Reading Group: Recovering the Intellectual Origins of Technology
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Epochal moments in science and technology confront us with new conceptions of what it means to be human. Copernicus dislodged humanity from our central position in the cosmos. Bacon showed us how to master nature for our purposes. Newton’s laws dethroned human perception as the interface to reality. Darwin situated us amongst the animals. And Freud challenged the notion that man is primarily a rational being.
Now, at what is perhaps the culmination point of the modern technological project in the Age of Turing, we are invited to return to the history of ideas to reconsider the place of technology in human life: what good it produces, what danger it poses, and what should be its relation to human guidance or morality.
Each change in the orientation of intellectual life emerged from a fundamentally optimistic or pessimistic disposition toward technology. Though the ancients were concerned about technology, they were moderate according to their orientation to nature’s apparent limits. We moderns are the children instead of an ambitious optimism–of the Enlightenment ideas that we can only know what we design or make and that we can master nature, including human nature, beyond any knowable limits. This optimism has been met throughout history with a chilling pessimism, which regards technology as a threat to humanity, the cause of social collapse, or the cause of the disenchantment of the world.
To map our moment, we must begin by looking backward at the origins of the great optimism of this epoch-defining project, then trace developments forward to understand the project’s consequences in the current era. Why? By going back to the roots, we can see with greater definition the causes of our world, including paths overlooked or forgotten.
Amid the dominance of technology, we must try to make ourselves naive again. We must ask the fundamental questions undistorted by the layers of historical sediment standing in the way of a natural confrontation with the phenomenon of technology.
What Questions Guide Us?
Though in future inquiries, reading groups, and other writings, we will explore how the consequences of these alternatives manifest themselves in contemporary debates, this first reading group will approach those thinkers who best illuminate the nature and character of technology at its origins. As we embark on this search, we are motivated by the following questions:
What were the aims of the modern technological project? How does AI fulfill or cause us to revisit those aims?
What elements of our humanity can technology enhance? What elements do we risk losing?
How has technology historically changed how people live, work, and form bonds? How will it do so in the future?
How should we conceive of human reason’s role and limitations in guiding technology? What principles and ends should guide it? What constitutes genuine progress?
What new political possibilities and dangers will emerge, and how can we think about them in ways that are neither dystopian nor utopian?
To what extent should technological systems or principles govern human affairs, and how might they be limited in doing no more than they should?
Reading List: Recovering the Intellectual Origins of Technology (9 Sessions)
Session 1: The consequences of a world with self-guided machines
Aristotle, Politics Bk. 1 and Bk. 2.8
Every subordinate, moreover, is an instrument that wields many instruments, for if each of the instruments were able to perform its function on command or by anticipation, as they assert those of Daedalus did, or the tripods of Hephaestus (which the poet says “of their own accord came to the gods’ gathering”), so that shuttles would weave themselves and picks play the lyre, master craftsmen would no longer have a need for subordinates…
Session 2: The rule of the philosopher-scientist
Leo Strauss, “Liberal Education and Responsibility”; “What is Political Philosophy?” (pp. 36-40)
Philosophy or science was no longer an end in itself, but in the service of human power, of a power to be used for making human life longer, healthier, and more abundant. The economy of scarcity, which is the tacit presupposition of all earlier social thought, was to be replaced by an economy of plenty. The radical distinction between science and manual labor was to be replaced by the smooth co-operation of the scientist and the engineer. According to the original conception, the men in control of this stupendous enterprise were the philosopher-scientists. Everything was to be done by them for the people, but, as it were, nothing by the people. For the people were, to begin with, rather distrustful of the new gifts from the new sort of sorcerers, for they remembered the commandment, "Thou shalt not suffer a sorcerer to live." In order to become the willing recipients of the new gifts, the people had to be enlightened. This enlightenment is the core of the new education.
Session 3: The turn from utopias to the effectual truth
Machiavelli, The Prince, chs. 14-16, 25
But since my intent is to write something useful to whoever understands it, it has appeared to me more fitting to go directly to the effectual truth of the thing than to the imagination of it.
Session 4: Reforming the morality of men to prepare the conquering of fortune
Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, 1.6, 2.preface, 2.1, 2.2, 2.29, 2.30
Thinking then whence it can arise that in those ancient times peoples were more lovers of freedom than in these, I believe it arises from the same cause that makes men less strong now, which I believe is the difference between our education and the ancient, founded on the difference between our religion and the ancient. For our religion, having shown the truth and the true way, makes us esteem less the honor of the world, whereas the Gentiles, esteeming it very much and having placed the highest good in it, were more ferocious in their actions.
Session 5: Human ingenuity as the production of imitations
Bacon, New Atlantis
We imitate also motions of living creatures, by images of men, beasts, birds, fishes, and serpents. We have also a great number of other various motions, strange for equality, fineness, and subtilty.
Session 6: The new science as the mastery of nature
Bacon, Great Instauration
For the end which this science of mine proposes is the invention not of arguments but of arts; not of things in accordance with principles, but of principles themselves; not of probable reasons, but of designations and directions for works. And as the intention is different, so accordingly is the effect; the effect of the one being to overcome an opponent in argument, of the other to command nature in action.
Session 7: The liberation of man as his degradation
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Introduction, 2.1.1, 2.1.2, 2.1.10; 2.2.1, 2.2.2, 2.2.5, 2.2.10, 2.2.20; 2.4.6, 2.4.7, 2.4.8
Above these an immense tutelary power is elevated, which alone takes charge of assuring their enjoyments and watching over their fate. It is absolute, detailed, regular, far-seeing, and mild. It would resemble paternal power if, like that, it had for its object to prepare men for manhood; but on the contrary, it seeks only to keep them fixed irrevocably in childhood; it likes citizens to enjoy themselves provided that they think only of enjoying themselves. It willingly works for their happiness; but it wants to be the unique agent and sole arbiter of that; it provides for their security, foresees and secures their needs, facilitates their pleasures, conducts their principal affairs, directs their industry, regulates their estates, divides their inheritances; can it not take away from them entirely the trouble of thinking and the pain of living?
Session 8: Nature’s conquest of man
C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man
Man’s conquest of Nature turns out, in the moment of its consummation, to be Nature’s conquest of Man. Every victory we seemed to win has led us, step by step, to this conclusion. All Nature’s apparent reverses have been but tactical withdrawals. We thought we were beating her back when she was luring us on. What looked to us like hands held up in surrender was really the opening of arms to enfold us for ever.
Session 9: Essence of technology as defining our “lifeworld”
Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology
Likewise, the essence of technology is by no means anything technological. Thus we shall never experience our relationship to the essence of technology so long as we merely conceive and push forward the technological, put up with it, or evade it. Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it. But we are delivered over to it in the worst possible way when we regard it as something neutral; for this conception of it, to which today we particularly like to do homage, makes us utterly blind to the essence of technology.
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Perhaps a moot point to the august personages of the Cosmos Institute, but, for the sake of working stiffs like me, on what days and times, and in which places, is this thing happening?
Love this. 🤝. Love your work. We desperately need a new conversation about the history and philosophy of Science and #scientia - the canon of ideas & disciplines underpinning the scientific method - and it’s role in shaping modern humanity & its relationship with the values of the Enlightenment it helped drive. This is partly what I was driving at in my recent post:
...https://open.substack.com/pub/georgefreemanmp?r=6isp8&utm_medium=ios