Anthony Burgess wrote A Clockwork Orange in 1962. The somewhat cryptic title refers to a certain view of man. The word "orange" refers to the Malay word "orang," which means man. Thus the main character of the novel, Alex, is a clockwork man. If you have seen the film or read the novel (and I confess to only seeing the film) you know that criminal Alex is made "good" by the scientific application
of certain visual stimuli that condition his mind to revolt at the idea of committing violence. The clear implication of the end of the film is that this technique can be used to make men good, but can also be used to make men bad.
This is one of the implications of the Atlantic Monthly article "Is Google Making Us Stupid," to which I referred yesterday. The author, Guy Billout, discusses the work of Fredrick Winslow Taylor, who in the late 19th Century timed the activities of various workmen in an attempt to find inefficiencies in their behavior. Obviously the more efficient they could become in the use of their time the more money was to be made by industry. Taylor wrote a book, The Principles of Scientific Management, aiming to turn the management of men into a science. In this way, the worker became almost literally a clockwork man. When man becomes a mere machine, it is easy to see him as something to be manipulated and conditioned, just as we might manipulate our car engine or computer.
This past weekend in Minnesota I was paging through a book at Barnes and Noble that was worried about the potential loss of America's "scientific soul." This was another in a long series of "evolution good, intelligent design bad" books, perhaps matched only by the "intelligent design good, evolution bad" books (for the record, I am an "evolution controversy" agnostic). I seriously doubt American ever had a "scientific soul," and if it did it is a good thing to remove. When we view humanity simply through the eyes of science it is all too easy to start seeing man as a clockwork machine, a thing to be manipulated for good and for ill. Man, of course, is a machine of sorts, but not only a machine.
In a Sherlock Holmes story I listened to during my recent road trip, Holmes laments while in a posh London neighborhood that while his friend Watson can appreciate the beautiful architecture of the homes, Holmes himself can only see places where crimes might take place. His dedication to his science has made him immune to beauty. What a pity if that is how we start to see humanity and nature, unable to appreciate their beauty, only able to see a machine.
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