‘The machine man of 1925’

2019 ◽  
pp. 221-256
Author(s):  
Max Saunders
Keyword(s):  
Human Computer Interaction ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Mass Production ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Wyndham Lewis ◽  
Marshall Mcluhan ◽  
Human Thought ◽  
Original Line ◽  
General Inability

This chapter moves beyond the human sciences, to develop the exploration (launched in the Introductions and Chapter 1) of the re-imagining of human nature and potentiality. It investigates the representation of the machine in the series, contrasting the volumes concerned with the dehumanizing effects of mechanized mass production with those taking a more nuanced and original line, arguing that the machine liberates human thought and creativity (a topic of evident relevance to today’s discussions of human-computer interaction and AI). It argues that To-Day and To-Morrow’s presentation of technology as prosthesis offers a more benign vision of mechanized futurity than the ‘prosthetic modernism’ of writers like Marinetti and Wyndham Lewis. H. Stafford Hatfield’s Automaton: or, The Future of the Mechanical Man (1928) is examined for the way in which it floats the possibility of a ‘mechanical brain’, yet is indicative of a general inability to predict the imminent electronic computer—thus raising a question of the limits of prediction in relation to thought-paradigms. A line is suggested from the series’ running together of technology, media and psychology, to the development of media studies, especially as articulated by Marshall McLuhan.

Why We Disagree About Human Nature

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Animal Cognition ◽  
Scientific Work ◽  
Biological Anthropology ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Disciplinary Boundaries ◽  
Nature Play

Is human nature something that the natural and social sciences aim to describe, or is it a pernicious fiction? What role, if any, does ‘human nature’ play in directing and informing scientific work? Can we talk about human nature without invoking—either implicitly or explicitly—a contrast with human culture? It might be tempting to think that the respectability of ‘human nature’ is an issue that divides natural and social scientists along disciplinary boundaries, but the truth is more complex. The contributors to this collection take very different stances with regard to the idea of human nature. They come from the fields of psychology, the philosophy of science, social and biological anthropology, evolutionary theory, and the study of animal cognition. Some of them are ‘human nature’ enthusiasts, some are sceptics, and some say that human nature is a concept with many faces, each of which plays a role in its own investigative niche. Some want to eliminate the notion altogether, some think it unproblematic, others want to retain it with reforming modifications. Some say that human nature is a target for investigation that the human sciences cannot do without, others argue that the term does far more harm than good. The diverse perspectives articulated in this book help to explain why we disagree about human nature, and what, if anything, might resolve that disagreement.

scholarly journals Review of The Natural and the Human: Science and the Shaping of Modernity 1739-1841 [by Stephen Gaukroger]

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Abou-Nemeh
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Human Science ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Scientific Culture ◽  
The West ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
The Third ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Oxford University Press

This compelling and erudite book examines the emergence of the human sciences in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and explores the rise of sensibility in studies of human nature and behavior. The Natural and the Human is the third installment of Stephen Gaukroger’s massive project that investigates the ways in which scientific values were consolidated into a dominant program of inquiry and shaped notions of modernity in the West from the thirteenth century onward. (The first two volumes, The Emergence of a Scientific Culture and The Collapse of Mechanism and the Rise of Sensibility, were published by Oxford University Press in 2006 and 2010, respectively.) <br>

scholarly journals Origins of translation and simulation in terms of theory and practice: Translation of Muhammad Iqbal's Urdu and Persian poetry in Arabic as a model

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-78
Author(s):  
Salahuddin Mohd. Shamsuddin ◽  
Siti Sarah binti Hj. Ahmad
Keyword(s):  
Expressive Arts ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Critical Study ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Symbolic Language ◽  
Emotional Life ◽  
Human Thought ◽  
Language Studies ◽  
Persian Poetry ◽  
The Subject

Translation has a great importance in the development of human sciences in every age. First, we examine the theories of writers and critics mentioned in the translation and simulation. Translator must know the function of the symbolic language that differs from the metaphors and similes. Translation is the best way to enrich the languages in which the literatures are formulated, which must be in constant contact with what human thought offers, and the writer or translator must take a position of criticism and scrutiny. The translator must not forget that he does not convey the meanings of words only, but also conveys the cultural spirit and emotional life of the era in which these texts were composed. Finally, this article studies the subject of translating the poetry by the poetry and makes the translation of Muhammad Iqbal's poetry from Urdu and Persian into Arabic as a model for studying the translated works of various Arab poet translators as the theory and application, in order to know the extent of the success of the translators in their works. This is a critical study in which the descriptive analytical method is used, which is useful in studying such expressive arts. In this research, the researchers reached this conclusion that the translation of the poetry by the poetry should not be to show the linguistic and artistic prowess, but rather the language used in translation should be a realistic language studies that there are some souls behind the word that must be realized.

Coming To Be Without a Cause

Philosophy ◽  
1990 ◽  
Vol 65 (253) ◽  
pp. 261-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. D. Sullivan
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Human Thought ◽  
Efficient Cause ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Do So

Quentin Smith contends that modern science provides enough evidence ‘to justify the belief that the universe began to exist without being caused to do so.’There was a time when such a claim would have been dismissed because it conflicts with a principle absolutely fundamental to all human thought, including science itself. As Thomas Reid expressed the matter:That neither existence, nor any mode of existence, can begin without an efficient cause is a principle that appears very early in the mind of man; and it is so universal, and so firmly rooted in human nature, that the most determined scepticism cannot eradicate it.

Psycho-Cultural Hypotheses About Political Acts

1948 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 102-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Leites
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Political Behavior ◽  
Defense Mechanisms ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Social Events ◽  
The One ◽  
Large Groups

During recent years there has been a noticeable rise in the production of, and interest in, a relatively new kind of analysis of political behavior. Anthropologists had become increasingly concerned with describing and explaining the entire way of life of the non-literate societies they were studying. Some of them came to believe that cultural anthropology should return to home, i.e., that the methods of observation and recording, and also the theories which they had developed on so-called primitive material should be applied to our own society and other large and complex groups. At the same time, psychologists and psychiatrists had become increasingly interested in describing and explaining the entire way of life, subjective and behavioral, of the individuals they were studying. They tended to be particularly interested, on the one hand, in the broad varieties of human nature (“character types” and “defense mechanisms”) and, on the other, in the unique structure of each case. But some of them came to be interested in ascertaining the psychological regularities, if any, in large groups. The confluence of these two developments in the human sciences led to the emergence of what we may call psycho-cultural analyses of social events.

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