Technological Limitations Based on a Society's Metaphysical Assumptions
Discussion
Neofeudal Review:
"Limitations based on a society’s metaphysical presuppositions
The ancient Greeks were the first to have a coherent scientific activity and to liberate scientific thought. They could have deduced the technical consequences of their scientific activity, but they did not do so. This was because their worldview refused to subsume all of society to treat technique as a God.
According to Jacques Ellul in The Technological Society:
- The Greeks were suspicious of technical activity because it represented an aspect of brute force and implied a want of moderation…The rejection of technique was a deliberate, positive activity involving self-mastery, recognition of destiny, and the application of a given conception of life. Only the most modest techniques were permitted - those which would respond directly to material needs in such a way that these needs did not get the upper hand….No one ought to apply scientific thought technically, because scientific thought corresponded to a conception of life, to wisdom. The great preoccupation of the Greeks was balance, harmony and moderation; hence, they fiercely resisted the unrestrained force inherent in technique, and rejected it because of its potentialities.
The Romans had a different conception of technique than the Greeks. To them, anything that improved the internal coherence of society was adopted, and this resulted in an equilibrium between the purely technical factor and the human factor:
- The social coherence was the first judicial technique the world had known. It was also the basis for the Roman military system, which was a direct expression of civil society in that it had the same respect for efficiency and economy. From it came the development of organs of transport, food supply, and so on; and the Roman conception of mass strategy and their refusal to create heroes: combat was thus reduced to its most utilitarian level.
After Christianity’s total victory over Rome, technique was obliterated in essentially every category. Knowledge across disciplines was lost as Christianity viciously checked the application of technique by demanding that any activity be first morally righteous before considering its practical uses:
- The search for justice before God, the measuring of technique by other criteria than those of technique itself - these were the great obstacles that Christianity opposed to technical progress. They operated in the Middle Ages in all areas of life, and made history coincide with theology.
This attitude remained until the Middle Ages when first scholasticism and then the reintroduction of Aristotlean reason created the foundation for which technique would ultimately arise. As faith in God subsided, faith in technique and of the materialist, atheistic Machine powered by reason grew, culminating in first the Industrial and then the Informational Revolutions."
(https://neofeudalreview.substack.com/p/on-the-digital-panopticon-mark-of)
More information
- From a contrarian point of view, which stress the tech-friendlyness of medieval christianity, see chapter 1 of: From Modes of Production to the Resurrection of the Body