Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 16, No. 94.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>
[1] From: Hartmut Krech <kr538@uni-bremen.de> (29)
Subject: Re: 16.089 Samuel Butler on prosthesis
[2] From: Aime Morrison
<ahm@ualberta.ca> (50)
Subject: RE: 16.089 Samuel Butler on prosthesis
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2002 08:35:56 +0100
From: Hartmut Krech <kr538@uni-bremen.de>
Subject: Re: 16.089 Samuel Butler on prosthesis
Dear Willard,
Butler's statement on prosthesis quite obviously draws upon the older
anthropomorphological theory of technics. The German philologist and
cultural historian Ludwig Geiger (1848-1919) seems to have been the first
to write that all human tools can be considered as "organic projections" of
the human body parts (in his "Zur Entwickelungsgeschichte der Menschheit.
Vortrge," Stuttgart: Cotta, 1871). This theory was popularized by the
German-American freethinker and philosopher Ernst Kapp (1808-1896) in his
"Grundlinien einer Philosophie der Technik. Zur Entstehungsgeschichte der
Cultur aus neuen Gesichtspunkten" (1877), long before Samuel Butler
(1835-1902) in his "Erewhon" (1910) was to write "(...) that the machines
are still in their infancy; they are mere skeletons without muscles and
flesh." (Chapter 25, page 265).
On Kapp and the idea of "organic projections" please see the following links:
http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/KK/fka1.html
http://www.hans-hass.de/Rahmenbedingungen/130_137_Das_erweiterte_Lebewesen.html
The other excerpt quoted by Arun-Kumar Tripathi making Butler a visionary
of modern world-wide electronic communication is itself preceded by various
statements by Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), like the following from
the second volume of his "Cosmos" (1847): "Der Begriff eines Naturganzen,
das Gefhl der Einheit und des harmonischen Einklanges im Kosmos werden
umso lebendiger unter den Menschen, als sich die Mittel vervielfltigen,
die Gesammtheit der Naturerscheinungen zu anschaulichen Bildern zu
gestalten." Please see:
http://www1.uni-bremen.de/~kr538/licht.html#Abreise
Best regards,
Hartmut Krech
Bremen, Germany
http://ww3.de/krech
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2002 08:37:21 +0100
From: Aime Morrison <ahm@ualberta.ca>
Subject: RE: 16.089 Samuel Butler on prosthesis
hello:
serendipitously, i happen this very day to be writing about samuel butler's
_erewhon_, and specifically, those two chapters that address the topic
currently under discussion.
what interest me about "The Book of The Machines" is the ambivalence of the
portrayal of machines, and the way this section stands out from the rest of
the text. for your potential enlightment, i offer two paragraphs i've got
under construction, which will give you a general sense of the book, if you
haven't read it, and a sense of the ambivalence of the treatment of machines
as competitors to humanity rather than prostheses:
"Samuel Butlers satirical novel _Erewhon_ (1872) manifests a different fear
of technology [than the book previously under discusion]. Explorer and
colonialist Higgs discovers a closed society where all the cherished values of
his own Victorian England are reversed. Put on trial for owning a mechanical
watch, Higgs learns that the Erewhonians maintain a sort of technological
stasis, having destroyed all their own machines, and not allowing the
invention of any new ones. The reasoning behind this practice is explained
across two chapters entitled The Book of the Machines. Claiming to
transcribe from memory the original tract that called for the breaking of the
machines, narrator Higgs relates the Erewhonian view of an analogous
relationship between machine and human evolution. In a not too distant future,
warns the transcribed Erewhonian philosopher, human beings would become a race
of slaves to the needs of superior machines of which they were once masters.
The tract chillingly notes that if the histories of machines and humanity are
considered together, it is clear that machines are quickly outstripping
humankind in the pace of their development, undergoing a shockingly efficient
and rapid evolution: any race for survival of the fittest would seem
increasingly weighted in favour of machines.
"_Erewhon_ lampoons many aspects of high-Victorian society, but this extended
musing on the nature of high technology, in this case mechanical and
industrial, presents a tone of seriousness and ambivalence not to be found
elsewhere in the novel. In contrast to their English brethren, the
Erewhonians universally agree that the machine evolution must be stopped, and,
further, that many of the machines they already have must be destroyed. The
satire in these chapters does not mock the decistion to de-mechanize, but
instead derides the bureaucratic means by which the Erewhonians decide where
to draw the line on their machine-breaking: The Erewhonians quibble over what
degree of mechanization is essential to the maintenance of their quality of
life, and of course certain lobby groups demonstrate pecuniary interest in
saving a particular technology from banishment, by means of spurious logic.
Ultimately, though, most machines are destroyed, and the Erewhonians seem none
the worse for itexcept that they are an illogical race of godless people that
Higgs concocts plans to enslave."
cheers!
aimee
. ++++++++++++++++++++++++
Aime Morrison "It is our national joy
PhD Program, Dept. of English to mistake for the first
University of Alberta rate, the fecund rate."
ahm@ualberta.ca -- Dorothy Parker,
on literary productivity
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Tue Jun 25 2002 - 04:04:11 EDT