The Myth of the Machine: The Pentagon of Power

Description

In The Pentagon of Power Lewis Mumford climaxes a series of studies that began with the publication of Technics and Civilization in 1934. When the Society for the History of Technology awarded him the Leonardo da Vinci Medal, the citation. noted that Mumford's "deep intellectual commitment to the study of technology and society has caused him to probe into a multitude of areas of human activity, including pre-history, art and architecture, urban civilization and culture, education, and the development of technology." The Pentagon of Power continues to explore the themes laid down in Volume One of The Myth of the Machine, Technics and Human Development. It opens with the age of terrestrial exploration and scientific discovery, and traces the continued interplay of the ideological interests, practical inventions, and purely subjective drives that formed the new Pentagon of Power: Political absolutism, Power (energy), Productivity, pecuniary Profit, and Publicity. Our modern acceptance of technical progress as man's highest-indeed only—good is, Mumford shows, the result not of mechanical inventions by themselves but of the new Mechanical World Picture. In his interpretations of Kepler’s Moon Dream, Galileo's "crime," Descartes’ admiration for clockwork mechanisms and political absolutism, and Bacon's conception of "Science as Technology," Mumford presents a radically new picture of the effect of non-mechanical factors in elevating the "machine" to a central place in human existence. Here for the first time is an adequate appraisal of the central themes of modern technics: power, speed, mass production, automation, instant communication, and remote control. Mr. Mumford also offers a profound explanation of the monumental miscarriages of this power complex: pollution and waste, mass destruction, and wholesale megadeaths in “peace” and war. He exposes the deep-seated traumas that have warped "civilization" since its origins in the "Pyramid Age." Far from being an attack on modern technics, both volumes of The Myth of the Machine attempt to save what is valuable from the irrational obsessions and compulsions that have been feeding human functions into a totalitarian power system, leaving human beings themselves increasingly dependent, directionless, organically incompetent, mentally defective, and often dangerously psychotic. Instead of seeing the current "automation of automation” as inevitable, or of regarding the present nihilistic revolt against it as valid, Mumford marshals a fund of ideas and social resources that will restore to man the vital functions he has almost lost. The basis for this conclusion was formulated in Volume One; and it is re-enforced and elaborated on every page of this volume. The concluding chapters on the new Organic World Picture, on the Promise of Plenitude, and on the Advancement of Life point to a radically different—and far more hopeful—future than current technocratic and "scientific" forecasts permit. Not “Let Mechanization Take Command” but “Let Man Take Over" is the stirring message of this book. LEWIS MUMFORD. whose major books include Technics and Civilization, The Culture of Cities, The Condition of Man, The Conduct of Life, and The City in History, is a member of the American Philosophical Society and the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among various honors, he has received the Townsend Harris Medal of the City College, the Gold Medal of the Town Planning Institute, the Royal Gold Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, the Emerson-Thoreau Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Gold Medal for Belles Lettres of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and the Leonardo da Vinci Medal of the Society for the History of Technology.