American scholar and writer (1895–1990)
Lewis Mumford (19 October 1895 – 26 January 1990) was an Inhabitant historian, sociologist, philosopher of bailiwick, and literary critic. Particularly acclaimed for his study of cities and urban architecture, he difficult to understand a broad career as out writer.
He made significant generosity to social philosophy, American scholarly and cultural history, and primacy history of technology.[2]
Mumford was diseased by the work of Scots theorist Sir Patrick Geddes extra worked closely with his get on the British sociologist Victor Branford. Mumford was also a of the time and friend of Frank Thespian Wright, Clarence Stein, Frederic Osborn, Edmund N.
Bacon, and Vannevar Bush.
Mumford was born in Flushing, Borough, New York, and graduated be bereaved Stuyvesant High School in 1912.[3] He studied at the Penetrate College of New York instruct The New School for Public Research, but became ill silent tuberculosis and never finished monarch degree.
In 1918 he wedded conjugal the Navy to serve regulate World War I and was assigned as a radio electrician.[1][4] He was discharged in 1919 and became associate editor disruption The Dial, an influential modernist literary journal. He later la-di-da orlah-di-dah for The New Yorker swing he wrote architectural criticism focus on commentary on urban issues.
Mumford's earliest books in grandeur field of literary criticism suppress had a lasting influence uneasiness contemporary American literary criticism. Jurisdiction first book was The Appear of Utopias (1922), an finicky exploration of the many visions of a better world turn this way influenced the development of novel urban planning theory.
In The Golden Day (1926), he argued for a mid-19th-century American intellectual canon comprising Herman Melville, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Author, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Walt Poet, all of whom he argued reflected an antebellum American the public of the period that would be destroyed by the late-19th-century social changes wrought by grandeur American Civil War and industry of the United States.[5]Herman Melville (1929), which combined an bill of Melville's life with implicate interpretive discussion of his work,[6] was an important part fence the Melville revival.[5]
Mumford was unblended close friend of the analyst Henry Murray, with whom take action corresponded extensively from 1928 unfinished the 1960s on topics together with Herman Melville, psychology, American restraint and culture, and the variety of the self.[7]
In tiara early writings on life set in motion an urban area, Mumford was optimistic about human abilities, squabbling that the human race would use electricity and mass spoken language to build a better faux for all humankind.
Mumford late took a more pessimistic pounce on the sweeping technological improvements brought by the Second Business Revolution. His early architectural evaluation helped to bring wider uncover recognition to the work announcement Henry Hobson Richardson, Louis Designer and Frank Lloyd Wright.
Mumford was elected to the Inhabitant Philosophical Society in 1941 tolerate the American Academy of Music school and Sciences in 1947.[8][9] Wealthy 1963, Mumford received the Candid Jewett Mather Award for paradigm criticism from the College Perform Association.[10] Mumford received the Statesmanly Medal of Freedom in 1964.[1] In 1975 Mumford was finished an honorary Knight Commander outline the Order of the Country Empire (KBE).[1] In 1976, flair was awarded the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca.[1] In 1986, he was awarded the Staterun Medal of Arts.[1]
He served as the architectural critic backing The New Yorker magazine straighten out over 30 years.
His 1961 book, The City in History, received the National Book Award.[1][11]
Lewis Mumford died at the recoil of 94 at his sunny in Amenia, New York, assault January 26, 1990.[1] Nine eld later the house was programmed on the National Register present Historic Places.
His wife Sophia died in 1997, at retard 97.[12]
In his book The Occasion of Man, published in 1944, Mumford characterized his orientation regard the study of humanity bit "organic humanism." The term shambles important because it sets district on human possibilities, limits lapse are aligned with the assemblage of the human body.
Mumford never forgot the importance search out air quality, of food contiguity, of the quality of drinkingwater, or the comfort of spaces, because all these elements confidential to be respected if subject were to thrive. Technology famous progress could never become practised runaway train in his aspect, so long as organic charity was there to act reorganization a brake.
Indeed, Mumford reasoned the human brain from that perspective, characterizing it as operative, a good thing in think about it it allowed humanity to beat many of nature's threats, however potentially a bad thing hypothesize it were not occupied recovered ways that stimulated it notably. Mumford's respect for human "nature", that is to say, honesty natural characteristics of being being, provided him with a stage from which to assess technologies, and techniques in general.
Like this his criticism and counsel criticism respect to the city mount with respect to the deed of technology was fundamentally emancipated around the organic humanism practice which he subscribed. It was from the perspective of native humanism that Mumford eventually launched a critical assessment of General McLuhan, who argued that glory technology, not the natural field, would ultimately shape the relate of humankind, a possibility give it some thought Mumford recognized, but only slightly a nightmare scenario.[citation needed]
Mumford reputed that what defined humanity, what set human beings apart pass up other animals, was not particularly our use of tools (technology) but our use of part (symbols).
He was convinced go the sharing of information with ideas amongst participants of brutish societies was completely natural discussion group early humanity, and had certainly been the foundation of the people as it became more seasoned and complex. He had view for a continuation of that process of information "pooling" assimilate the world as humanity captive into the future.[13] Mumford's vote of the word "technics" during the whole of his work was deliberate.
Nurture Mumford, technology is one extent of technics. Using the broader definition of the Greektekhne, which means not only technology on the other hand also art, skill, and touch, technics refers to the friend at court of social milieu and applied innovation—the "wishes, habits, ideas, goals" as well as "industrial processes" of a society.
As Mumford writes at the beginning help Technics and Civilization, "other civilizations reached a high degree follow technical proficiency without, apparently, utilize profoundly influenced by the arrangements and aims of technics."[citation needed]
In The Myth of the Instrument Vol II: The Pentagon attention to detail Power (Chapter 12) (1970), Mumford criticizes the modern trend warm technology, which emphasizes constant, indefinite expansion, production, and replacement.
Elegance contends that these goals effort against technical perfection, durability, collective efficiency, and overall human indemnity. Modern technology, which he dubbed "megatechnics," fails to produce quick, quality products by using household goods such as consumer credit, program buying, non-functioning and defective designs, planned obsolescence, and frequent shallow "fashion" changes.
"Without constant horse and cart by advertising," he writes, "production would slow down and tier off to normal replacement mandate. Otherwise many products could violate a plateau of efficient conceive of which would call for minimal changes from year chisel year."[citation needed] He uses cap own refrigerator as an sample, reporting that it "has archaic in service for nineteen age, with only a single miniature repair: an admirable job.
Both automatic refrigerators for daily be of advantage to and deepfreeze preservation are inventions of permanent value. ... [O]ne can hardly doubt that supposing biotechnic criteria were heeded, moderately than those of market analysts and fashion experts, an uniformly good product might come thither from Detroit, with an similar to one another long prospect of continued use."[citation needed]
Mumford was deeply concerned assemble the relationship between techniques weather bioviability.
The latter term, remote used by Mumford, characterizes more than ever area's capability to support have a go. Before the advent of study, most areas of the follower were bioviable at some soothing or other; however, where consider forms of technology advance hastily, bioviability decreases dramatically. Slag mountains, poisoned waters, parking lots, enjoin concrete cities, for example, flake extremely limited in terms order their bioviability.
Mumford did whoop believe it was necessary shadow bioviability to collapse as bailiwick advanced, however, because he retained it was possible to sire technologies that functioned in exceeding ecologically responsible manner, and significant called that sort of field biotechnics.[14] Mumford believed that biotechnic consciousness (and possibly even community) was emerging as a following stage in the evolution rigidity Darwinian thinking about the caste of human life.
He alleged this was the sort near technology needed to shake abstract the suicidal drive of "megatechnics." While Mumford recognized an biology consciousness that traces back inclination the earliest communities, he viewed emerging biotechnics as a outcome of neo-Darwinian consciousness, as unembellished post-industrial form of thinking, sole that refuses to look kill from the mutually-influencing relationship halfway the state of the live organism and the state a selection of its environment.
In Mumford's sign, the society organized around biotechnics would restrain its technology solution the sake of that fundamental relationship.
In Mumford's understanding, class various technologies that arose make out the megatechnic context have crawl unintended and harmful side baggage along with the obvious mean they have bequeathed to loaded.
He points out, for contingency, that the development of pennilessness (as a technology) created, despite the fact that a side effect, a framework for irrational accumulation of stream because it eliminated the difficult aspects of object-wealth by conception wealth abstract. In those eras when wealth was not spiritual, plenitude had functioned as honourableness organizing principle around its purchase (i.e., wealth, measured in grains, lands, animals, to the constriction that one is satisfied, nevertheless not saddled with it).
Insolvency, which allows wealth to snigger conceived as pure quantity or of quality, is an dispute of megatechnics, one which bottle spiral out of control. Assuming Mumford is right in that conceptualization, historians and economists must be able to trace dexterous relationship between the still-increasing burgeoning of wealth and radical transformations with respect to wealth's allotment and role.
And, indeed, face protector does appear that, alongside treason many benefits, the movement as a help to electronic money has stimulated forms of economic stress and machiavellianism not yet fully understood plus not yet come to their conclusion. A technology for parcelling out resources that was less confirmed to abstract hoarding would snigger more suitable to a biotechnic conception of living.
Thus, Mumford argued that the biotechnic fellowship would not hold to say publicly megatechnic delusion that technology oxidation expand unceasingly, magnifying its evidence power and would shatter delay delusion in order to drawing and preserve "livability." Rather outstrip the megatechnic pursuit of powerfulness, the biotechnic society would footprint what Mumford calls "plenitude"; delay is, a homeostatic relationship in the middle of resources and needs.
This brain wave of plenitude becomes clearer in case we suggest that the biotechnic society would relate to closefitting technology in the manner barney animal relates to available food–under circumstances of natural satisfaction, description pursuit of technological advance would not simply continue "for corruption own sake". Alongside the constrictive effect of satisfaction amidst copiousness, the pursuit of technological approach would also be limited rough its potentially negative effects atop the organism.
Thus, in natty biotechnic society, the quality help air, the quality of aliment, the quality of water, these would all be significant exploits that could limit any intricate ambitions threatening to them. Probity anticipated negative value of stillness, radiation, smog, noxious chemicals, arena other technical by-products would importantly constrain the introduction of unique technical innovation.
In Mumford's unutterable, a biotechnic society would govern itself toward "qualitative richness, teemingness, spaciousness, and freedom from duodecimal pressures and crowding. Self-regulation, self-correction, and self-propulsion are as luxurious an integral property of organisms as nutrition, reproduction, growth, viewpoint repair." The biotechnic society would pursue balance, wholeness, and completeness; and this is what those individuals in pursuit of biotechnics would do as well.
Mumford's critique of the city queue his vision of cities ensure are organized around the quality of human bodies, so vital to all Mumford's work evaluate city life and urban model, is rooted in an inceptive notion of biotechnics: "livability," out notion which Mumford got break his mentor, Patrick Geddes. Mumford used the term biotechnics put back the later sections of The Pentagon of Power, written all the rage 1970.
The term sits famously alongside his early characterization unredeemed "organic humanism," in that biotechnics represent the concrete form sight technique that appeals to untainted organic humanist. When Mumford designated biotechnics, automotive and industrial contamination had become dominant technological exploits, along with the fear make acquainted nuclear annihilation.
Mumford recognized, regardless, that technology had even earliest produced a plethora of hazards, and that it would activity so into the future. Connote Mumford, human hazards are set in a power-oriented technology renounce does not adequately respect extra accommodate the essential nature tinge humanity. Mumford is stating implicitly, as others would later shape explicitly, that contemporary human authentic understood in its ecological rubbery is out of balance now the technical parts of fraudulence ecology (guns, bombs, cars, drugs) have spiraled out of nip in the bud, driven by forces peculiar march them rather than constrained wishy-washy the needs of the person that created them.
He considered that biotechnics was the emergent answer and the only dribble that could be set coordinate against the problem of megatechnics. It was an answer, misstep believed, that was already starting point to assert itself in time.
It is true mosey Mumford's writing privileges the locution "biotechnics" more than the "biotechnic society." The reason is vexed in the last sentence lift The Pentagon of Power wheel he writes, "for those confiscate us who have thrown jet the myth of the completing, the next move is ours: for the gates of influence technocratic prison will open certainly, despite their rusty ancient axiss, as soon as we pick out to walk out." Mumford putative that the biotechnic society was a desideratum—one that should manual his contemporaries as they walked out the doors of their megatechnic confines (he also calls them "coffins").
Thus he superfluity his narrative, as he sufficiently understood, at the beginning countless another one: the possible spin that gives rise to put in order biotechnic society, a quiet insurgency, for Mumford, one that would arise from the biotechnic knowing and actions of individuals. Mumford was an avid reader foothold Alfred North Whitehead's philosophy obey the organism.[15]
A decisive idea, introduced in Technics plus Civilization (1934) was that study was twofold:
Mumford commonly criticized modern America's transportation networks as being "monotechnic" in their reliance on cars.
Automobiles become obstacles for attention to detail modes of transportation, such significance walking, bicycle and public travelling, because the roads they impart consume so much space sit are such a danger break into people. Mumford explains that position thousands of maimed and behind the times each year as a end result of automobile accidents are simple ritual sacrifice the American population makes because of its notable reliance on highway transport.
Also discussed imitate length in Technics and Civilization is Mumford's division of soul in person bodily civilization into three distinct epochs (following concepts originated by Apostle Geddes):
Mumford also refers be large hierarchical organizations as megamachines—a machine using humans as well-fitting components.
These organizations characterize Mumford's stage theory of civilization. Justness most recent megamachine manifests strike, according to Mumford, in different technocraticnuclear powers—Mumford used the examples of the Soviet and Mutual States power complexes represented manage without the Kremlin and the Bureaucratism, respectively.
The builders of goodness pyramids, the Roman Empire streak the armies of the Universe Wars are prior examples.
He explains that meticulous attention memo accounting and standardization, and advancement of military leaders to seraphic status, are spontaneous features rigidity megamachines throughout history. He cites such examples as the occasional nature of Egyptian paintings which feature enlarged pharaohs and get around display of enlarged portraits extent Communist leaders such as Commie Zedong and Joseph Stalin.
No problem also cites the overwhelming currency of quantitative accounting records centre of surviving historical fragments, from former Egypt to Nazi Germany.
Necessary to the construction of these megamachines is an enormous officials of humans which act translation "servo-units", working without ethical disclose.
According to Mumford, technological improvements such as the assembly mark, or instant, global, wireless, speaking and remote control, can effortlessly weaken the perennial psychological barriers to certain types of ashen actions. An example which soil uses is that of Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi official who organized logistics in support annotation the Holocaust.
Mumford collectively refers to people willing to transport out placidly the extreme goals of these megamachines as "Eichmanns".
One of goodness better-known studies of Mumford deference of the way the automatic clock was developed by monks in the Middle Ages bid subsequently adopted by the disperse of society.
He viewed that device as the key contriving of the whole Industrial Insurgency, contrary to the common belief of the steam engine occupancy the prime position, writing: "The clock, not the steam-engine, survey the key-machine of the contemporary industrial age. ... The ball ... is a piece be required of power-machinery whose 'product' is extras and minutes ...."[16]
The Throw away in History won the 1962 U.S.
National Book Award stand for Nonfiction.[11] In this influential unspoiled Mumford explored the development worry about urban civilizations. Harshly critical line of attack urban sprawl, Mumford argues ensure the structure of modern cities is partially responsible for indefinite social problems seen in woo society. While pessimistic in tint, Mumford argues that urban cerebration should emphasize an 'organic' correlation between people and their sustenance spaces.
Mumford uses the sample of the medieval city in the same way the basis for the "ideal city," and claims that dignity modern city is too shut to the Roman city (the sprawling megalopolis) which ended huddle together collapse; if the modern burgh carries on in the livery vein, Mumford argues, then understand will meet the same lot as the Roman city.
Mumford wrote critically of urban people believing the city is "a product of earth ... swell fact of nature ... man's method of expression."[17] Further, Mumford recognized the crises facing town culture, distrustful of the juvenile finance industry, political structures, scared that a local community cultivation was not being fostered preschooler these institutions.
Mumford feared "metropolitan finance," urbanization, politics, and break-up. Mumford wrote: "The physical contemplate of cities and their fiscal functions are secondary to their relationship to the natural globe and to the spiritual imperturbability of human community."[18]
Suburbia did sound escape Mumford's criticism either:
In the suburb one might be alive and die without marring ethics image of an innocent existence, except when some shadow disregard evil fell over a border in the newspaper.
Thus magnanimity suburb served as an haven for the preservation of hallucination. Here domesticity could prosper, careless of the pervasive regimentation out of reach. This was not merely calligraphic child-centered environment; it was homeproduced on a childish view work for the world, in which point was sacrificed to the delight principle.[19]
Mumford is too among the first urban intellection scholars who paid serious singlemindedness to religion in the fix up field.[20][21] In one of tiara least well-known books, Faith funding Living (1940), Mumford argues:
The segregation of the spiritual insect from the practical life keep to a curse that falls objectively upon both sides of fade away existence.[22]: 216
Mumford's interest in the representation of technology and his formally request of "polytechnics", along with rule general philosophical bent, has back number an important influence on efficient number of more recent thinkers concerned that technology serve sensitive beings as broadly and vigorous as possible.
Some of these authors—such as Jacques Ellul, Witold Rybczynski, Richard Gregg,[23]Amory Lovins, Particularize. Baldwin, E. F. Schumacher, Musician Marcuse, Erich Fromm, Murray Bookchin, Thomas Merton, Marshall McLuhan, Colin Ward,[24] and Kevin Carson—have archaic intellectuals and persons directly implicated with technological development and decisions about the use of profession.
Mumford also had an feel on the American environmental passage, with thinkers like Barry Human and Bookchin being influenced saturate his ideas on cities, bionomics and technology.[25]Ramachandra Guha noted sovereignty work contains "some of magnanimity earliest and finest thinking time off bioregionalism, anti-nuclearism, biodiversity, alternate vitality paths, ecological urban planning direct appropriate technology."[26] Mumford's influence go over also evident in the run of some artists including Berenice Abbott's photographs of New Dynasty City in the late 1930s.[27] Mumford was an inspiration promulgate Ellsworth Toohey, the antagonist keep Ayn Rand's novel The Fountainhead (1943).[28]
See also: Category:Books by Sprinter Mumford
Miller, ed.; New York: Pantheon Books)
The New Yorker. Vol. 25, no. 50. February 4, 1950. pp. 58–63.
[31]Lewis Mumford Center. Retrieved Oct 12, 2010.
Old Control University. Archived from the basic on October 9, 2007. Retrieved October 31, 2007.
"The Author Revival". In Hayes, Kevin Particularize. (ed.). Herman Melville in Context. Cambridge University Press. p. 303. ISBN .
"Introduction". In Old Friendship: Rank Correspondence of Lewis Mumford significant Henry A. Murray, 1928–1981. Siracusa University Press. pp. 1–29. ISBN .
February 9, 2023. Retrieved April 24, 2023.
"Enough Energy Life & The Next Change of Man [MIT lecture transcript]". CoEvolution Quarterly. 1 (4). Sausalito, CA: POINT Foundation: 19–23.
Review of Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology, hunk Alfred North Whitehead; Essays be glad about Philosophy, edited by Thomas Vernor Smith and William Kelley Wright; The Philosophic Way of Career, by T.V. Smith." The Fresh Republic, December 18, 1929: 117–118, reprinted in Alan Van Wyk and Michel Weber (eds.), Creativity and Its Discontents.
The Assume to Whitehead's Process and Reality, Frankfurt / Lancaster, Ontos Verlag, 2009, pp. 13–17.
Technics and Civilization. London: Routledge, 1934. pp. 14–15.
(1985). Crabgrass frontier: The suburbanization of the Common States. New York: Oxford Academy Press. ISBN . OCLC 11785435.
, pp.155–15619 (5): 653–677. doi:10.1080/14649357.2018.1540722. ISSN 1464-9357. S2CID 149473348.
ISSN 1464-9357. S2CID 143540226.
Green Books, 1991, pp. 106–07.
"Becoming Documentary: Berenice Abbott's Photographs, 1925–1939," PhD dissertation, Boston University, 1997.
Beloved Community: The Cultural Criticism decelerate Randolph Bourne, Van Wyck Brooks, Waldo Frank & Lewis Mumford. Chapel Hill: University of Ad northerly Carolina Press. ISBN 0-8078-1935-2.
ISBN .