24
" Unfortunately, computer knowledge, because it must be processed and programmed, cannot remain constantly in touch, like the human brain, with the unceasing flow of reality; for only a small part of experience can be arrested for extraction and expression in abstract symbols. Changes that cannot be quantitatively measured or objectively observed, such changes as take place constantly all the way from the atom to the living organism, are outside the scope of the computer. For all its fantastic rapidity of operation, its components remain incapable of making qualitative responses to constant organic changes. "
― Lewis Mumford , The Pentagon of Power (The Myth of the Machine, Vol 2)
25
" When an ideology conveys such universal meanings and commands such obedience, it has become, in fact, a religion, and its imperatives have the dynamic force of a myth. Those who would question its principles or defy its orders do so at their peril, as groups of rebellious workers continued to discover for the next three or four centuries. From the nineteenth century on, this refurbished religion united thinkers of the most diverse temperaments, backgrounds, and superficial beliefs: minds as different as Marx and Ricardo, Carlyle and Mill, Comte and Spencer, subscribed to its doctrines; and from the beginning of the nineteenth century on, the working classes, finding themselves helpless to resist these new forces, countered the capitalist and militarist expressions of this myth with myths of their own-those of socialism, anarchism, or communism-under which the machine would be exploited, not for a ruling elite, but for the benefit of the proletarian masses. Against this machine-conditioned utopia only a handful of heretics, mostly poets and artists, dared to hold out. "
― Lewis Mumford , The Pentagon of Power (The Myth of the Machine, Vol 2)
26
" If Leonardo's example of diversification had been more widely followed, the whole tempo of mechanical and scientific development would have been slowed down. This means that the pace of change might have been established in relation to human need, and that valuable parts of man's cultural heritage might have been kept alive, instead of being ruthlessly extirpated in order to widen the empire of the machine. Instead of rapid advances, on the basis of uncoordinated knowledge, in specialized departments, mainly those concerned with war and economic exploitation, there would have been the possibility of a slower but better-coordinated advance that did justice to the processes, functions, and purposes of life. "
― Lewis Mumford , The Pentagon of Power (The Myth of the Machine, Vol 2)
27
" In endeavoring to answer the question, "Is Life Worth Living?" William James pointed out that the psychological conditions that supplement the biologists' observations upon parasitism show that organic activities of the highest sort oscillate between two poles: positive and negative, pleasure and pain, good and bad; and that an attempt to live in terms of the positive, the pleasurable, and the plentiful alone destroys the very polarity needed for the full expression of life. "It is, indeed, a remarkable fact," observed James, "that sufferings and hardships do not, as a rule, abate love of life; they seem on the contrary to give it a keener zest. The sovereign source of melancholy is repletion. Need and struggle are what excite us; our hour of triumph is what brings a void. Not the Jews of the Captivity, but those of the days of Solomon's glory are those from whom the pessimistic utterances in our Bible come. "
― Lewis Mumford , The Pentagon of Power (The Myth of the Machine, Vol 2)
28
" Even under more ingratiating conditions than rocket travel, this new conquest has already disclosed drawbacks quite as remarkable as its advantages. On a transcontinental flight by a jet plane approaching super-sonic speed, the actual trip is so cramped, so dull, so vacuous, that the only attraction the air lines dare to offer are those vulgar experiences one can have by walking to the nearest cabaret, restaurant, or cinema: liquor, food, motion pictures, luscious stewardesses. Only a lurking sense of fear and the possibility of a grisly death help restore the sense of reality. "
― Lewis Mumford , The Pentagon of Power (The Myth of the Machine, Vol 2)
31
" In fixing their gaze on the sky and on the movements of physical bodies, the scientific revolutionists were only continuing an austere religious tradition that goes back to the beginnings of civilization, if not before: and more immediately, they were resuming a practice that looks back to the Greeks. When Pythagoras was asked why he lived, he answered: "To look at heaven and nature." That struck the new scientific note. Similarly, Anaxagoras, de Santillana points out, when accused of caring naught for his kind and his own city, replied by pointing at the heavens and saying: "There is my country." The exchange of the Christian's universe, focused on man's existence and his ultimate salvation, for a purely impersonal universe without a God except the blazing sun itself, without a visible purpose or desirable human destination, might seem a bad bargain: indeed, a pitiable loss. But it had the compensatory effect of making science the only source of meaning, and the achievement of scientific truth the only ultimate purpose. "
― Lewis Mumford , The Pentagon of Power (The Myth of the Machine, Vol 2)
32
" Galileo's mechanical world was only a partial representation of a finite number of probable worlds, each peculiar to a particular living species; and all these worlds are but a portion of the infinite number of possible worlds that may have once existed or may yet exist. But anything like a single world, common to all species, at all times, under all circumstances, is a purely hypothetical construction, drawn by inference from pathetically insufficient data, prized for the assurance of stability and intelligibility it gives, even though that assurance turns out, under severe examination, to be just another illusion. A butterfly or a beetle, a fish or a fowl, a dog or a dolphin, would have a different report to give even about primary qualities, for each lives in a world conditioned by the needs and environmental opportunities open to his species. In the gray visual world of the dog, smells, near and distant, subtle or violently exciting, probably play the part that colors do in man's world-though in the primal occupation of eating, the dog's world and man's world would approach each other more closely. "
― Lewis Mumford , The Pentagon of Power (The Myth of the Machine, Vol 2)
33
" What law of nature has singled out the increased application of energy as the law of organic existence? The answer is: No such law exists. In the complex interactions that made life possible on earth, energy in all its forms is of course and indispensable component, but not the sole factor. Organisms may almost be defined as so many diverse inventions for regulating energy, reversing its tendency to dissipation, and keeping it within limits favorable to the organism's own needs and purposes. This screening process began, before organisms could make their appearance, in the atmospheric layer that tempers the direct heat of the sun and filters out lethal rays. Too much energy is as fatal to life as too little: hence the regulation of energy input and output, not its unlimited expansion, is in fact one of the main laws of life. In contrast, any excessive concentration of energy, even for seemingly valid purposes, must be closely scrutinized, and often rejected as a threat to ecological equilibrium. "
― Lewis Mumford , The Pentagon of Power (The Myth of the Machine, Vol 2)
38
" What one must give up, in any effort to achieve a many-dimensioned and coherent world picture, is the idea of early achievement and instant exploitation. Whatever the field of invention, or organization, one must be ready to go forward at a slower pace, looking before and after; to make fewer discoveries, to spend as much time assimilating knowledge as in acquiring it; to do less, perhaps, in a whole lifetime in any one department than the concentrated specialist is able to do in a decade. From the standpoint of the power system this demands an impossible sacrifice: the sacrifice of power to life. "
― Lewis Mumford , The Pentagon of Power (The Myth of the Machine, Vol 2)
39
" No comatose space travel, no millennial hibernation, however interminable, promise even a scintilla of what earthbound man has already accomplished. Our own planet still holds countless unlocked mysteries as great as any that lie beyond our own Milky Way. And even that knowledge, however deeply it penetrates, is only part of the total manifestation of life in millions of living species. The actual genius that will "flourish only in space, in the realm of the machine," is the genius of entropy and anti-life. With space exploration, the traditional enemy of God and man has already re-appeared, in post-Faustian form. And as of old, if one is willing to sell one's soul to him, he offers his ancient bribe-unlimited power of control, control absolute, not only over all other kingdoms and principalities, but over life itself. "
― Lewis Mumford , The Pentagon of Power (The Myth of the Machine, Vol 2)