(no subject)
I've been catching up on past issues of The New Yorker that piled up over the course of the semester, and I read today an article about the effect of technology on history, which is a topic for which my feelings can be sumarized with a "whatever," but a stream of consciousness type thing was going on in the back of my head while reading it that brought be to the compulsion to make a few remarks. The notion of technological determinism was briefly discussed: that certain inventions inevitably brought about certain events in history. Examples given: printing press: scientific revolution, the pill: sexual revolution, cotton gin: expansion of slavery. Jill Lepore, who wrote the article, goes on to attempt to debunk what has historically been taken as the given of technological determinism, but that's not the point I care about.
What I'm wondering is this.... Could it be that upon observing the causal nature of the operation of what we refer to as technologies, our understanding of determinism as a philosophy was somehow enhanced? The more prevalent deterministic mechanisms became in our everyday life, the more disposed we became to see everything as causally determined, until we arrived at theories such as technological determinism. A quick glance at the SEP article on causal determinism provides that determinism began to be seriously explored philosophicaly circa the eighteenth century, which fits circumstantially into my theory. Obviously, our obsession with determinism would be causally determined, but it's interesting to attempt to break down the causes.
Another article in this issue of The New Yorker (May 12, 2008, for anyone who's interested) talked about multiples: the discovery of a theory or the invention of something by multiple unrelated people at about the same time in history. The extraordinary number of multiples suggests that our concept of the genius is misguided, that many, if not all of, the ideas we take as posssessing their discoverers essentially in reality do not. Current culture, societal whims, national obsessions... who knows. Everything comes together to result, seemingly inevitably, in certain discoveries at certain times, and if genius-so-and-so hadn't been around, no matter. Very Hegelian, I think. The catch is, according to the author of this article, Malcolm Gladwell, the world of art does not possess multiples. If Shakespeare hadn't written Hamlet, no one would have. This doesn't seem as profound as I think it was meant to; I think it's obvious why.
This evening, I humbled myself greatly and asked my dad to pick up a pack of cigarettes for me on his way home. I hope never to be so humbled again. On the bright side, I got a free pack of cigarettes.
What I'm wondering is this.... Could it be that upon observing the causal nature of the operation of what we refer to as technologies, our understanding of determinism as a philosophy was somehow enhanced? The more prevalent deterministic mechanisms became in our everyday life, the more disposed we became to see everything as causally determined, until we arrived at theories such as technological determinism. A quick glance at the SEP article on causal determinism provides that determinism began to be seriously explored philosophicaly circa the eighteenth century, which fits circumstantially into my theory. Obviously, our obsession with determinism would be causally determined, but it's interesting to attempt to break down the causes.
Another article in this issue of The New Yorker (May 12, 2008, for anyone who's interested) talked about multiples: the discovery of a theory or the invention of something by multiple unrelated people at about the same time in history. The extraordinary number of multiples suggests that our concept of the genius is misguided, that many, if not all of, the ideas we take as posssessing their discoverers essentially in reality do not. Current culture, societal whims, national obsessions... who knows. Everything comes together to result, seemingly inevitably, in certain discoveries at certain times, and if genius-so-and-so hadn't been around, no matter. Very Hegelian, I think. The catch is, according to the author of this article, Malcolm Gladwell, the world of art does not possess multiples. If Shakespeare hadn't written Hamlet, no one would have. This doesn't seem as profound as I think it was meant to; I think it's obvious why.
This evening, I humbled myself greatly and asked my dad to pick up a pack of cigarettes for me on his way home. I hope never to be so humbled again. On the bright side, I got a free pack of cigarettes.