Ideas
Mumford believed that what defined humanity, what set human beings apart from other animals, was not primarily our use of tools (technology) but our use of language (symbols). He was convinced that the sharing of information and ideas amongst participants of primitive societies was completely natural to early humanity, and had obviously been the foundation of society as it became more sophisticated and complex. He had hopes for a continuation of this process of information “pooling” in the world as humanity moved into the future.
Mumford's choice of the word "technics" throughout his work was deliberate. For Mumford, technology is one part of technics. Using the broader definition of the Greek tekhne, which means not only technology but also art, skill and dexterity, technics refers to the interplay of a social milieu and technological innovation - the "wishes, habits, ideas, goals" as well as "industrial processes" of a society. As Mumford writes at the beginning of Technics and Civilization, "other civilizations reached a high degree of technical proficiency without, apparently, being profoundly influenced by the methods and aims of technics."
Read more about this topic: Lewis Mumford
Famous quotes containing the word ideas:
“The uppermost idea with Hellenism is to see things as they really are; the uppermost ideas with Hebraism is conduct and obedience. Nothing can do away with this ineffaceable difference. The Greek quarrel with the body and its desires is, that they hinder right thinking; the Hebrew quarrel with them is, that they hinder right acting.”
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)
“Men can intoxicate themselves with ideas as effectually as with alcohol or with bang and produce, be dint of serious thinking, mental conditions hardly distinguishable from monomania.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“My drawings have been described as pre-intentionalist, meaning that they were finished before the ideas for them had occurred to me. I shall not argue the point.”
—James Thurber (1894–1961)