{"id":12913,"date":"2014-08-28T07:39:12","date_gmt":"2014-08-28T11:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/etherwave.wordpress.com\/?p=12913"},"modified":"2014-08-28T07:39:12","modified_gmt":"2014-08-28T11:39:12","slug":"derek-price-on-automata-simulacra-and-the-rise-of-mechanicism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/2014\/08\/28\/derek-price-on-automata-simulacra-and-the-rise-of-mechanicism\/","title":{"rendered":"Derek Price on Automata, Simulacra, and the Rise of “Mechanicism”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Price.<\/a>
Derek J. de Solla Price (1922-1983). Click for the full-size\u00a0photo at Yale University Manuscripts and Archives<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Before we proceed further with our discussion<\/a><\/span> of Simon Schaffer’s “Enlightened Automata” (1999), I’d like to go back a further 35 years to take a look at\u00a0Derek J. de Solla Price, “Automata and the Origins of Mechanism and Mechanistic Philosophy,”<\/a><\/span>\u00a0Technology and Culture\u00a0<\/em>5 (1964): 9-23. This should give us some sense of how much and how little the literature had changed by the time Schaffer wrote.<\/span><\/p>\n

Price’s article was written\u00a0in a period when historians were interested in defining and tracing the shifts in thought\u00a0that\u00a0they took to be crucial to the development\u00a0of modern science. The tradition of scholarship is closely associated with figures such as Alexandre Koyr\u00e9 (1892-1964) and Rupert Hall (1920-2009), whose touchstone work,\u00a0The Scientific Revolution: The Formation of the Modern Scientific<\/em> Attitude<\/em>, appeared in\u00a0<\/em>1954.<\/span><\/p>\n

Probably the most important\u00a0shift these authors attended to was the rise of “mechanistic” modes of explaining natural phenomena, punctuated by the philosophy of Ren\u00e9 Descartes (1596-1650) and the achievements of Isaac Newton (1643-1727). Price’s aim was to investigate the intellectual relationship between mechanistic philosophy (“or mechanicism<\/em> to use the appropriate term coined by Dijksterhuis,” 10*) and the creation\u00a0of sophisticated mechanisms.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Price related,\u00a0“Historians of the Mechanistic Philosophy customarily proceed from the reasonable assumption that certain theories in astronomy and biology derived from man’s familiarity with various machines and mechanical devices. Using everyday technological artifacts one could attempt with some measure of success to explain the motions of the planets and the behavior of living animals as having much of the certainty and regularity reproduced in these physical models.” According to Price, “… simulacra (i.e., devices that simulate) and automata (i.e, devices that move by themselves)” played an important role in the relations between the histories of technology and philosophy, because they would have seemed to offer “tangible proof, more impressive than any theory, that the natural universe of physics and biology was susceptible to mechanistic explanation.”<\/span><\/p>\n

However, Price hoped to use a careful examination of the long history of these mechanisms to invert the traditional interpretation, to demonstrate that “mechanistic philosophy … led to mechanism rather than the other way about.” He suggested that humans have “some strong innate urge toward mechanistic explanation,” which “led to the making of automata.” \u00a0In turn, automata were the source of “much of our technology, particularly the part embracing fine mechanism and scientific instrumentation.” In fact, he supposed, “In these special mechanisms are seen the progenitors of the Industrial Revolution.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

From a still broader perspective: “In the augmenting success of automata through the age of Descartes, and perhaps up to and including the age of electronic computers, we see the prime tangible manifestation of the triumph of rational, mechanistic explanation over those of the vitalists and theologians” (10).<\/span><\/p>\n

When you line it up from A to Z, this is a pretty\u00a0oddball narrative of an “innate” human proclivity for a certain type of explanation\u00a0overcoming alternative possibilities to finally be affirmed in the development of\u00a0modern\u00a0science and technology. But I’ll ask readers\u00a0to put aside knee-jerk objections, to pay attention, first, to the fact that Price and Schaffer share a belief in the close historical linkage of\u00a0mechanistic philosophy, automata, and industrialization;** and, second, to the detailed argument that Price constructed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Price spent the bulk of his article recounting the history of simulacra and automata,\u00a0which he traced all the way back to the “deep-rooted urge of man to simulate the world around him through the graphic and plastic arts,” pointing to the archaeological evidence of the “naturalistic rock paintings of prehistoric caves” and to “ancient grotesque figurines and other ‘idols’ found in burials,” as well as in “talking statues” made in ancient Egypt where speaking trumpets were “concealed in hollows leading down from the mouth”\u00a0(10). He also pointed to articulated masks found in Africa and Wayang figures<\/a><\/span> used in Indonesian shadow plays to suggest, “Primitive animism may lay at the very root of animation” (11).<\/span><\/p>\n

He went on to discuss accounts of simulacra in the classical world, including “cosmological simulacra,” which were apparently rarer and later in arriving than “biological models” (12), but which wedded concepts of mathematical and geometric regularity in celestial motion to mechanical\u00a0devices. He argues that ancient water clocks and sundials probably were built for “the aesthetic or religious satisfaction derived from making a device to simulate the heavens,” rather than for\u00a0a “utilitarian purpose” (13). He notes that such devices were certainly used to drive celestial models in the Chinese context<\/a><\/span>. And then, of course, there was the extraordinary sophistication of the Antikythera mechanism, which, when Price wrote, had only begun to be fathomed.<\/span><\/p>\n

If you’re not familiar with the remarkable\u00a0story of Antikythera mechanism, and Price’s place in the history of studying it, have a look at this video:<\/span><\/p>\n