Leo Marx

The Idea of “Technology” and Postmodern Pessimism

“Technological pessimism” may be a novel term, but most of us seem to understand what it means.2 It surely refers to that sense of disappointment, anxiety, even menace, that the idea of “technology” arouses in many people these days. As the editors of this volume note, however, there also is something paradoxical about the implication that technology is somehow responsible for today’s widespread social pessimism. The modern era, after all, has been marked by a series of “spectacular scientific and technological breakthroughs”; we are reminded of the astonishing technical innovations of the last century in, say, medicine, chemistry, aviation, electronics, atomic energy, space exploration, or genetic engineering. Isn’t it odd, then, to attribute today’s widespread gloom to the presumed means of achieving all those advances: an abstract entity called “technology”?

The idea of nature in America

Daedalus Spring 2008 The idea of nature is–or, rather, was– one of the fundamental American ideas. In its time it served–as the ideas of freedom, democracy, or progress did in theirs–to de1⁄2ne the meaning of America. For some three centuries, in fact, from the founding of Jamestown in 1607 to the closing of the Western frontier in 1890, the encounter of white settlers with what they perceived as wilderness –unaltered nature–was the de1⁄2ning American experience. By the end of that era, however, the wilderness had come to seem a thing of the past, and the land of farms and villages was rapidly becoming a land of factories and cities. By 1920, half the population lived in cities, and as the natural world became a less immediate presence, images of the pristine landscape–chief icon of American nature– lost their power to express the nation’s vision of itself. Then, in the 1970s, with the onset of the ecological ‘crisis,’ the refurbished, matter-of-fact word environment took over a large part of the niche in public discourse hitherto occupied by the word nature. Before the end of the century, the marked loss of status and currency suffered by the idea of nature had become a hot subject in academic and intellectual circles. Reputable scholars and journalists published essays and books about the ‘death’–or the ‘end’–of nature; the University of California recruited a dozen humanities professors to participate in a semester-long research seminar designed to “reinvent nature”;1 and the association of European specialists in American studies chose, as the aim of its turn-of-the-century conference, to reassess the changing role played by the idea of nature in America.2 Leo Marx

The Railroad in American Art: Representations of Technological Change

These essays on paintings, prints, and photographs explore the wealth of railroad imagery in American art.

Environmental degradation and the ambiguous social role of science and technology

ConclusionRecent anxieties about the deterioration of the global environment have had the effect of intensifying the ambiguity that surrounds the social roles of scientists and engineers. This has happened not merely, as suggested at the outset, because the environmental crisis has made their roles more conspicuous. Nor is it merely because recent disasters have alerted us to new, or hitherto unrecognized, social consequences of using the latest science-based technologies. What also requires recognition is that ideas about the social role of modern science and engineering are embedded in, hence mediated by, larger views of the world. Within such American worldviews, moreover, the status of science and engineering is closely bound up with their perceived effect upon the environment.In the dominant culture, accordingly, the respect given to scientists and engineers is in large measure dependent on their ability to play the central role assigned to them in the historical narrative about progress. As the ostensible heroes of that popular story, they are expected to lead the way in realizing the promise of prosperity and general well-being. The environmental crisis surely has diminished the credibility of that story, thereby causing the social role of science and engineering to seem more dubious — more ambiguous. To be sure, the crisis also may have the effect, for very different reasons, of increasing the power and responsibility of organized science. But the late twentieth-century task of damage control cannot possibly elicit anything like the respect accorded to organized science by the earlier belief in progress.It also is important to recall, finally, that the narrative of progress itself has undergone a disillusioning transformation. The early Enlightenment version of the story depicted scientists and engineers working in the service of a social and political ideal that all people could share. But the later technocratic concept of progress, with its sterile instrumentalist notion of advancing the power of science-based technology as an end in itself, is far less likely to inspire trust. Its patent inadequacies have had the effect of enhancing the appeal, if only by contrast, of the seemingly “anti-science” ideologies of pastoralism and primitivism. All of which might be taken to suggest that if the scientific and engineering professions want to recover some of the respect and status they once had, they would be well advised to join with sympathetic humanists and social scientists in recuperating some of the idealism that the project of modern science formerly derived from its place within the ideology of progress. That might entail the sacrifice of their technocratic posture of neutrality, dissociating themselves from people and institutions responsible for environmental degradation, and their help in formulating a new concept — which is to say, new criteria — of progress to which they might commit themselves. A primary test of any proposed social policy under this new dispensation surely would be whether it would improve, or at a minimum protect, the life-enhancing capacities of the global ecosystem. *** DIRECT SUPPORT *** A8402064 00011 *** DIRECT SUPPORT *** A8402064 00012 *** DIRECT SUPPORT *** A8402064 00013

The Puzzle of Antiurbanism in Classic American Literature

Whenever American attitudes toward the city are under discussion we are likely to hear a familiar note of puzzlement. We hear it, for instance, near the end of the influential study by Morton and Lucia White, The Intellectual versus the City: From Thomas Jefferson to Frank Lloyd Wright. After making their case for the centrality of antiurban motives in American thought and expression, the Whites invite us to share their perplexity. “How shall we explain this persistent distrust of the American city?” they ask. “Surely it is puzzling, or should be.”1