065 Oliver of Malmesbury had killed himself in an attempt to -n.ir from a bigfa place: but from the fifteenth century on the desire to conquei tin au became a recurrent preoccupation of inventive mind : and it was close enough to popular thought to make the report uf 1 flight from Portugal to Vienna serve as a news hoax in L709. Tile new ftttitude toward tune and space infected the workshop and the counting hou-e, the at my and tin- < itv. The tempo became faster: the magnitudes became grcatei: conceptually, modern culture Ianinli.il itself into -pare ami gi\e it-elf over to movement. What Max Weber called (he "romanticism of numbers" grew naturally nut of this intensi. In timt •k'-epmg. in hading, in lighting men counted numbers; and finally, as the habit grew, only numbers counted. CULTURAL PREPARATION a 1: The Influence of Capitalism The romanticism of numbers bad still another aspect, important for the development of scientific habits of thought. Tin- was the riss of capitalism, and the change from ■ baiter economy, facilitated by small supplier of variable local coinage, to a money economy with an Internationa] credit structure and a constant reference to the abstract symbols of wealth: gold, drafts, bills of exchange, eventually merely numbers. From the standpoint of technique, ibis structure had its origin in the towns of Northern Italy, particularly Florence and Venice, in the fourteenth century; two hundred years later there was its existence in Antwerp an international bourse, devoted to aiding speculation in shipments from foreign port- and in money itself. Llv the middle of the sixteenth century book-keeping by duuhle entry. bilU of ex-change, letters of credit, and speculation in "futures" were all developed in essentially their modem form. 'Whereas ihe procedures of science were not refined and codified until after Galileo and Newton, finance had emerged in its present-day dress at the very beginning of the machine age: Jacob Fugger and J. Pierponl Morgan could understand each other's methods and point of view and temperaroeut far better than Paracelsus and Einstein. The development of capitalism brought the new habit* of abstraction and calculation into the lives of city people: only the country folk, still existing on their more primitive local basis, wttra partly immune. Capitalism turned people from tangibles to intangibles: its symbol, as Sombart observes, is the account book: "its life-value lies in its profit and loss account." The "economy of acquisition," which bad hitherto been practiced by rare and fabulous creatures like Midas and Croesus, became once more the everyday mode: it tended to replace the direct "economy of needs" and to substitute money-values for life-values. The whole process of business took on more end more an abstract form; it was concerned with non-commodities, imaginary futures, hypothetical gains. Kail Mont well summed up Urn new process of IransnraUtiont-"Since money does not disclose what has been transformed into ft. I ilim'i "eeoriomv ol needs ami 10 suuMuirie woui r 14 TECHNICS AND C t V i L I / \ T I O N everything, whether a commodity or nut, is convertible into gold. Even Hung becomes saleable and purchasable. Circulation is i|)e great social retort into which everything is thrown and out of which everything is recovered as crystallized money. Not even the bones of the saints are able to withstand this alchemy; and still less able to withstand it are more delicate things, sacrosanct things which are outside the commercial traffic of men. Just as all qualitative differences between commodities are effaced in money, so money, a radical leveller, effaces all distinctions. Hut money itself is a commodity, an external object, capable of becoming the private property of an individual. Thus social power becomes private power in the hands of a private person." This last fact was particularly important for life and thought: the quest of power by means of abstractions. One abstraction re-enforced the other. Time was money: money was power: power required the furtherance of trade and production: production was diverted from the channels of din-el use into tho^e of remote trade, toward the acquisition of larger profits, with a larger margin for new capital expenditures for wars, foreign conquests, mines, productive enterprises . . . more money and more power. Of all forms of wealth, money alone is without assignable limits. The prince who might desire to build five palaces would hesitate to build five thousand: but what was to prevent him from seeking by conquest and taxes to multiply by thousands the riches in his treasury? Under a money economy, to speed up the process of production was to speed up the turnover: more money. And as the emphasis upon money grew in part out of the increasing mobility of late medieval society, with its international trade, so did the resulting money economy promote more trade: landed wealth, humanized wealth, houses, paintings, sculptures, books, even gold itself were all relatively difficult to transport. whereas money could be transported after pronouncing the proper abr.-oaJ.ibra by a simple algebraic operation on one side or another of the ledger. In time, men were more at home with abstractions than they were with die goods they represented. The typical operations of finance were the acquisition or the exchange of magnitudes. "Even the day* tivetv dJllicult to transport, whereas monev could be transoorteii alter CULTURAL HMEPARATION 25 dwami of the pecuniary day-dreamer." as Veblcn observed, "lake shape as a calculus of profit and loss computed in standard unit* of an impersonal magnitude.*' Men became powerful to the extent tliat liny neglected the real world of wheal and wool, food and cloilies, and centered their attention on the purely quantitative rep-1« -malíon of it in tokens and symbols: to think in term* of mere weight and number, to make quantity not alone an indication of value ttut tlx- criterion of value—that was ihe contribution of capitalism to mechanical world-picture. So the abstractions of capitalism preceded the abstractions of modern science and re-eufoiced at every point i!- typical lessons and its typical methods of pioceduie. The clarification and the convenience, particularly for long distancc trading in -pace .111.I tune were great: but the social price of these economies was a high one. Mark Kepler's words, published in 1S95: "A-, the car i- made to perceive sound and the 01: to perceive color, so the mind of man has been formed to understand, not all sorts of things, but quantities, It perceives any given thing more clearly in proportion as lhal. thing is close to bare quantities as to its origins, but the further a thing recedes from quantities, lite more darkness and error inheres in it." Was it an accident that the founders and patrons of the Royal Societ) in London—indeed some of the first experimenters in ihe physical sciences—were merchants from the City? King Charles 11 might laugh uncontrollably when he heard that these gentlemen had spent their time weighing air; but their instincts were justified, their procedure was correct: the method itself belonged to their tradition, and there was money in it. The power that was science and the power that was money were, in final analysis, the same kind of power: the power of abstraction, measurement, quantification. But it was not merely in the promotion of abstract habits of thought and pragmatic interests and quantitative estimations that capitalism prepared the way for modem technics. From the beginning machines and factory production, like big guns and armaments, mad© direct demands for capital far above the small advances nece«ary tP provide the old-style handicraft worker with tools or keep him nfive. The freedom to operate independent workshops and factorie*. to 11« o6 TECHNICS AND CIVILIZATION inacliines and profit by them, went to thus.- who had command of capital. While the feudal families, with their command over the- laud, often had a monopoly over such natural resources, .is were found in the earth, and often retained an interest in glass-making, coal, mining, and iron-works right down to modern times, the new mechanical inventions lent themselves to exploitation by the merchant clashes. The incentive to mechumzalbm lay in the greater [Mollis that could he extracted through the multiplied power and efficiency of the machine. Thus, although capitalism and technics must be clearly distinguished at even stage, one conditioned the other and reacted upon it. The merchant accumulated capita] b) widening the Bcale of his operations, quickening his turnover, and discovering new territories fur exploitation: the inventor carried on a parallel process by exploiting new methods of production and devising new things to be produced. Sometimes trade appeared .1- .1 rival to the machine by offering greater opportunities foi profit: sometimes it curbed further development* in order to increase the profit of a particular monopoly: both motives are still operative in capitalist society. From the first, there were disparities and conflicts between these two forms of exploitation: but trade was the older partner and exercised a higher authority. It was trade that gathered up new materials from the Indies and from th? \merices, new foods, new cereals, tobacco, I in-: it was trade that found a new market for the trash that was turned mrt by eighteenth century inaasvptoductioa: it was trade— abetted hv uai—lliat developed tin- larg«--i ale enterprises and the 4<]ijiiiii-Iialive capacity and method that made it possible to create the industrial system as a wlnde and weld together its various parts. Whether machines would have been invented so rapidly and pushed M zealously without the extra incentive of commercial profit is extremely doubtful: for all the more skilled hatidicr.i It occupations were deeply entrenched, and the introduction of printing, for example, was delayed ii< much as twenty years in Paris by the bitter opposition of the guild of scribes an.I copyist*. But while technics Undoubtedly owes an honest debt to capitalism, as it does likewise to wur, it was nevertheless unfortunate that the machine was coudi- CULTURAL PREPARATION 27 Untied, at the outset, by these foreign institutions and took on char-,n.|eri:-li< I that had nothing essentially to do with die technical processes or the forms of work. Capitalism utilized the machine, not to further social welfare, hut to increase private profit; mechanical instruments were useij for the .ippr.indizement of the ruling classes. It was because of capitalism that the handicraft industries in both Europe arid other parts of the world were recklessly destroyed by machine products, even when the latter were inferior in the Unrig they replaced! for the prestige of improvement ami success and power was with th<' machine, evm when it improved nothing, even when technically speaking it was a failure, ft was because of the possibilities of profit that the pl.ne of the machine was overemphasized and the degree of regimentation pushed beyond what was necessary to harmony or efficiency, ft was because of certain traits in private capitalism that the machine—which was a neutral agent—has often seemed, and in fact has sometimes been, a malicious element in society, careless of human life, indifferent to human inlere'ts. The machine has suffered for the sins of capitalism; contrariwise, rapiial-ism hu often taken credit for the virtues of the machine. By supporting the machine, capitalism quickened its puce, and gave a special incentive to preoccupation with mechanical improvements: though it often failed to reward the inventor, it succeeded by blandishments and promises in stimulating him to further effort. In many departments the pace was over-accelerated, and the stimulus was over-applied: indeed, ihe necessity to promote continual changes and improvements, which has been characteristic of capitalism, introduced an element of instability into technics and kept society from assimilating it- mechanical improvements and integrating them in an appropriate social pattern. As capitalism itself baB developed and expanded, these vices have in fact grown more enormous, and the dangers to society as a whole have likewise grown proportionately, Enough hew to notice the .love historical association of modem technic^ and modern capitalism, ami to point out that, for all this historical development, mere is no necessary connection uetween them. Capitalism has existed in other civilisations, which had * relatively low technical development; and technics made steady im- 1- 1 U'Wl'lII I, UlMIMIIlli. Illl Ull'llie IIIOIC SMJlr'U jiai'lHlCUIll Uli ap.iMUiia r 28 Tti:n nh:s and civilization movements from the tenth to the fifteenth century without the specif ,niT„l,vr Of capitalism. But ll.e Style ot the machine has up to l|«. present hcen powerfully influenced hv capitalism: the c.phasi. upon higrie's. fur example, is a commercial trait; it appeared in guild halls and merchant hm.-cs long hefore it was evident in technics, with its originally (Hodwl K»le of operations. 5; From Fahle to Fact Meanwhile, with the transformation of the concepts of time and space went a change in the .lirection of interest from the heavenly world to the natural one. Around the twelfth century the supernatural •world, in which the European mind had hcen enveloped as in a cloud from the decav of the classic schools of thought onward, began to lift: the beautiful culture of Provence whose language Dante himself had thought perhaps lo use for his Divine Comedy, was the first (Hid of the new order: a bud destined to be savagely blighted by llie Alhigciisian crusade. Everv culture lives within its dream. That of Christianity was one in which a fabulous heavenly world, filled with gods, saints, devils, demons, angels, archangels, cherubim and seraphim and dominions and powers, shot it- fantastically magnified shapes and images across the actual life of earlhborn man. This dream pervades the life of a culture us the fantasies of night dominate the mind of a "deeper: it is reality—while the sleep lasts. But. like the sleeper, a culture lives within an objective world that goe= on through its sleeping or waking, and sometimes breaks into the dream, like a noise. p> modify it or to make further deep impassible. By a slow natural promt, the. world of nature broke in upon the medieval dream of bell and paradise and eternity: in the fresh naturalistic sculpture of the thirteenth century duir. lies one can wahh llie first uneasy >tir of the sleeper,, as the light of morning -Irikes Ins eyes. At first, tin- craftsman's interest in nature was a confused one: side by side with the fine carvings of oak leaves and hawthorn sprays, faithfully copied, tenderly arranged, ibe sculptor -till - rented strange monsters, gargoyles, chimeras, legendary beasts. But the interest in nature steadily broadened and became more con- M i I l II u. PREPARATION 29 sinning. The naive feeling of the thirteenth century artist turned mto the systematic exploration of the sixteenth century botanists and physiologi-l-. •In the Mi.Idle Ages," as Mmile Male snid, '-the idea of a thing which a man lormed for himsrlf was always more u-ul than the actual thing it-elf, mid we see why these mystical ecnturie, had no conception of what men now call science. The study of things for'their own soke held no meaning for the thoughtful nun. . . . The tusk loi the student of nature was to discern the eternal truth that God would have e n h thing express." In escaping this utlitude, the vulgar had an advantage ever the learned: thrir minds viere less tamable o! forging their own shackles, A rational common nose interest in Nature t«u not a product of the new classical learning of the Rene* pence; rather, one iiiix —I say. thai a few centuries after it had flourished Bmorif.' the peasant- and the nta-ons, it made its way by another route into the court and the study ami the university, Vill.nd de Honnecourt'a notebook, the precious Impie-i of a great master-mason. ha- drawings of a bear, a «-v.an, a gras-hopner, n fly, a dragonfly, ■ lobster, a lion and a pair of pa r roquets, all done directly from life. The book of Vitn re reappeared, as in a palimpsest, through the heavenly book of the Word. During the Middle Ages the < sternal world had had no cunceplunl hold upon the mind. Naluial facts were insignificant compared with the diviro.....ler and intention which Christ ami his Church lud revealed: ll" \i-dde world was merely .1 pledge and a symbol id thai Eternal Vim Id of whose blisses ami damnations it gave such « keen foretaile. People ate and drank and mated, basked in the sun and grew solemn under the star-; but there was little meaning in thi* immediate stale; whatever significance the items of daily life had . „. -i acrc--.il ies and costumes and rehearsals for the drama ot Man'- pilgrimage through eternity, flow far could Uh? mind go in scientific mensuration and observation as long as the mystic nutn-1" 1 s three and four and seven and nine and twelve filled every relation with an allegorical significance, Before the sequence* in nature could be studied, it was necessary to discipline the imagination and sharpen the \ .-.on: mystic second sight must be converted into factual TECHNICS AND CIVILIZATION 30 hrst sight. The artists had a fuller part in this discipline than they have usually been credited with. In enumerating the many parts of nature that cannot be studied without the "aid and intervening of mathematics," Francis Bacon properly includes perspective, musie, architecture, and engineering along with the sciences oi astronomy and cosmography. The change in attitude toward nature manifested itself in solitary figures long before it became common, Roger Bacon's c\pcrimental precepts and his special researches in optica have long been commonplace knowledge; indeed, like the scientific vision of his Elizabethan namesake they have been somewhat overrated: their significance lies in the fact that they represented a general trend. In the thirteenth centurv, the pupils of Albertus Magnus were led by a new curiosity to explore their environment, while Absalon of St. Victor complained that the students wished to study "the conformation of the globe, the nature of the elements, the place of the stars, the nature of animals, the viulence of the wind, the life of herbs and roots." Danle and Petrarch, unlike most medieval men, no longer avoided mountains as mere terrifying obstacles that increased the hardships of travel: they sought them and climbed them, for the exaltation that comes from the conquest of distance and the attainment of a bird's-eye view. Later, Leonardo explored the hills of Tuscany, discovered fossils, made correct interpretations of the processes of geology: Agricola, urged on by his interest in mining, did the same. The herbal* and treatises on natural history that came out during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, though they still mingled fable and conjecture with fact, were resolute steps towurd the delineation of nature: their admirable pictures still witness this. And the little books on the seasons and the routine of daily life moved in the same direction. The great painters were not far behind. The Sistine Chapel, no less than Rembrandt's famous picture, was an anatomy lesson, and Leonardo was a worthy predecessor to Vesalius, whose life overlapped his. In the sixteenth century, according in Beckmann, there were numerous private natural history collections, and in J659 Eliaa Ashmole purchased the Tradescant collection, which he later presented to Oxford. CULTURAL preparation 41 The discovery of nature as a whole was the most important part of that era of discovery which began for the Western World with the Crusades and the travels of Marco Polo and the southward ventures of the Portuguese. Nature existed to he explored, to be invaded, to be conquered, and finally, to be understood. Dissolving, ibe medieval dream disclosed the world of nature, as a lifting mM opens to view the rocks and trees and herds on a hillside, whose existence had been heralded only by the occasional tinkling of bells or the lowing of a cow. Unfortunately, the medieval habit of separating the soul of man from the life of the material world persisted, though the theology that supported it was weakened; for as soon as the procedure of exploration was definitely outlined in the philosophy and mechanics of the seventeenth century man himself was excluded from the picture. Technics perhaps temporarily profited by this exclusion; but in the long run the result was to prove unfortunate. In attempting to seize power man tended to reduce himself to an abstraction, or, what comes to almost the same thing, to eliminate every part of himself except that which was bent on seizing power. 6: The Obstacle of Animism The great series of technical improvements that began to crystallize around the sixteenth century rested on a dissociation of the animate and the mechanical. Perhaps the greatest difficulty in the way of this dissociation was the persistence of inveterate hahitsoj animistic thinking. Despile animism, such dissociations had indeed been made in the past: one of the greatest of such acts was the invention of the wheel. Even in the relatively advanced cmlisaUoil of die Assyrians one sees representations of great statues being moved across bare ground on a sledge. Doubtless the notion of the wheel came originally from observing that rolling » h>g wis «^ *J shoving it: but tree, existed for untold years and the V^** trees had gone on for many thousands, in all likeMood, neolithic inventor performed the stunning ad of di*oea*wm made possible the cart So long as every object, animate or *"J^t as the dwelling place of a spirit, so long •» one exoecttd * n» direction, ine gfeai palmers weie tun iai oem I TECHNICS AND CIVIMZATION ship to behave like a living creature, if was next in impossible u> j-olate as a mechanical sequence tbe special function one sought to serve. Just .-is the Egyptian workman, when he made the leg „[ fl chair, fashioned it to represent the leg ol a bullock, so the desire naively to reproduce the organic, and to conjure up giants and djiunj for power, instead ol contriving their abstract equivalent, retarded the development of the machine. Nature often a--i-ts in suc], abstrac-in.ri: die swan's use of it- wing may have suggested the sail, even as the hornet's ncsi suggested paper. Conversely, the bu.lv itself i, a soil of microcosm of the machine: the arms are levers, the lungs arc bellows, the eyes are lenses, the heart i- a pump, the iisi is a hammer, the nerves are a telegraph system connected with a .entral station: hut on the whole, the mechanical instruments were invented before the physiological functions were accurately described. The most ineffective kind of machine is the realistic mechanical imitation of a man or another animal: technics remembers Vuucaiison for hi* loom, rather tli.01 foi bis life-like mechanical duck, which not merely ate food hut went through the routine oi digestion and excretion. Tlu-. original advances in modern teclrnics became possible only when a mechanical system .mild be isolated fiotn the entire tissue of relations. Not merely did the first airplane, like that of Leonardo, attempt to reproduce the motion of birds' wings: as late as 1897 Ader's builike airplane, which now hangs in the Conservatoire des Ails el Metiers in Paris had its ribs fashioned like a hat's body, mid ihe verv propellers, as if to exhaust all the zoological possibilities, were made of thin, split wood, as much as possible like bird*3 feathers, .Similarly, [he belief that reciprocating motion, as in the movement of the arms and legs. Was the "lutm-al" form of motion was used to justify opposition lo die original conception of the turbine. Branca'* plan of a steam-engine, at the beginning of ihe seventeenth century showed the boiler in ihe form of the head and torso of a man. Circular motion, one of the most useful ami frequent attributes of a fully developed machine is, curiously, one of the least observable motions in nature: even the stars do not describe a circular course, and except for ihe rotifers, man himself, in occasional dances and handsprings, is die chief exponent of rotary motion. 33 C I! L T t; H A L PKRPAIIATTON The specific triumph of the technical imagination rested on the ability to dissociate lifting power [ruin ihe arm ami rrcate a crane: Ki dissociate work from the a. lion of men and animnls and create the water-mill: to dissociate light from ihe eiimhnsiion of wood ami and .re il.- ihe electric lamp. Eoi thousands of years animism bad Stood in the way of this development; Ur it had concealed ihe entire face of nature behind a scrawl ol human forms: even die star* Merc grouped together in the living figures of Castor and Pollux or tin- Bull on the faintest points of resemblance. Life, not content with iis own province, had flowed incontinently into stone-, rivers, stars, and all the natural ■ laments: the external environment, because it sva* so iuune.lial'h pint of man, remained capricious, mischievuiis. a reflection of his own disordered urges and fears. Since tli- w..(!d seem.-.I, in essence, animistic and since these "external" powers threatened man, the only method of escape that his own Wtll-to-power could follow was either the disciplině ol ihe self or the ionqiic'-t ní oilier men: the way of religion nv the way of war. 1 shall discuss, in another place, the special contribution lhat the technique and animus of warfare made lo tbe development of the machine; as for the discipline of the personality it wns e^cn-tially. during ihe Middle Ages, the province of the Church, and it had gone farthest, of course, not among the peawinU and nobles, still clinging to essentially pagan ways of thought, with which the Church had - ■pe.henily compromised: it had gone iaruW in the muii.i-ici a--, and the universities. Here a„»,i,.m was extruded by a sense of the omnipotence ol a .ingle spun. ..fined, by the very enlargement of Hi. dut.«. out ot any semblance of merely human or animal capacities. Cod had created an orderly world, and his Law prevailed ^'^'TT, perhaps inscrutable; but they were not capricious: the whole burden of the religious 1,1.- was to create an auitude of humility towsrd the ways of God and .he world he had created. II ^^J* *»* of the Middle Ace. remained superstitious and an,m^. *e*£ physical docrines of the Schoolmen were in fact anU-an-m^ M» gist of the matter was that God's world was no. vM «* ^ onlv the church could form a bridge between man and ttoabwMaV 3i TECHNICS AND CIVILIZATION The meaning of this division did not fully become apparent until the Schoolmen them.-elves had fallen into disrepute and their in. heritors, like Descartes, had begun to take advantage of the old breach by describing on a purely mechanical basis the entire world of nature—leaving out only the Church's special province, the soul of man. It was by reason of the Church's belief in an orderly independent world, as Whitehead has shown in Science and the Modern World, that the work of science could go on so confidently. The humanists of the sixteenth century might frequently be sceptics and atheists, scandalously mocking the Church even when they remained within its fold: it is perhaps no accident thai the serious scientists of the seventeenth century, like Galileo. Descartes, 1 eibniz, Newton, Pascal, were so uniformly devout men. The next step in development, partly made by Descartes himself, was. the transfer of order from God to the Machine. For God became in the eighteenth century the Eternal Clockinaker who, having conceived and created ttnd wound up the clock of the universe, had no further responsibility until the machine ultimately broke up—or, as the nineteenth century thought, until the works ran down. The method of science and technology, in their developed forms, implies a sterilization of the self, an elimination, as far .is possible, of the human bias and preference, including the human pleasure in man's own image and the instinctive belief in the immediate presentations of his fantasies. What better preparation could a whole culture have for such an effort than die spread oi the monastic system and the multiplication of a host of separate communities, dedicated to the living of a humble ami self-abnegating life, under a strict rule? Here, in the monastery, was a relatively non-animistic, non-organic world: the temptations of the body were minimized in theory and, despite strain and irregularity, often minimized in practice—more often, at all events, than in secular life. The effort to exalt the individual self was suspended in the collective routine, Like ihe machine, the monastery was incapable of self-pel petuation except by renewal from without. And apart from the fact that women wen- similarly organised in nunneries, the monastery was like the army, a strictly masculine world. Like the army, again, it sharpened is a sue- CULTURAL PREPARATION and disciplined and focussed the masculine will-to-power: „ .,„ . cession of military leaders came from die religious orders, while the lender of the order that exemplified the ideals of the Counier-Rrior-niation began his life as a soldier. One of the fir*! experimental M-ienti>K Roger Bacon, was a mouk; so, again, wa, Michael Slifel. who in 1341 widened the use of symbols in algebraic equations; the monkr. -tood high in the roll of mechanics and inventor-. The spiritual routine of lha monastery, if it did not positively favor the machine, at least nullified many of the influences thai worked against it. And unlike die similai discipline of the Buddhists, thai of tin- Western monk.- gave i ise to more fertile and complex kinds of machinery dian prayer wheel-. In still anolher way did the institutions of ihe Church perhaps prepare the way for the machine: in their contempt for the body. Now respect for the body and its organs is deep in .ill the classic-cultures of the past. Sometimes, in being "mi.igiiulively projected, tlie body ma) be displaced symbolically by the parti or organ- of another animal, as in the Egyptian Horns: but the substitution is made for the - ike of intensifying some organic quality, the power of muscle, eye. genitals. The phalluses that were carried in a religious procession were grealer and more powerful, by representation, than the actual human organ-: so. too, the images of the soda might attain heroic si;.e. to accentuate then vitality. The whole ritual of life in the old cultures tended to empWn* K»JWCtll,v *J bodj and to dwell on its beauties and delight- even ll.e monks who naiute.i the \'i mtj . ases of India were under its spell. The enthronement of the human form in sculpture, and the care of the body in the palest,a of the Creeks or ihe bath, of the Romans, re-mtnrcrd this inner feeling for the organic. The legend *« typifcB the horror and the resentment lhal classic people, felt against the mut.l ition of the body: one made beds to fit human beings, one did not . bop Off legs or heads to fn bed* , Tins tffirmative sense of the body surely never d.»pp««A. «« during ,.......vercsl Uiumph. of On —mtv: every new recovers it ihrougb their physical delight in-J «J«. *■«WJ. the převalen, e of gluttony as a sin during the Middle Ages wa ■*u .-art* as susneuiled m liie co ^^^^^ routine. tliu not coop 36 f EGU ni CS AND Cl vi ti 2 \ 710 N ,ťlim-s to the importance "'' *■ l,ellv- "'" thr sy*i«maiic te*chinaj „I' the Church were ducted against the bod) and it* culture: ij ,m one lund it w«l « Templ.- of the Holy Ghost, il was also viLj ajjj riniuJ by nature: the flesh tended to corruption, and to achieve fa pious ends of life one must mortify it and subdue it, lessening fa nppetitM by fasting and abstention. Stich was the lettei .,1 ille Clun-eh^ teaching; and while one cannol suppose that the mass „{ humanity kept close to the letter, tin- feeling against the body's exposure, il- UBCi, its celebration, was there. While public b.nh houses were common in the Middle Ages, dor. trarv to the complacent superstition that developed after the Reno* , \ K V T 10 N 3J die ..impawn would possibly have been unthinkable; hut without tho scrambled daring of the magicians the iu-i positions would not I,,,, bean taken For the magicians not only believed In in.ov.-ls hm audaciously sought to work them: bj then straining after the ewep. tlonal, die natural philosopher- who followed tben were first given i clue to the regular. The dream "I courno-i iug mime i-i one of the old,-t that has flowed and i hired ill mim'- niuul. 1 ach prat , [inch in human history in win. b tins " i" ha- tourid a positive nutlet murks a rise in human culture and a permanent contribution In man's security ami welt-being. Prométheu-, the lin-biingrr. stands at the beginning of man's conquest: foi fire not merely made possible the auier digesdon .if foods, but its flames kepi oil predatory animal-, and around the warmth of it. during the coldei seasons of die year, an Sítiva ul life became possible, beyond the mere huddle and vacuity ní lbe winter's sleep. Tin- slow advances in making tools and weapons mul Dtensils dial milked the earlier 'lone periods wen- t pedestrian conquest ol tin environment: gains by inches. In the neolithic period came the firsl .cicat lilt, will) the domestication ol plants and animal-, the making of orderly and effective astronomical observations, and the spread ol i i datively peaceful big-stone civilization in many lands separated over lbe planet. Fire-making, agriculture, pottery, astronom) v.....ma rvi II""- collective leaps; domination- radial own a.l iptations, For thousands of years men must have dteamed, vainly, of furlh, i short-CUttI and controls. Beyond the great and perhaps relatively short period of ueolitl.ic i„vcniion the advances, up lo the tenth century of our own era, had been relatively small except in the use of metala. Bui the hope of some largei compiest, some more fundamental reversal of man* dependent relation upon a merciless and indifferent external world , „lltlllllI.,i ,o ],.,„,„ l,i, dreams and eve, his prayers: (he myll» Mat fairy -ton, are a testimony to his desire for plenitude and power, tor frci d,mi of rli'ivemeul and length of dav-. looking at the bird, i......beamed of Bight: perhaps one of « ,.....I universal „I man's envies and desires: Paedalus among fti (nek,. Avar Katsi, the living man, among die Peruv.an bldfan*, to .« TECHNICS AND CIVILIZATION say nothing of Kali and Neith. Asiaitc and Psyche, or the Angels of Gjii-iiimitv. In tin/ thirteenth century, tins dream reappeared pi.'i'lľii'ally in the mind ol Rogea Ha.mi. The flying caqjet of the Arabian \iglii>. the seven-leagued L...>!-, tin- wishing ring, were all evidences of the desire to fly. to travel last, to diminish spi1COi t(j remove the obstacle of distance. Along with tin- went a fairly eon-slant de-ire to deliver the hody from infirmities, from it, eurly aging, which dried up its powers, and trom tlie diseases that threaten life even in the midst pi vigor anil youth. The gods may he defined as beings of aomewhal more than hum.in stature that have these POWen of defying space and time and tin cycle ol growth and decay: even in the Christian legend the ability to make the lame walk and the blind see is one of the proofs ol podhood. lmhotep and Aesculapius. Ic reatorj then -kiii in tin- medical aits, were raised into deities by the Egyptians and the tiiceks, (oppressed by want and starvation, the dream of the born of plenty ami the Earthly Paradise continued I" haunt rut 11. It was ill the North that these myths of extended powers took on an added firmness, perhaps, from the actual achievements of the miners and smith-: one remembers Thor, master of the thunder, whose magic hammer made him so potent: one remembers I.oki. the cunning and mischievous god ol fire: on.- ivim-mbi-i - the ptotnes who < reated the magic armor and weapons of Siegfried—llmarinen of the Finns, who made a steel eagle, and Wieland. tin- fabulouo German smith, who made feather clothes for flight. Back of all these fables, these collective wishes and Utopias, lay the de-sire to prevail over the brute nature of things. But the very dreams that exhibited these desires were a revelation of the- difficulty of achieving them. The dream give- direction lo human activity and both expresses the inner urge of the organism and conjures up appropriate goals. Hut when the dream strides too far ahead of fact, it tends to short-em ml action: the anticipatory subjective pleasure serves as a surrogate lot the I bought and contrivance and action that might give it a foothold in reality. The disembodied desire, unconnected with the conditions of its fulfillment OX willi its means of expression, leads nowhere: at most it contributes M CULTURAL PREPARATION to an inner equilibrium. How difficult was the discipline required before mechanical invention became possible one sees in the part played by magfe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centurie*. MagíCi 'ik'' l'11"' fsntasy, was l short cut to knowledge and power. But even in ihe most primitive form of shamanism, magic involves a drama and an in lion: if one wishes, to kill one's enemy by iwif-ic, one must at least mould .c w.ix figure and stick pins into it; and similfU'ly- if the need toi gold in early capitalism promoted a grand quest for the means of Iran-muling ba-c metals into noble ones, it vás accompanied '"■ fumbling and frantic attempt* lo manipulate the external environment. Under magic, die esperunenter acknowledged that it was neci.-s.-arv to have a sow's car before one could make a silk purse: this w.is .1 re.d adv.iiiic toward maller-of-fact. "The operations." as Lynn Thnmdikc well >ay* of uugir, "were supposed to be efficacious here in the world of external reality": magic presupposed a public demonstration rather dian a merely private guti-fication. No one can put his linger on the place when- magic hecamc science, where empiricism became systematic expi-iimeniulism, where alchemy fie. .on, chemistry, where astrology became astronomy, in short, where the need for immediate human result, and gratifications ceased to leave it- smudgy imprint. Magic w.i- marked above all perhaps by two 1111-1 ientific qualities: hy secrets and myslificalious, and bj a certain impatience for "results." According to Agricoll the transrautationists of the sixteenth century did not hesitate to conceal gold in a pellet ol ore, in order to make their experiment come out sinve-slulh similai dodge-, like a concealed .lock-winder. «crc used in the numerous perpetual motion machines that were put forward. Everywhere ihe dross of fraud and charlatanism mingled with ihe occasional grams o I scientific knowledge that magic Ulilfced or produced. . , But the instruments of research were developed before a met »o of procedure was found: and if gold did not come out of cad in Ihe experiments of the alchemists, thev are not (0 1« reproached 1« their ineptitude but congratulated on iheir audacity: Uierr liiwg««> lions sn.fied quarry in a cave they could net penetrate, end ■■man nrtit/ilv anH hoth exuiřS^CS tlic itírľťf U'ŕjííf Ul l'llti Ol^uiiio rtr 111• n h 11 ■ 1 f 41) TECHNICS AND CIVILIZATION having anJ pointing 6«*% called the hunter, la ihe spot, s.......^ ,,,,,„. *M out of tl,c 1,1 ""■ :lhcm- isis* the retort and tlie furnace and the ale,,doe: the habit oi .nanipu-lalion by crushing, grinding, fifing, distilling, dissolving- valuable apparatus for real experiments, valuable methods for real seienee. fhe source of authority tor the magician-, ceased to be Aristotle and the fathers of the Church: they relied upon what their baud, could do and their eves could see. with the aid ..1 mortal and pestle and furnace. Magic rested on demonstration rather than dialectic: more than anything else, perhaps, except painting, it released European thought from the tyranny of the written text. In sum, magic turned men's minds to the externa] world: it suggested the need of manipulating it: it helped create the took for successfully achieving this, and it sharpened observation as to the results. The philosopher's stone was not found, but the science of chemistry emerged, to enrich us far beyond the simple dreams of the gold-seekers. The herbalist, zealous in his quest for simples and cure-alls, led the way for the intensive explorations of the botanist and the physician: despite our boasts of accurate coal lar drugs, one must not forget that one of the few genuine specifics in medicine, quinine, comes from the cinchona bark, and that chaulmoogra oil, used with success in treating leprosy, likewise comes from an exotic tree. As children's play anticipates crudely adult life, so did magic anticipate modern science and technology: it was chief)] the lack of direct ion tJiat was fantastic: the difficulty was not in using the instrument but in finding a field where it could be applied and finding the right system fur applying it. Much of seventeenth century science, though no longer tainted with charlatanism, was just as fantastic. It needed centuries of systematic effort to develop ihe technique which has given us Ehrlich's stilvarsan or Bayer 207. But magli mas the bridge that united fantasy with technology: the dream of power with the engines of fulfillment. The subjective confidence of the magicians, seeking to inflate their private egos with b.....ulless wealth and mysterious energies, surmounted even their practical failures: their fiery hopes, their crazy dreams, their cracker! hoinuuculi continued CULTURAL FREPARATION « to gleam in the ashes; lu have dreamed so riotously was to make die technics mat follow.,| less incredible and hence less impossible. 8: Social Regimentation It mechanical thinking and ingenious experiment produced the nun lone. 11-mi! illation [lave it u soil to grow in: the social process worked h.....I in hand with the new ideuiopy and tbc new technics, Long before tlie peoples of the *v\ estem World turned to the machine, medium-in as an element in social life had come into exigence. Before inventors created engines to lake the place of men. the leaders of men had drilled and regimented multitudes of human beings: they had discovered how to reduce men to machines. The slaves and pea-ants who hauled the stones for the pyi.-miids. pulling in rhythm to the crack ol the whip, tin -laws working in the Roman galley, each man chained to his seat and unable to perform any other motion than the limited mechanical one, the order ami march and system of attack of the Macedonian phalanx—these were all machine phenomena. Whatever limits the actions and movements of human beings to their bate mechanical elements belongs to the physiology, if not to the mechanics, of the machine age. From the fifteenth century on invention and regimentation worked reciprocally. The increase in the number and kinds of machines, mills, guns, clocks, lifelike automata, must have suggested mechanical attiilmlc- for men ami extended the analogies of mechanism to moie subtle and complex organic f.nts; b\ the seventeenth century tin- turn of interest disclosed itself in philosophy. Deseartcs, in aiLilv/ing the physiology of the human body, remarks that its func-tinning apart fiom the guidance of the will does not "appear at all strange to those who are acquainted with die variety of movements performed by tlie different autumata, or moving machines fabricated by human industry, and with the help of but a few pieces compared with the great multitude of bones, nerves, arteries, veins, and other parts that are found in the body of each animal. Such person* will look upon this body as a machine made by the hand of God." But ihe opposite process was also true: the mechanization of human habits prepared the way for mechanical imitations. i i _ t___ 42 TECHNICS AND CIVILIZATION To the degree that fear and disruption prevail in society, men tend to seek an absolute: if it does not exist, they project It Regimentation gave the men of the period a finality they could discover nowhere else. If one of the phenomena of the breakdown of the medieval order was the turbulence that made men freebooters, discoverers, pioneers, breaking away from the lameness of the old ways and the rigor of self-imposed disciplines, the other phenomenon, related to it, but compulsively drawing society into a regimented mould, was the methodical routine of the drillmaster and the book-keeper, the soldier and the bureaucrat. These masters of regimentation gained full ascendency in the seventeenth century. The new bourgeoisie, in counting house and shop, reduced life to a careful, uninterrupted routine: so long for business: so long for dinner: so long for pleasure —all carefully measured out. as methodical as the sexual intercourse of Tristram Shandy's father, which coincided, symbolically, with the monthly winding of the clock. Timed payments: timed contracts: limed work: timed meals: from this period on nothing was quite free from the stamp of the calendar or trie clock. Waste of time became for protestant religious preacher-, like Richard Baxter, one of the most heinous sins. To spend time in mere sociability, or even in sleep, was reprehensible. The ideal man of the new order was Robinson Crusoe. No wonder he indoctrinated children with his virtues for two centuries, and served as the model lor a score of sage discourses on the Economic Man. Robinson Crusoe was all the more representative as a tale not only because it was the work of one of the new breed of writers, the professional journalists, but because it combines in a single setting the element of catastrophe and adventure with the necessity for invention. In the new economic system every man was for himself. The dominant virtues were thrift, foresight, skillful adaptation of means. Invention took the place of image-making and ritual; experiment took the place of contemplation; demonstration took the place of deductive logic and authority. Even alone on a desert island the sober middle class virtues would carry one through. . . • Protestantism re-enforced these lessons of Middle class Bobricty and gave them God's sanction. True: the main devices of finance i I CULTURAL PREPARATION a were a product of Catholic Europe, and Protestantism has received undeserved praise as a liberating force from medieval routine and undeserved censure as the original source and spiritual justification of modern capitalism. Hut the peculiar office of Protestantism was to unite finance to ihe concept of a godly life and to turn the asceticism countenanced by religion into a device for concentration upon worldly goods and worldly advancement. Protestantism rested firmly on the abstractions of print and money. Religion wus to be found, not simply in the fellowship of religious spirits, connected historically through the Church and communicating with God through an elaborate ritual: it was to be found in the word itself*, die word without its communal background. In the last analysis, the individual must fend for himself in heaven, as he did on the exchange. The expression of collective beliefs through the arts was a snare: so the Protestant stripped the images from his Cathedral and left the bare stones of engineering: he distrusted all painting, except perhaps portrait painting, which mirrored his righteousness; and he looked upon the theater and the dance as a lewdness of the devil. Life, in all its sensuous variety and warm delight, was drained out of the Protestant's world of thought: the organic disappeared. Time was real: keep it! Labor was real: exert it! Money was real: save it! Space was real: conquer it! Matter was real: measure it! These were the realities and the imperatives of the middle class philosophy. Apart from the surviving scheme of divine salvation all its impulses were already put under the rule of weight and measure and quantity: day and life were completely regimented. In the eighteenth century Benjamin Franklin, who had perhaps been anticipated by the Jesuits, capped the process by inventing a system of moral book-keeping. How was it that the power motive became isolated and intensified toward the close of the Middle Ages? Each element in life forms part of a cultural mesh: one part implicates, restrains, helps to express the other. During this period Ihe mesh was broken, and a fragment escaped and launched itself on a separate career—the will to dominate die environment To dominate, not to cultivate: to seize power, not to achieve form. One cannot, plainly, embrace a complex series of events in such sinipJe t*tf» W iloTTiinani virtues wer« lhritL toresuzht. skilltul adaptation 4-1 TECHNICS ft N D C I V I Li / \ i'll) N alone! Anothei faciei in ili<' change may have been due to an intense fied sense oi inferiority: this perhaps :iuw thiuiigh tin- humiliating disparity between nun's ideal pretensions and bis real accomplish* merits—between the charity and peace preached by the Church and its eternal war- and feuds and animosities, between the hoi) life as preached by the saint- and tin- Loach Lous life as lived l>\ the Renascence Popes, between the belief in heaven ami llic squalid disordei .md distress of actual existence, Failing redemption by grace, harmonization of desires, the Chi istian virtues, people tought, |-11>.• i• -. to wipe mil their sense of inferiority and overcome theii loi-i'.it.....bj seeking power. At all events, the old synthesis had broken down in thought and in social action. In no little degree, it had broken down because it was an inadequate one; a closed, perhaps fundamentally neurotic con« ceptkui of human life and destiny, which oiigin.ilk had -piling out of the misery and terror that had attended both the brutality of Imperialistic Rome and its. ultimate put) taction and decay. So remote were the attitudes and concepts <>l Christianity from the facts of the natural world and of human life, that once the world itself was opened up by navigation ami exploiatiou, by the new cosmology, by new methods of observation ami experiment, there was no returning to the broken shell of the old order. The split between the Heavenly system and the Earthly one bad become too grave to be overlooked, too wide to be bridged: human life had a destiny outside thai shell. The crudest •< ieoce touched i loser to contemporary truth than the most refined siihokisicismj the clumsiest steam engine or spuming jenny had more efficiency than the soundesl guild regulation, and the paltriest factory and iron bridge had more promise for architecture than the most masterly buildings of Wren and Adam: tin- first yard of cloth woven bj machine, the first plain iron casting, had potentially more esthetic interest than jewelry fashioned by a Cellini or the canvas cov.-ted by .1 Reynold*! in short: a live macta'a* was belter than a dead organism; and the organism of medieval culture was dead. From the fifteenth century to the seventeenth men lived in an empty world: a win Id that was daily growing emptier, They said CULTURAL PREPARATION « their prayers, they repeated their formulas; they even nought to retrieve il>c holiness they hud lust by resuneeting BupersMtiona they bad long abandoned: hence the fierceness and hollow fanati< i-m of the < -iiunlcr -Reformation, its burning of heretics, its persecution oi witches, precisely in ihe midst of the growing "enlightenment," They threw themselves back into the medieval dream with a new intensity ul feeling, ii not rohvictics: they carved and painted ami wrote- who indeed ever hewed more mightily in stone thaa Michel-angelo, Who wiole with nunc spectacular ecstasy and vigor than Shakespeare? But beneath the -uiUee occupied by these work- of :ni and thought was ,1 deed world, an empty world, a void ili.ii no amount of dash and hiavura could fill up. The arts shot up into the sir in j hundred pulsing fountains, for it i- jnsi al the moment of cultural and social dissolution that the mind often works with a freedom and intensity thai is not possible when the social pattern is Stable and life as a whole is more satisfactory: but the idol urn itself had become empty. Men no longer believed, without practical reservations, in heaven and bell and the communion of the saints: still less did ihey believe in the smooth gods and goddesses and sylph* and muses whom ihey used, with elegant but meaningless gesture-, to adorn their thoughts and embellish their environment: these supernatural figures, though they were human in migin and in consonance with certain stable human needs, had become wraiths. Observe the infant Je,us of a Shut. ■ nib eeiiimv altarpieee: the infant lies on an ultar, opart; the Virgin is transfixed and beatified by the presence of the Holy Ghost: the myth is real. Observe the Holy Familie- of tin- sixteenth sntl seventeenth century painting: fashionable young ladies are coddling their well-fed human infants: the myth has died. First only the gorgeous clothes are left: finally n doll takes the place of ihe living child: a mechanical puppet. Mechanics became the new religion, and 11 gave lo the world a new Messiah: the machine. «>: The Mechanical Universe The issues of practical life found their justification and their appropriate frame of ideas in the natural philosophy of the seven- :j>ii'«-lrv la-hioned uv child- .1 mechanical puppet, ween.....is mi aim IW 46 technics and CIVILIZATION leenth century: this philosophy has remained, in effect, the working creed of technics, even though its ideology has been chullenged, modified, amplified, and in pari undermined by the further pursuit of science itself. A series of thinkers, Bacon, Descartes. Galileo, Newton. Puscal, defined the province of science, elaborated its special technique of research, and demonstrated its elliciicy, Ai the beginning of the seventeenth century there were only scat1 leied efforts of thought, some scholastic, some Aristotelian, tone mathematical and scientific, as in the astronomical observation* of Copernicus. Tycho Bruhe, and Kepler: the machine had bad only an incidental part to play in these intellectual advances. At the end, despite the relative sterility of invention itself during this century, diere existed a fully arlicwlaled philosophy of the universe, on purely mechanical lines, which served as a starling pomt for all ihe physical sciences and for further technical improvements: the mechanical Weltbild had come inlo existence. Mechanics set the pattern of successful research and shrewd application. Up to this time the biological sciences had parallel.id the physical sciences: thereafter, for at least a century and a half, they played second fiddle; and it was not until after 1800 that biological facts were recognized as an important basis for technics, By what means was the new mechanical picture put together? And how did it come to provide such an excellent Boil for the propagation of inventions and the spread of machines? The method of the physical sciences rested fundamentally upon a few simple principles. First: the elimination of qualities, and the reduction of the complex to the Mmple by paying attention only to those aspects of events which could be weighed, measured, or counted, and to the particular kind of space-lime sequence that Could be controlled anil repeated—or, as in astronomy, whose repetition could be predicted. Second: concentration upon the outer world, and the elimination or neutralization of the observer as respects the data with which be works. Third: isolation; limitation of the field: specialization of interest and subdivision nf labor. In short, what the physical sciences call the world is not the total object of common human experience: it is just those aspects of this experience cultural preparation thai lend themselves to accurate factual observation and to #-n. erulized Statements. One may define a mechanical system ai one in which any random sample of ihe whole will serve in place of the whole: an ounce of pure waier in ihe laboratory is supposed to have the same properties as a hundred cubic feet of equally pure water in the eastern and the environment of die object is not supposed to ailed its behavior. Our modem concepts of space and time make it seem doubtful if any pure mechanical system really exiita: but the original bias of natural philosophy was to discard organic complexes and to seek isolates which could be described, /or practical purposes, as if they completely represented the "physical world" from which they bad been extracted. This elimination of the organic had the justification not only of practical iiitcifst but of history itself. Whereas Socrates had turned hi- back upon the Ionian philosophers because he was more concerned to learn about man's dilemmas lhan to learn about trees, rivers, and stars, all thai could be called positive knowledge, which bad survived the rise and fall of human societies, were just such non-vital truths as the Pythagorean theorem. In contrast to the cycles of taste, doctrine, fashion, there had been a steady accretion of mathematical and physical knowledge In this development, the study of aatrcmooij had been u great aid: the stars could nol he cajoled or perverted: then courses were visible to the naked eye and could be followed by any patient observer. Compare the complex phenomenon of an ox moving over a winding uneven road with the movements of a planet; it is easier to trace an entire orbit than to plot the varying rale of speed and the changet of position that takes place in the nearer and more familial object. '!'•> /ii attention upon a mechanical syilem wu the firit ttep totvard creating system: an important victory for rational thought By centering effort upon the non-historic and the inorganic, the physical sciences clarified the entire procedure of analysis: for the field to which they confined their attention was one in Hrhkh the method could be pushed farthest without being too palpably inade* quale or encountering too many special difficulties. But the teal physical world was still not simple enough for the scieotifio m«ti*« f I H íl I u i>'Jll 48 TECHNICS AND CIVILIZATION in ils first stages of development: it was necessary to reduce it to sii.ii elements as could be ordered in term-, of space, time, mass, motion, quantity. Tfie amount of elimination and rejection that accompanied this was excellently described b\ t.alilco. who gave the process such a strong impetus. One must quote him in full: "As soon as I form a conception of a material or Corporeal Bub-stunce, I simultaneously feel the necessity of cnneeiiing ibal it has hoiindaTJcs of some shape or other; that relatively to others it is great or small; that it is in this or that place, in tiri- or that time; that it is in motion or at rest; that it touches, or does not touch, another body; that it is unique, rare, or common; nor can I, by any act of imagination, disjoin it from these qualities. But 1 do not find myself absolutely compelled to apprehend it a.- iie.r.su ily accompanied hy such conditions us that it must be while or red. bitter or sweet, sonorous or silent, smelling sweetly or disagreeably; and if the senses had not pointed out these qualities language and imagination alone could never have arrived at lln-m. Tier, ton- I think that these ta-tes, smells, color-, el-., with regal.I !-. tin- object in which they appear to reside, are nothing more than mere names. They exist only in the sensitive body, for when the living creature is removed all these qualities are earned otT and annihilated, although we have- imposed particular names upon them, and would fain persuade ourselves that they truly and in fa>-t exist. 1 do not believe that there exists anything in externa] bodies for exciting tastes, smeUs, and sounds, etc., except ^i/,-, shape, quantity, and motion." In other words, physical science confined it-elf to the so-called primary qualities: the secondary qualities are spurned as subjective. But a primary quality is no more ultimate or elementary than a secondary quality, and a sensitive body is no less real than an insensitive body. Biologically speaking, smell wan highly important for survival: more so, perhaps, than the ability to discriminate distance or weight: for it is the chief means of determining whether food is fit to eat, and pleasure in odors not merely refined tire process of eating but gave a special association to the visible symbols of erotic interest, sublimated finally in perfume. The primary qualities could be called prime only in terms of mathematical CULTURAL PREPARATION ,w analysis, because they had. as an ultimate point of reference, an independent measuring stick for time and space, a clock, a ruler, a balance. The value of concentrating upon primary qualities, was thai it neutralized in experiment and analysis the sensory and emotional ir-aeti..n, of the observer: apart from die process of thinking, he bee.line an instrument of record. In this manner, scientific technique became cuiumuiial, impersonal, objective, within its, limited field, the purely conventional "material world." This technique resulted in a valuable moralizatinn ..I thought: the standards, first worked out in realms foreign to man's personal aims and immediate interests, were equally applicable to more complex aspeiIs of reality that stood closer to his hopes, loves, ambitions. Rut the first effect of ibis advance in clarity and in sobriety of thought was to devaluate every department of experieni e except that which lent itself to mothe-mutieal investigation. When the Royal Society was founded in England, the humanities wen- deliberately excluded. In general, the practice of the physical sciences meant an intensification of the senses: the eye had never before been so sharp, the ear so keen, the hand so accurate. Ilooke, who had seen how'glasses improved seeing, doubted not that "there may be found Mechanical Inventions t., improve our other senses, of hearing, smelling, tasting, touching." Bui with this gain in accuracy, went a deformation of experieni e as j whole. The instruments of science were helpless in the realm of qualities, The qualitative was reduced to the subjective: the subjei live was dismissed as unreal, and the unseen and immeasurable in■!■ existent. Intuition and feeling did not affect mechanical process ,,r mechanical explanations. Much could be accomplished by the new science and the new technics because much thai wbb associated with life and work in the past—art, poetry, organic rhythm, fantasy—was deliberately eliminated. As the outer world of perception grew in importance, the inner world of feeling became more and more impotent. The division of labor and the specialisation in single parts of an operation, which already had begun lo characterise the economic life of the seventeenth century, prevailed in the world of thought: .l.;l;,. tminatft d JS8 50 TECHNICS AND CIVILIZATION they were expressions of the same desire for mechanical accuracy and for quick results. The field of research was progressively divided up, and small parts of it were subject to intensive examination: in small measures, so to say, truth might perfect he. This restriction was a great practical device. To know the complete nature of an object does not necessarily make one fit to work with it: for complete knowledge requires a plenitude of time: moreover, it tends finally to a sort of identification which lacks precisely the cool aloofness that enables one to handle it and manipulate il for external ends. If one wishes to eat a chicken, one had better treat it as food (coin die beginning, and not give it too much friendly attention or human sympathy or even esthetic appreciation: if one treats the life of the chicken as an end. one may even with Bruhniinical thoroughness preserve the lice in its feathers as well as the bird. Selectivity is an operation necessarily adopted by die organism to keep it from being overwhelmed with irrelevant sensations and comprehensions. Science gave this inevitable selectivity a new rationale: il singled out the most negotiable set of relations, mass, weight, number, motion. Unfortunately, isolation and abstraction, while important to orderly research and refined symbolic representation, are likewise conditions under which real organisms die, or at least cease to function effectively. The rejection of experience in its original whole, besides abolishing images and disparaging the non-instrumental aspects of thought, had another grave result: on the positive side, it was a belief in the dead; for the vital processes often escape close observation so long as the organism is alive. In short, the accuracy and simplicity of science, though they were responsible for its colossal practical achievements, were not an approach to objective reality but a departure from it. In their desire to achieve exact results the physical sciences scorned true objectivity: individually, one side of the personality was paralyzed; collectively, one side of experience was ignored. To substitute mechanical or two-way time for history, the dissected corpse for the living body, dismantled units called "individuals" for men-in-groups, or in general lite mechanically measurable or reproducible for the inaccessible and the complicated and the organically whole, is to achieve a limited practical mastery CULT ť RA l PREPARATION m at the expanse of truth and of the larger efficiency that depends on truth. By confining his operations to those aspects of reality which bud, so to say. market value, and by isolating and dismembering the corpus of experience, the physical scientist created a babit of mind favorable to discrete practical inventions: at the same time it was highly unfavorable t" all those forms of art for which the secondary qualities ami the individualised receptors and motivators of the artist were oJ fundamental importance. B) his consistent metaphysical principle.- .oid in-- I actual method of research, the physical scientist denuded the world of natural and organic objects and turned his back upon real experience: he substituted for the body and blood of n-.dit) a skeleton of effective abstractions which he could manipulate with appropriate wiie- and pulleys*. What was left lus the hare, depopulated world of matter and motion: a waste! rod. In order to thrive at all, it was necessary for ihe inheritors of the seventeenth century idolum to fill the world up again with new ofgam-ms. devised to represent the new realities of physical science, Machines—and machines alone—completely met the requirements of the new scientific method and point of view: they fulfilled the definition of "reality" far more perfectly than living organisms. And once the mechanical world-pietuie was established, machines could thrive and multiply and dominate existence: their competitors had been exterminated or had been consigned to a penumbra 1 universe in which only artists aud lovers and breeders ot animals dared to believe. Were machines not conceived in terms of primary qualities nlotie, without regard to appearance, sound, or any other soit of sensory stimulation? If science presented on ultimate reality, then the machine w-is, like die law in Gilbert's ballad, the tiue embodiment of everything mat was excellent. Indeed in this empty, denuded world, the invention of machines became a duty. By renouncing a large part of his humanity, a man could achieve godhood: he dawned on this second chaos and created the machine in Ids own image: the image ol power, but power ripped loose liom his flesh and isolated from his humanity. 54 TECHNICS AND CIVILIZATION 10: The Duty to Invent The principles th.'M had proved effective in the development of the scientific method were, with appropriate changes, those that served as a foundation for invention. Technic-; is a translation into appropriate, practical forms of the theoretic truths, implicit or lormulaled, anticipated or discovered, of science. Science and tech-nics form two independent yet related worlds: sometimes converging, sometimes drawing apart. Mainly empirical inventions, like the -team-engine, may suggest Carnof- researches in thermodynamic-: abstract physical investigation, like Faraday's with the magnetic field, may lead directly to the invention of the dynamo. From the geometry and astronomy of Egypt and Mesopotamia, both closely connected with the practice of agriculture to the latest researches, in electro-physics, Leonardo's dictum holds true: S, i,-iu:e is the captain sod practice the soldiers. But r&methnes the soldiers win the battle without leadership, and sometimes the captain, by intelligent strategy, obtains victory without actually engaging in battle. The displacement of the living and the organic took place rapidly with the early development of the machine. For the machine was n counterfeit of nature, nature analyzed, regulated, narrowed, controlled by the mind of men. The ultimate goal of ii- development was however not the mere conquest of nature but her le-ynthesis: dismembered by thought, nature was put together again in new cambinatiorts: material synlhese< in chemistry, mechanical syntheses in engineering. The unwillingness to accept the natural envuonment as a fixed and final condition of man's existence had always contributed both to his art and his technics: but from the seventeenth century, the attitude became compulsive, and it was to technics that he turned for fulfillment. Steam engines displaced horse power, iron and concrete displaced wood, aniline dyes replaced vegetable dyes, and so on down the line, with here and theie a gap. Sometimes the new product waB superior practically or esthetic/ally to the old, as in llie infinite superiority of the electric lamp over the tallow candle: sometimes the new product remained inferior in quality, as rayon is still inferior to natural silk: but in either event llie gain was in I ANTICIPATIONS OF SPEE r 11 Rapid land locomotion: the Mil-wagon (1598) u»ed by Prince Maurice of Orange, one "f the fust roinmanders lo introduce modern drill. The desire for speed, proclaimed by KiiC" B*W0 in the thirteenth century, lud became insistent by ihe lixleenlh ■'■ ul.jrj. Ib-nce skales for ,|>on. iCaurtex), OtOUtS*4 Win.-am. UunrArnl -.le. Iicoilnt ,, - • hu.lt ot "nod. Alter i«rimO»*. At Scirncr 4t OiuicIi'm •Iiibui ,ln,rli liAfc««ngr3 coach: one »| nun, u| Memo automobile ilnvrn <,tl lb? r..»,|» in tn« IBVl'a tnj railway ujnaopaUll, The ilr vnlopmenl n| tic aiilitajjiltilr awaited tulihw lirn, lie*., -,,,!,,. .! i„4da, and liquid fuel. ICnurfery. UruUckn Mustum. MunrArn) MM Tlam^fWM^njTviTTnT^uT^vTTnTuTrT^^ I í. PER S PECTI VE5 t: Uflwn nl niihirtlt»m m the twiilii! i riimiy. I Sum// ď ItJhn. ItitnťtX Z- Liiki-iiuiii: frniii llurrr's lirninr |.il |l,, .-,-H'líJlíli .K.11M1H ]l| |rpir -i-uiijuon: coordination »{ ili,idnrr dlnl moknout .i[ thr cane. • inn "i ■ i- ii. -. Titir.rrlt..', Sii-.iniui tiiul ihe Elder,! ihe complete j-ii'liiic .Ii.imtk a mirror at Sn iih-.i'- (-.-i. Bw f lupifi II. Sccimii '1. ol«o <' haj'i'T III. Section 6. 4: Eiilil^nih 'nliiri tiii.im.iiim. or the . I... L - i. lit, l>rriiillimslc »lt

' they actually provided benefits, just as they agreed lhal child bctiiiig was good, whether the offspring proved a blessing Id society or a nuisance. Mechanical invention, even more than science, was the answer to a dwindling faith and a faltering life-impulse. The meandering energies of men. which had flowed over into meadow and garden, had crept • grotto and cave, during the Renascence, were turned by inventiLin into a confined bead of water above a turbine: they could i-parkle and tipple and cool and revive and delight no more: they were harnessed for « narrow and definite purpose: to move wheels and multiply society's capacity for work. To live was to work: what other lift, indeed do machines hiau? Faith had at last found a new object, not the moving of mountains hut the moving of engines and machine. Power: the application of power to motion, and the application of motion to production, and of production to money-making, and so the further increase of power—this was tlie worthiest object thai a mechanical habit of mind and a mechanical mode of action put be Tore men. As everyone recognizes, a thousand salutary instruments came out of the new technics; but in origin front the seventeenth century on the machine served as a substitute religion. .'iiui so itie lurilier uiereasi 54 technics AND CIVILIZATION and a vital religion does not need the just ideation of mere utility. The religion of die machine needed such support as little a& the transcendental faiths it supplanted; for the mission of religion is to provide an ultimate significance and motive-fun e: the necessity of invention was a dogma, uud the ritual of a mechanical routine was the binding clement in the faith. In the eighteenth century. Mechanical Societies sprung into existence, to propagate the creed with greater zeal: they preached the gospe] of work, justification by faith in mechanical science, and Balvation b) the machine. Without the missionary enthusiasm, of the enterprisers and industrialists and engineers and even the untutored mechanics from the eighteenth century onward, it would be impossible to explain the rush of converts and the accelerated tempo of mechanical improvement. The impel.sunaI procedure of science, the hard-headed contrivances of mechanics, the rational calculus of the utilitarians—these interests captured emotion, ail the more because the golden paradise of financial success lay beyond. In their compilation of inventions and discoveries. Dairustaedlcr and Du Bois-Iteymond enumerated the following inventors: between 1700 and 1750—170: between 1750 and 1800—344: between 1800 and 1850—861: between 1850 and 1900—1150. Even allowing for the foreshortening brought about automatically In historical perspective, one cannot doubt the increase)] acceleration between 1700 and 1850. Technics had seized the imagination; the engines themselves and the goods they produced both seemed immediately desirable. While much good came through invention, much invention came irrespective of the good. If the sanction of utility had been uppermost, invention would have proceeded most rapidly in the departments where human need was sharpesl, in food, shelter, and clothing: but although the last department undoubtedly advanced, the farm and the common dwelling house were much slower to profit by the new mechanical technology than were the battlefield and the mine, while the conversion of gains in energy into a life abundant took place much more slowly after the seventeenth century than it had done during the previous seven hundred years. Once in existence, the machine tended to justify itself by silently cultural preparation m taking over departments of life neglected in its ideology. Virtuosity is mi important clement in die development of technics; the interest in the materials as such, the pride of mastery over tools, the skilled manipulation of form. The machine cryHtalltjsed in new patterns the whole set <>f independent interests which Thorrtein Veblen grouped loosely under '"the instinct of workmanship." and enriched leehnics as a whole even when it temporarily depleted handicraft. The very sensual and contemplative responses, excluded from love-making and song and fantasy by the concentration upnn die mechanical means of production, were not of course finally excluded from life: ihey re-entered it in association with the technical arts themselves, and the machine, often lovingly personified as a living creature, as with Kipling's engineers, absorbed the affection and care of both inventor and workman. Cranks, pistons, screws, valves, sinuous motions, pulsations, rhythms, murmuis. sleek surfaces, all are virtual counterparts of the organs and functions of the body, and they stimulated and absorbed some of the natural affections. But when thai stage was reached, the machine was no longer a means and its operations were not merely mechanical and causal, bul human and final: it contributed, like any other work of art, to an organic equilibrium. This development of value within the machine complex ilself, apart from the value of the products created by it, was, as we shall see at a later st.ip-, .1 profoundly important result of ihe new technology. 11: Practical Anticipation!! From ihe beginning, the practical value of science was uppermost in the minds of its exponents, even in those who single-mindedly pursued abstract truth, and who were as indifferent to its popularisation as Gauss and Weber, the scientists who invented the telegraph for their private communication. "If my judgment be of any weight,* said Francis Bacon in The Advancement of Learning, "the use of history mechanical is of all others the most radical and fondnmental towards natural philosophy: such natural philosophy *» shall not vanish in the fume of subtile, sublime, or delectable speculation, hot such as shall be operative to ihe endowment and benefit oi psair* life." And Descartes, in his Discourse on Method, obaema: "|W _ .l i ...i,r...U Hi TECHNICS AND C I V 11.1 t. A T I U N them [general re-n i. nous r.--peeling physical I perceived it to be possible lo arrive si knowledge highly useful in lit<■: sad In lieu of the speculative philosophy usually taught in lbe schools to di SCO Vet n practical, by menus of which, knowing the forOS and action of fire, water, air, the stilt, the heavens, and all the Other bodies that surround us, as distinctly oi we know the various drafts of our artisans, we might also apply them in die same way to all the use- in which ihey arc adapted, and thus render ourselves the lord- and |m, -es-ors, of nature. And this is a icsull to be desired, CJOl only in order to tlie invention of an infinity oi arts, by which we might be able to enjoy without any trouble the fruits of die earth, .ind all its comforts, hut also especially for die preservation of health, which i i without doubt of all blessings of this life the first and fundamental one; for the mind is so intimately dependent upon lbe condition and relation of die organs of the body thai if any means can ever be found 10 render men wiser and more ingenious than hitherto. 1 believe dial it is in medicine they must he sought for." Who Í6 rewarded in the perfect commonwealth devised by Bacon in The New Atlantis? In Salomon's House the philosopher and the urti-t and the teacher were left out of account, even though Bacon, like the prudent Descartes, clung very ceremoniously 10 the rites of the Christian church. Fur tin- "oiiliiuii.es and riles" of Salomon's House there are two galleries. In one of diesc "we place patterns and samples of all manner of ihe more rare and excellent inventions: in the other we place the statues of all principal Inventors. There we have the statue of your Columbus, that discovered the West Indies: also the Inventor of Ships: your monk diat was the Inventur of Ordnance and Gunpowder: the Inventor of Music; the Inventor of Letters: the Inventor of Printing- the Inventm oi obser> vaiions by astronomy: the Inventor of Works in Metal: the Inventor of Glass: die Inventor of Silk of the Worm: the Inventor of Wine: the Inventor of Com and Bread: the Inventor of Sugars. ... For upon every invention of value, we erect a statue to the Inventor and give him a liberal and honorable reward," This Salomon's House, as Bacon fancied it, was a combination of the Rockefeller Institute S7 Cli LTTJRAL PH ErARATION and the Deutsche- Museum: if iere, if anywhere, was die means to-wards tin- relief of man's estate. Observe this: there is liitlc that is vague or fanciful in all these , imiei line- about the new ndc to he played by science and the nin< hie . The general staff of science hud worked out the strategy of the i amp.ugn long before the commanders in the field bad developed ,i tactics capable of carrying out the attack in detail. Indeed, Usher note- lb.it in tic seventeenth century invention was relatively feeble, and the power of the technical imagination had far outstripped die actual eapiicitie- of workmen and engineers. Leonardo, Andteae, Cainpanella. Bacon. Hnoke in his Micrographia and Clanvill in h;. Seep •• ientifica, wrote down in outline the specifications for r],;- ||,......•• : : die use of -. ieuce for the advancement uf technics, and the direction of technics toward die conquest of nature were the burden oi the whole effort. Bacon's Salomon's House, though iur-mulated afiei Ihe s< tual founding of the Accidentia Lynxei in Italy, was the actual starting point of the Philosophical College that first mel in 1646 at die Bullhead Tavern in Cheaps i de. and in 1662 was duly incorporated as the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge. This society had eight standing committees, the firsi of which was to "consider and improve all mechanical inven-lions." The laboratoi ie? and technical museums of the twentieth cen-lurv exist" il first as a thought in the mind of this philosophical courtier: nothing that we do or practice today would have surprised him. So confident in the results of die new approach was Hooke that he wrote: "There is nothing that ties within the power of human w,i <„, i,!,-.!, is la. more clTdiuall of human industry which we might nol compass; we might not only hope for inventions to equal** those of Copernicus. Galilee, Gilbert, Harvey, and odiers. whose names arc almost lost, that were the inventors of Gunpowder, the Seaman's Compass. Printing, Etching, Graving, Micrwcupea, Wc, but mull.....les that may far exceed diem: lor ^^^T^ seem to have been dre product of some such methods .hough hu imperfect: what may no. be therefore expected Ir*. « ifj-^tfjj prosecuted? Talking and contention of Arguments wouU soonfc Led into lab..,-; all the hne dreams and opimons and umveml t__ 75?aiíTaŤTT^tw^^Í^^WtlBllf W TECHNICS AND CIVILIZATION melaphysical nature, which the luxury of subtil brains lias devised would quick] V vanish and give place to solid histories, experiments, and work--" The leading Utopias of the time, Chrislijiiopolis, die City of the Sun, to say nothing of Bacon's fragment or Cyrano de Bergerac's minor works,, all brood upon the possibility of utilizing the machine to make the world more perfect: the machine was the substitute for Plato's justice, temper.ime. and courage, even a- it wis likewise for the Christian ideal- of grace and redemption. The machine came forth as the new demiurge that was [0 Create a new heaven and a new earth: at the least, as a new Moses: that was to lead a barbarous humanity into the promised land. There had been premonitions of all this in the Centuries before. "I will now mention." said Roger Bacon, "some of the wonderful works of art and nature in which there is nothing <>f magic and which magic could not perform. Instrument- ma;, be made by which the largest ships, with only one man guiding them, will be carried with greater velocity than if they were full of sailors. Chariots may be constructed that will move with incredible rapidity without the help of animals. Instruments of living may I formed m which a man, sitting at his ease and meditating in anv subj'-M t, may beat the air with his artificial wings after the manner of birds ... as also machines which will enable men to walk at the bottom of seas or rivers without ships," And Leonardo de \ inei left behind him a list of inventions and contrivances that reads like a synopsis of the present industrial world. But by the seventeenth century the note of confidence had increased, and the practical impul-e bad become more universal and urgent. Tlie works of Porta. Cardan, Bessou, Kamelli, and other ingenious inventors, engineers, and mathematicians are a witness both to increasing skill and to growing enihiiM.ism over technics itself. Schwenter in bis Delassemeiits Physicc-Mnthemutiqucs (1636) pointed out how two individuals roiiid communicate with each other by means of magnetic needles. "To them that come after 11-," said Clanvill, "it may be as ordinary to buy a pair of wings to fly to remotest regions, as now a pair of boots to ride a journey: and CULTURAL preparation at to confer at the distance of the Indies by sympathetic conveyances may be as usual in future times as by literary correspondence." Cyrano de Bergerac conceived the phonograph, flooke observed that it is "not impossible to hear a whisper a furlong's distance, it having been already done; and perhaps the nature of things would not make it more impossible, although that furlong be ten times multiplied." Indeed, ha even forecast the invention of artificial silk. And Ghmvill said again: "1 doubt not posterity will find many things that are now but rumors verified into practical realities. It may be that, some ages hener, .1 voyage to the Southern tracts, yea. possibly to the moon, will not be more strange than one to America, . , . The restoration ol grej hairs to juvenility and the renewing the exhausted marrow may at length be effected without a miracle; and the turning of the now comparatively desert world into a paradise may not improbably be effected from late agriculture." (1661) Whatever was lacking in the outlook of tile seventeenth century it was not lack of faith in the imminent presence, the speedy development, and the profound importance of the machine. Clock-making: time-keeping: space-exploration: monastic regularity: bourgeois order: technical devices: proleslant inhibitions: magical explorations: finally the magistral order, accuracy, and clarity of the physical -• iciiee- themselves—all these separate activities, inconsiderable perhaps in themselves, had at last formed a complex social and ideological network, capable of supporting the vast weight ol the machine and extending its operations still further. By the middle of the eighteenth century the initial preparations were over and the kev inventions hail been made. An army of natural philosophers, rationalists, experimenters, mechanics, ingenious people, hod assembled who were clear as to their goal and confident as to their victory. Before more diun a streak of grey had appeared at the horizon's rim, they procla irned the dawn and announced how wonderful it was: bow marvelous the new day would be. Actually, they were to announce 1 shift in the seasons, perhaps a long cyclical change in the dhnale itself. fte^^^rtiwciilf-r in lii>- [ lilisifinfoti fliiiii-o-Miillu'iHul nine* MO^ftl 1_______I: