This time, since the usual workload was increased substantially, the final exam was relatively easier. Apart from the traditional term-definition questions—which have been raised to 14—there was only one essay question. Counted toward the total score, the essay question was worth the equivalent of 12 points, so one might roughly say it was the fourth short paper.
2. Essay question (30 points): citations must be proper (if you cite at all); plagiarism is forbidden.
Why is it said that “the key machine of the industrial age was not the steam engine but the clock” (Mumford)?
This final short paper also required proper citation, but after all, since this was an open-book exam taken in class, it should not degenerate into a competition of “book-piling.” This was actually a pretty good question, since one can’t really find the answer in ordinary books; it mainly tested the students’ own understanding.
Still, one regret is that although Wu Laoshi mentioned this sentence in class and gave some explanation of it, the philosophy of technology line of thought that he had been infusing throughout the course still seemed somewhat thin. Even though Wu had long ago pointed out the historical view that “technology is an ocean, science is an island,” from the perspective of this semester’s general history course, his way of narrating history had not yet undergone any obvious reform. So for those students who attended class faithfully, this question may still have come as a bit of a surprise.
Also, judging from the way the question is phrased, it seems to ask you to restate the reasons for Mumford’s remark, but may I say that I disagree with it? From the tone of the question, it would seem best to agree with and echo the statement, but from my standpoint as the actual grader, perhaps it would be even better if one could offer objections. Of course, Professor Wu himself should also be open on this point; in any case, if one wants to refute the statement, one should first understand why someone would say it, and what he may have meant by saying it.
Personally, I do not fundamentally oppose this statement, but I do not quite endorse it either. In short, I take a reserved position. In my commentary on McLuhan, I once quoted this criticism of Mumford by McLuhan:
McLuhan quotes Mumford’s related views on the significance of the clock for modern civilization, and comments: “Lewis Mumford believes that, in terms of influence on the mechanization of society, the clock should rank ahead of the printing press. However, he failed to notice the influence of the phonetic alphabet; it was precisely the phonetic alphabet that made possible the visual segmentation and unified segmentation of time. In fact, he did not realize that the phonetic alphabet is the source of Western mechanistic thinking, just as he did not know that mechanization is the process by which society shifts from an auditory-tactile orientation to a visual-value orientation.” [73] McLuhan believed that “it was not the clock, but the print culture reinforced by the clock, that produced abstract time, causing people to eat not because they were hungry, but because it was ‘time to eat’” [74] The crux of “time to eat” lies in the fact that it is some abstract, symbolic, visual impression, such as “12:00,” rather than some auditory impression. The instant as a written sign and the instant as a “chime” are utterly different. If “time to eat” merely means “the moment the bell rings,” then there is no abstraction here, whether the one ringing the bell at fixed times is a human being or a machine; but once “time to eat” becomes some visualized instant, time is abstracted out and separated from concrete life, while at the same time acquiring an objective and disenchanted appearance. The mechanization of “time” does not come only from the mechanization of the “clock”; crucially, it also comes from the clock’s transformation from auditory to visual form. It is the shift from “clock chimes” to “clock points” that shaped the modern human understanding of time.
That is to say, according to McLuhan’s line of thought, the real “key machine” is not the “mechanical clock,” but the “visual mechanical clock.” But even if one puts it that way, the key machine can basically still be said to be the “clock.”
At least one other machine is equally or even more “key,” namely the printing press I have been paying attention to lately; indeed, although Mumford himself “ranked the printing press after the clock,” he also stressed that its “importance was no less than that of the clock” (Technics and Civilization, p. 123; p. 134).
Mumford’s use of the word “clock” is rather ambiguous. In one place he hints that what he is more concerned with is “the mechanical clock made with a falling weight” rather than “the ancient… water clock” (p. 14; p. 13), but devices such as water clocks, which already existed in antiquity or in the East, can also count as machines. Mumford believed that “at every stage in the history of the clock, it has been the outstanding representative of the machine” (p. 15; p. 14). But the problem is this: if the history of the clock is a long process spanning multiple eras, why is it especially a key machine with regard to the “industrial age”? We must say that although the development of the clock passed through a long span of historical periods, it did indeed play an important role in the shaping of the Industrial Revolution and the new era; but why it could, and precisely did, play such an important role at that particular time still requires other backgrounds and contingencies. For example, when mechanical clocks were introduced into China, they clearly did not bring about an industrial revolution; they merely became toys for the imperial court. And in the West, the reason clocks were able to leave the monastery and influence the whole of society cannot be explained by clocks themselves alone; it also required preparation in other environments, and among these were surely the important roles of the alphabet, the printing press, and even the steam engine.
In any case, to say that the clock is a very key machine in human history, or even the key machine of “modernity,” is not a problem. But to say specifically that it is the key machine of the industrial age is still open to question. For strictly speaking, if “modernity” is marked by the Scientific Revolution, then it basically precedes the industrial age. Even if one says that the clock is the key machine of the entire “modern” world, then what, in turn, ushered in the industrial age? In fact, according to Mumford’s own periodization, the transition from the eotechnic phase to the paleotechnic phase roughly began in the 1700s, and “the great changes in population and industry that occurred in the eighteenth century can be attributed to coal as mechanical power, the new methods of effectively utilizing this power (the steam engine), and the new methods of melting and working iron. This coal-iron system developed a new civilization.” (p. 146; p. 156)
If that is the case, then if “key” means the machine that directly opened the curtain on the industrial age, then even Mumford himself still acknowledges that the “steam engine” remains at the core. Whether one says that the steam engine, after all, emerged in an environment already full of clocks, or that the logic behind the steam engine had already been implicitly contained within the clock, as far as periodization is concerned, when speaking of the industrial age one still has no choice but to mention the steam engine first. There is nothing wrong with that.
In short, the assertion that “the key machine of the industrial age was not the steam engine but the clock” is somewhat imprecise. The key point is what is meant by saying “the key of a certain age.”
Of course, when we turn back, we should still try to understand what this sentence is trying to express. If we are not trying to parse the wording with microscopic care, but merely want to explain the importance of the clock as a machine for the industrial age, then the issue becomes much clearer.
Drawing partly on Mumford’s discussion (p. 15 onward; p. 14), roughly three points can be made:
- At the level of technical devices, the clock is the typical representative of machinery, approaching perfection in standardization, automation, accurate control, and so on, and becoming the object of imitation for other apparatuses. (For example, modern mechanism is almost just clock theory.)
- At the level of ideas and concepts, the clock produced “time.” It shaped uniform, independent, divisible, and measurable time. Owing to this conception of time, a whole series of elements of modern life came to the fore: punctuality, fixed working hours, the concept of efficiency, and so on.
- At the level of social life, the clock extended the regularized way of life that had originally arisen in monasteries to society as a whole, especially eventually becoming the taken-for-granted rhythm of life for those who became “workers.” (This aspect can also be subsumed under the level of the conception of time.)
Of course, as the question itself implies, the discussion should also involve a comparison with the steam engine.
Since this question allows for fairly open answers, it is difficult in actual grading to deduct or award points according to a fixed list of knowledge points. Still, some keywords are worth noting—standardization, automation, precision, control, time, uniform time, independent time, efficiency, rhythm of life… If none of the above is mentioned at all, then the score would probably have to be below 20; if one can mention the conceptual level, then probably below 25; and an excellent answer that reflects comprehensively and carefully on each concept would receive 28 or 29. Of course, there are also some special cases: for example, if the answer does not cover everything but is especially well organized in its argument, that can be specially considered; and there are a few especially careless ones, such as those who write only two or three sentences and turn it in (I caught sight of one while collecting the papers, and it was turned in early at that), for whom this big question can only be given a score close to zero.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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