The Fourth Discontinuity: The Co-Evolution of Humans and Machines by Bruce Mazlish

Abstract

888 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGYAND CULTURE The Fourth Discontinuity: The Co-Evolution of Humans and Machines. By Bruce Mazlish. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1993. Pp. ix+272; notes, index. $30.00. In what must be one of his most frequently cited passages, Freud once observed that human narcissism has suffered three great outrages: the Copernican revolution, which destroyed the notion that the earth is a privileged home, essentially discontinuous with the rest of the universe; the Darwinian revolution, which planted the human species on an evolutionary continuum with the lower animals; and finally Freud’s own discovery that the vaunted rational ego rests on a fragile continuum with the unconscious. Bruce Mazlish argues that a “fourth discontinuity” must now be admitted: “What is claimed here is that the sharp disconti­ nuity between humans and machines is no longer tenable” (p. 7). At first blush, this claim is so pretentious as to appear parodic, but the author assures us— ifonly in his penultimate footnote—that his discovery is not of the rank of heliocentrism, natural selection, or psychoanalysis. It is the more modest finding of an accomplished intellectual historian who has set out to reconstruct the concept of human nature as it has been shaped by speculations on the nature of machines. The first section of the book contains discussions of mechanical imagery in the anatomical drawings of Leonardo da Vinci, Ambroise Paré, and Andreas Vesalius; the attempt to theorize the difference between animals and machines in Descartes and La Mettrie; an excursus on automatons from Vaucanson to Isaac Asimov; and a chapter that surveys alternative views of technology during the Industrial Revolution. Part 2 focuses more narrowly on the problem of human nature as depicted by Linnaeus and Darwin, Freud and Pavlov, and finally Charles Babbage, T. H. Huxley, and Samuel Buder. The third section, derived mosdy from the work of Mazlish’s colleagues at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, speculates on the future “co-evolution” of humans and machines in the brave new world of biogenetic engineering and computer robotics. The idea itself is an intriguing one with a distinguished history. In 1960 Sherwood Washburn advanced the controversial thesis that early, tool-wielding apes may have so transformed their environments as to call forth new and distinctively “human” adaptations. However this se­ quence may ultimately be resolved, it is clear that the evolution of the species has been marked by the interdependency of human beings and their tools ever since. The Fourth Discontinuity makes an engaging argument out of this interdependency and will reward readers for its suggestive insights and its provocative, opinionated style. At the same time, there are problems of substance and method in the book, which the author himself seems to recognize. “Flying high above the terrain of history” (p. 73), Mazlish writes as if political and economic forces had no impact either on the development of technology or on the philosophical and literary responses to it that are his primary subject TECHNOLOGYAND CULTURE Book Reviews 889 matter (a fleeting reference to the “imperialist” mission of the Beagle hardly counts). Against the global forces at work in, for instance, the robotics or biotechnology industries, his conclusion that “humans may opt” to become more mechanical or “they may decide not to” seems very inadequate. Second, Mazlish acknowledges that he is “hovering at the periphery of the philosophical issues” (p. 192), but defensive maneuvers of this sort do not compensate for the lack of really close analyses of the theories and theorists he has selected. The dustjacket promises intel­ lectual history “in the grand tradition,” and that is pretty much what we get. The more venturesome positions in this debate—Donna Haraway’s “cyborgs,” Manuel De Landa’s “robot historian,” the elaborate histori­ cal reconstructions ofJean-Claude Beaune, critical trends in the histo­ riography of science and of technology—receive no attention. Although Mazlish concedes that his principle of selection is “neither systematic nor truly ecumenical” (p. 199), one cannot help but wonder how Star Wars and Robocop find their way into the narrative, but not Heidegger or the Frankfurt School. Having stated these reservations, it must be said in conclusion that Mazlish has embarked on an ambitious...