Lewis Mumford (October 19,
1895 – January 26, 1990) was an American
historian and philosopher of technology and science. Particularly noted for his study of
cities and urban architecture, he had a
tremendously broad career as a writer that also included a period
as an influential
literary critic.
Mumford was influenced by the work of Scottish theorist Sir
Patrick Geddes.
Mumford was also a contemporary and friend of
Frank Lloyd Wright,
Frederic J. Osborn,
Edmund N. Bacon, and
Vannevar Bush.
Life
Mumford
was born in Flushing, New York,
and graduated from Stuyvesant High School
in 1912. He studied at the City College of
New York
and The New School for
Social Research, but became ill with tuberculosis and never
finished his degree. In 1919 he became associate editor of
The Dial, an influential
modernist literary journal. He later worked for
The New Yorker where he
wrote architectural criticism and commentary on urban issues.
Mumford's earliest books in the field of literary criticism have
had a lasting impact on contemporary American literary criticism.
The Golden Day contributed to a resurgence in scholarly
research on the work of 1850's American
transcendentalist authors and
Herman
Melville: A study of His Life and Vision effectively launched
a revival in the study of the work of
Herman Melville. Soon after, with the book
The Brown Decades, he began to establish himself as an
authority in US
architecture and urban
life, which he interpreted in a social context.
In his early writings on urban life, Mumford was optimistic about
human abilities and wrote that the human race would use
electricity and
mass communication to build a better
world for all humankind. He would later take a more pessimistic
stance. His early architectural criticism also helped to bring
wider public recognition to the work of
Henry Hobson Richardson,
Louis Sullivan and
Frank Lloyd Wright.
Mumford was involved in numerous research positions and received
the
Presidential Medal of
Freedom in 1964. In 1943 Mumford was made an honorary
Knight Commander of the Order of the
British Empire. In 1976, he was awarded the
Prix mondial Cino Del Duca.
He served as the architectural critic for
The New Yorker magazine for over 30
years, and his 1961 book,
The
City in History, received the
National Book Award.
Lewis
Mumford died at his home in Amenia, New York
.
Ideas
Mumford believed that what defined humanity, what set human beings
apart from other animals, was not primarily our use of tools
(technology) but our use of language (symbols). He was convinced
that the sharing of information and ideas amongst participants of
primitive societies was completely natural to early humanity, and
had obviously been the foundation of society as it became more
sophisticated and complex. He had hopes for a continuation of this
process of information “pooling” in the world as humanity moved
into the future.
Mumford's choice of the word "technics" throughout his work was
deliberate. For Mumford, technology is one part of technics. Using
the broader definition of the Greek
tekne, which means not
only technology but also art, skill and dexterity, technics refers
to the interplay of a social milieu and technological innovation -
the "wishes, habits, ideas, goals" as well as "industrial
processes" of a society. As Mumford writes at the beginning of
Technics and
Civilization, "other civilizations reached a high degree
of technical proficiency without, apparently, being profoundly
influenced by the methods and aims of technics."
Megatechnics
In
The Myth of the
Machine Vol II: The Pentagon of Power (Chapter 12) (1970),
Mumford
criticizes the modern
trend of technology, which emphasizes constant, unrestricted
expansion, production, and replacement. He explains that these
goals work against technical perfection, durability, social
efficiency, and overall human satisfaction. Modern technology—which
he calls 'megatechnics'—evades producing lasting, quality products
by using devices such as consumer
credit,
installment buying, non-functioning and
defective designs,
built-in
fragility, and frequent
superficial "fashion"
changes. "Without constant enticement by
advertising", he explains, "production would
slow down and level off to normal replacement demand. Otherwise
many products could reach a plateau of efficient design which would
call for only minimal changes from year to year."
He uses his own
refrigerator as an
example, explaining that it "has been in service for nineteen
years, with only a single minor repair: an admirable job.
Both
automatic refrigerators for daily use and deepfreeze preservation
are inventions of permanent value ... if biotechnic criteria were
heeded, rather than those of market analysts and fashion experts,
an equally good product might come forth from Detroit
, with an
equally long prospect of continued use."
Biotechnics
Mumford describes an organic model of technology, or
biotechnics, as a contrast to
megatechnics.
Organic systems direct themselves to "qualitative richness,
amplitude, spaciousness, and freedom from quantitative pressures
and crowding. Self-regulation, self-correction, and self-propulsion
are as much an integral property of organisms as nutrition,
reproduction, growth, and repair." Biotechnics models life in
seeking balance, wholeness, and completeness.
Polytechnics versus monotechnics
A key idea, introduced in
Technics and Civilization
(1934) was that technology was twofold:
- Polytechnic, which enlists many different modes of
technology, providing a complex framework to solve human
problems.
- Monotechnic which is technology only for its own sake,
which oppresses humanity as it moves along its own trajectory.
Mumford commonly criticized modern America's transportation
networks as being 'monotechnic' in their reliance on cars.
Automobiles become obstacles for other modes of
transportation, such as
walking,
bicycle and
public
transit, because the roads they use consume so much space and
are such a danger to people. Mumford explains that the thousands of
maimed and dead each year as a result of automobile accidents are a
"ritual sacrifice" the American society makes because of its
extreme reliance on
highway transport.
Megamachines
Mumford also refers to large
hierarchical
organizations as
megamachines—a
machine using humans as its components. These
organizations comprise Mumford's
stage
theory of civilization.
The most recent Megamachine manifests itself,
according to Mumford, in modern technocratic nuclear powers—Mumford used the examples of
the Soviet
and US
power complexes represented by the Kremlin and the Pentagon
, respectively. The builders of the
Pyramids
, the
Roman Empire and the armies of the
World Wars are prior
examples.
Features
He explains that meticulous attention to accounting and
standardization, and elevation of military leaders to divine status
are spontaneous features of megamachines throughout history. He
cites such examples as the repetitive nature of Egyptian paintings
which feature enlarged
Pharaohs and public
display of enlarged portraits of dictators such as
Mao Zedong and
Joseph
Stalin. He also cites the overwhelming prevalence of
quantitative accounting records among surviving historical
fragments, from
ancient Egypt to
Nazi Germany.
Necessary to the construction of these megamachines is an enormous
bureaucracy of humans which act as
"servo-units", working without ethical involvement. According to
Mumford, Technological improvements such as
remote control by
satellite or radio, instant global communication,
and
assembly line organizations dampen
psychological barriers against the end result of their actions. An
example which he uses is that of
Adolf
Eichmann, the Nazi official who conducted logistics behind
the Holocaust. Mumford collectively
refers to people willing to carry out placidly the extreme goals of
these megamachines as "Eichmanns".
The clock as herald of the Industrial Revolution
One of the better-known studies of Mumford is of the way the
mechanical clock was
developed by monks in the
Middle Ages
and subsequently adopted by the rest of society. He viewed this
device as the key invention of the whole
Industrial Revolution, contrary to the
common view of the
steam engine holding
the prime position, writing: "The clock is a piece of machinery
whose 'product' is seconds and minutes."
Urban civilization
In his influential book
The City
in History, which won the
National Book Award, Mumford explores
the development of urban civilizations. Harshly critical of
urban sprawl, Mumford argues that the
structure of modern cities is partially responsible for many social
problems seen in western society. While
pessimistic in tone, Mumford argues that
urban planning should emphasize an organic
relationship between people and their living spaces.
Mumford uses the example of the medieval city as the basis for the
"ideal city," and claims that the modern city is too close to the
Roman city (the sprawling megalopolis) which ended in collapse; if
the modern city carries on in the same vein, Mumford argues, then
it will meet the same fate as the Roman city.
Mumford wrote critically of
urban
culture believing the city is "a product of earth ... a fact of
nature ... man's method of expression." Further Mumford recognized
the crises facing urban culture, distrusting of the growing finance
industry, political structures, fearful that a local community
culture was not being fostered by these institutions. Mumford
feared "metropolitan finance,"
urbanisation,
politics,
and
alienation.
"The physical design of cities and their economic functions are
secondary to their relationship to the national environment and to
the spiritual values of human community."
Writing style
While Mumford's writing exhibits much original research and a
uniquely "Mumfordian" approach to history and technology, his style
often incorporates powerful
rhetorical
subtleties and
psychoanalytical
interpretations of philosophical figures. A Mumford essay also
tends to be multidisciplinary, combining references and images from
an often startlingly wide range of studies.
Influence
Mumford's interest in the history of technology and his explanation
of "polytechnics", along with his general philosophical bent, has
been an important influence on a number of more recent thinkers
concerned that technology serve human beings as broadly and well as
possible. Some of these authors — such as
Jacques Ellul,
Witold Rybczynski,
Amory Lovins,
J.
Baldwin,
E. F.
Schumacher,
Herbert Marcuse,
Murray Bookchin,
Marshall McLuhan — have been both
intellectuals and persons directly involved with technological
development and decisions about the use of technology.
Mumford also had an influence on the American
environmentalist movement, with thinkers
like
Barry Commoner and Bookchin
being influenced by his ideas on cities,
ecology and technology.
Ramachandra Guha noted his work contains
'some of the earliest and finest thinking on
bioregionalism, anti-nuclearism,
biodiversity, alternate energy paths,
ecological urban planning and appropriate technology."
It is also evident in the work of some artists. This includes
Berenice Abbott's photographs of New
York City in the late 1930s.
Bibliography
Incomplete - to be updated
- The Story of Utopias (1922)
- Sticks and Stones (1924)
- The Golden Day (1926)
- Herman Melville: A Study of
His Life and Vision (1929)
- The Brown Decades: A Study of the Arts in America,
1865-1895 (1931)
- The City (1939, a
film)
- "Renewal of Life" series
- Values for Survival (1946)
- Art and Technics (1952)
- In the Name of Sanity (1954)
- The Transformations of Man (1956 New York: Harper and
Row)
- The City in History
(1961) often considered his most important work (Awarded the
National Book Award)
- The Highway and the City (1963, essay collection)
- The Myth of the
Machine (2 volumes)
- Technics and Human Development (1967)
- The Pentagon of Power (1970)
- The Urban Prospect (1968, essay collection)
- My Work and Days: A Personal Chronicle (1979)
- Sketches from Life: The Autobiography of Lewis Mumford
(1982 New York: Dial Press)
- The Lewis Mumford Reader. Donald L.
Miller, ed. (1986 New York: Pantheon Books)
Articles
- :
Reviews the Esso Building, Rockefeller Center
- : Reviews Parke-Bernet
Galleries, Madison Avenue
References
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