"That certain concerns about technology are, for lack of a better word, universal, should be evident to any historian. Early Daoists cautioned against technologies that sully the spirit and ignite chaos. The Zhuangzi [one of the foundational texts of Daoism] warns against the use of "clever machines" and suggests that they are better left alone by those walking the righteous path."
"This is not unlike the apprehension that many European intellectuals harbored toward the technologies of their respective times, whether that be the early widespread resistance in Western Europe to Hindu-Arab numerals, the reluctance of the Catholic Church to embrace perspectival painting and scientific method in the early Renaissance, or the anxiety that swept over the European continent during the introduction of photography, the film camera, the microscope, and the steam engine."
"Yet admonition and derision are far from being the only reactions. Humanity's enthusiastic embrace of technology, which is so patent in practice, can also be found in the realm of ideas. In China, Mohists took an artisan position, forcefully arguing against the Confucian ideal to transmit rather than create. The Neo-Confucian, Shen Kuo (1031-1095), whose Brush Talks from Dream Brook documents scientific innovations in physics, astrology, mathematics, and medicine, claimed that there was no contradiction between Confucius's teachings and technology."
Certain concerns about technology have appeared across cultures and eras. Early Daoists cautioned against technologies that sully the spirit and ignite chaos. The Zhuangzi warns against the use of "clever machines" and advises that they be left alone by those on the righteous path. European intellectuals also expressed apprehension toward new technologies, resisting Hindu-Arab numerals, perspectival painting, scientific method, photography, film, the microscope, and the steam engine. Nineteenth-century critics labeled image-capturing devices blasphemous. In China, Mohists promoted artisan innovation against Confucian transmission, and Shen Kuo documented scientific innovations while asserting compatibility between Confucian teaching and technology.
#history-of-technology #cultural-attitudes-toward-technology #daoism-and-mohism #european-technological-skepticism
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