China , 1958.

Henri Cartier -Bresso n/Ma g num Photos

44

zone

Machine and OrganismGeorges Canguilhem

Th e relationship between machine and organism has generally been studiedin only one way. Nearly always, th e organism has been explained on th e basisof a precon ceived idea of th e st ructure and functioning of th e machine; butonly rarely have the structure and function of the organism been used to maketh e const ruc t ion of th e ma chine itself more understandable. Even th oughmechani stic theory sparked some very impressive technical research , the factremained that the very notion of an "organology," as well as its basic premisesand method ology, remained undeveloped. I

Philosopher s and mechanistic biologists approached the machine as a setof data, or else made it into a probl em that th ey could solve purely throughmental application . To do this, they called on the engineer, who was for thema scient ist in th e truest sense . Misled by th e ambiguit ies of their view ofmechanics, they saw machines only as theorems in concrete form . The opera­tions necessary to construct machines were only secondary conside rat ions

when compared with th e all-important idea th at the machine revealed theirtheori es in concreto . To see this, one needed only to acknowledge what sciencecould acco mplish, and from th ere it was simply a matter of th e confidentapplicat ion of th at knowledge. However, I do not believe th at it is possible totreat the biological problem of th e "living machine" by separat ing it from thetec hnological problem it supposedly resolves - namely, the problem of the re­lationship between tec hnology and science. Thi s problem is normally resolved

by star ting with the idea th at , logically and chronologically, knowledge pre­cedes application . What I want to show is that th e cons truct ion of machin escan indeed be understood by virtue of cer tain truly biological principles, with­out having at th e same time to examine how technology relates to science.

I shall address the following topics in success ive order: what it means tocompare an organism to a machine; th e relationship between mechanicalprocesses, and the results th at might be achieved by using them; and the his­tori cal rever sal of the tradit ional relationship between the machine and theorganism and th e philosophical consequences of thi s reversal.

4S

Mach ine and Organ ism

For th ose who have carefully studie d living beings and the forms th ey take, it

is rare - and only in th e case of th e ver te brates - that on e notices any truly

mechanical at tr ibutes , at least in th e sense that th e term is commonly under­

stood by scie ntists. In La Pensee technique, for example, Julien Pacotte notes

that movements of the joints and the eyeball can be paralleled with wha t math­

emat icians call a "mechanism ,"? A machine can be defined as a man-made,

ar tificial const ruc tion, whi ch esse nt ially fun ctions by virtue of mechanical

ope rat ions. A mechanism is made of a gro up of mobile solid parts that work

together in suc h a way that th eir movement does not threaten the integrity

of the unit as a whole. A mechanism therefore cons ists of movable parts that

work together and periodi cally return to a set relation with respect to eac h

othe r. It cons ists of interlinking parts, each of whi ch has a determinable

degree of freedom of movement: for example, both a pendulum and a cam

valve have one degree of freedom of movement, whereas a threaded screw

has two. The fact that these varying degrees of freedom of movement can be

quantified means that they can serve as tangib le guides for measuring, for

sett ing limits on the amount of movement that can be ex pected between any

two inte rac t ing solid obj ects. In every machine, then, movem ent is a fun ction,

firs t, of th e way th e parts interact and, second, of the mechani cal operations

of the overall unit.!

Mechanics is governed by the principle that every movement of a machine

is geome t ric and measurable. What is more, every such movement regulates

and transforms the forc es and energy imparted to it . Mechanics, though, do es

not work in the same way that a motor do es: in mechanics, movements are

simply propagated, not create d. A rather simple example of how this trans­

formation of movement takes place can be seen in several devices - a wheel

crank or an eccentric crank, for exam ple - th at are set into motion by an ini­

ti allateral movement but eventually produce reciprocating, ro tary movement.

Of co urse, mech anical ope rations can be combine d, either by supe r im pos ing

th em or adding them together. It is even possible to take a basic mechani cal

device, mo dify it and make it capable of performing a var iety of other mechan­

ical operations . This is exactly what happens wh en a bicycle freewheel clutch

is rele ased or sto ppe d ."

What const it utes the rule in human indust ry is th e exce pt ion in the struc­

ture of organisms and the exception in nature, and I must add here that in

the history of technology and th e inventions of man assembled configu rations

are not th e most primitive. The oldes t known tool s are made of a single piece.

The cons truction of axes or of ar rows made by assem bling a flint and a han­

dle, or the co nstruct ion of nets or fabrics, are so many signs that the primi­

tive stage has been passed.

This brief overview of some elementary princip les of kin ematics helps to

zone

give a fuller sense of the problem without losing sight of a central paradox:

Why was it ne cessary to turn to the theo ry of mechanism, as outlined above,

in order to explain the living organism? The an swer can be found , it see ms,

in the fact that this mechanical model of living organism s does not rely on

kinematics alone. A m achine, as defined abo ve, is not totally self- suffi cient: it

must rece ive and th en transform ene rgy imparted to it from an outside source.

To be represented in movement it mu st be associated with an ene rgy source. "

For a long time, kinematic mechanism s were powered by human s or ani­

mals . During thi s stage, it was an obvious tautology to compare the movement

of bodies to the movement of a machine, when the ma chine itself dep ended

on humans or animals to run it . Consequently, it ha s been shown that m echa­

nisti c theo ry has dep ended, historically, on the assumption that it is possible

to const r uct an automaton, meaning a mechanism that is miraculous in and

of itself and do es not rely on human or an imal muscle power.

This is the general idea put forth in the following well -known text:

Exami ne carefully the physical eco nomy of man: What do you find ? The jaws are

armed with teeth, which are no more than pincers. This stomac h is nothing but a

retort, or heat chamber; the veins, th e arteries and indeed the entire vascular sys­

tem are simpl y hydraulic tubes; the heart, a pump; the viscera, nothing but filter s

and sieves; the lungs, a pair of bellows; and wh at are mu scles if not a syste m of

cables and rop es. What is the oculomotor nerve, if not a pull ey? And so on . Try

as they will, chemists cann ot explain natu re and set up a separate philosophy sim ­

ply by coining a new vocabulary around words like "fusion," "sublimation" and

"precipitation" ; for thi s does not at all address eithe r th e incontrovertible laws of

equilibr ium or th e laws govern ing the workings of th e wedge, cables, pumps as

elements of mechanical theory.

This text is not where we might think to find it, but in fact comes from the

Praxis medica, written by Baglivi in 1696, an Italian do ct or belonging to the

iatromechanical schoo!. This school, founded by Borelli , had apparently been

influenced by Descartes, although for rea sons of national prestige, the Italian s

prefer to attribute it to Galileo.»This text is interest ing be cause it treat s the

wedge, the rope, the cabl e and the pump as if they could be seen in the same

terms for formulating explanatory principles. It is clear, however, that from

the mechanistic point of view there is a difference between these devices: a

cable essent ially transmits a given movement, wh ereas a pump transforms a

given movement and is also a motor - admittedly, a motor that returns what ­

ever energy it receives; but, at ce r tain intervals, it apparently has a degree of

indep endence of movement. In Baglivi's text, the heart is the primum mavens

- the ce nt ral pump that serves as the motor for the whole body.

Therefore, a cr ucial ele me nt behind the mechanical explanat ion of bodily

movement is that, in addition to machines that perform as kinematic devices,

47

Machi ne an d Organ ism

the re are also machines that act as motors, deriving th eir ene rgy, at the mo­

ment it is utili zed, from a source othe r than animal muscle. And this is why,

although Baglivi's text see ms linked to Descartes, the idea of the body-as­

ma chine actually goes back to Ar istotle. When dealing with the Cartesian

theory of th e animal-machine, it is often difficult to decid e whether or not

Descartes had any precursor s for thi s id ea. Those who look for Descartes's

predecessors here usually cite Gomez Pereira, a Spanish doct or of the second

half of th e sixteenth century: Pereira suggested, before Descartes, that he

could dem on strate that anima ls we re who lly machines and that they do not

possess th at sens it ive soul so fre que ntly attr ibu te d to th ern .? But in othe r

respects, it is unquesti on ably Aristo tle who saw the congruity between animal

movements and automat ic mechan ical movements, like those observe d in

instruments of war, especially catapults. This idea is treated rather extensively

by Alfred Espinas, who discusses the connec tion between th e problems dealt

with by Ari stotle in De Motu atiimali um and those in his compilat ion of

Quaestiones mechanicae.8 Ari stotle draws a clear parallel between the organs

of animal movement and "oreana ," or parts of war ma chines, like th e arm of

a cata pult abo ut to launch a projectile. Thus cata pults, typ ical auto ma t ic

machines of the period, see me d to be ar ticulated like a human limb, as th ey

were poi sed and made to release their grea t sto res of pent-up ene rgy. In the

same work, Aristo tle carr ies th e analogy even fur ther by compari ng th e move­

ment of our limbs to mechanism s; and he makes his case in much the same

way that Plato did when, in the Titnaeus, he com pared th e movement of ver ­

tebrates to hinges or pivots.

It is true that in Aristotle th e theory of movement is somewhat different

fro m wh at it wo uld becom e in D escartes. Acco rding to Aris to tle, th e soul is

th e principl e of all movemen t . All movem ent firs t presupposes immobility

and then re quires a prime mover or some motivating force. Desire moves

th e body, and des ire is ex plained by the soul, just as potentiality is explaine d

by an act . Despite their differ ing ex planations of movement, for Ar isto tle as

for Descartes later, the co mpar ison of the body with a machine presupposes

tha t man is co mposed of auto ma te d mech anical parts reliant on an ene rgy

source th at pr oduces motor effects over time and continue to do so well after

th e origin al (human or animal) ene rgy has di ssipated. It is this discrepancy

between the sto rage of energy to be rel eased by the mech ani sm and the mo­

ment of release th at allows us to forge t the relati on of dependence between

the effec ts of the mechanism and th e act ions of a bod y. W hen Descartes looks

to machi nes to ex plain how orga nis ms wo rk, he invokes spring-o pe rated and

hydraulic automata. As a result, he owes a great intellectual debt to the ideas

behind the technical creations of his own time, including clocks and watc hes,

wate r mill s and churc h organs of the early seventeenth century. We can say,

zone

th en , th at as long as the conce pt of th e human and animal body is inextricably

"tied" to the ma chine, it is not possible to offer an explana tion of the body

in terms of the machine. H istor ically, it was not possible to conce ive of suc h

an explanation until the day th at human ingenuity create d mech anical devices

that not only imitated organic movements - as in th e launching of a projec­

til e or the back-and-forth movem ent of a saw - but also required no human

inte rve nt ion except to const ruc t them and set th em going

In two instances, I have asserted th at an ex planation cannot be formulated

witho ut the ex iste nce of certai n condit ions . Is thi s tantamount to att ribut ing

a historical necessity to scientific explanatio n? How do I explain th e abrupt

appearance in Descartes of a lucid mechanisti c interpretation of biological

ph en om en a? This theory is clearl y related to modi fications th at occ urred in

the eco nomic and political st ruc ture of Western society, but th e nature of

this relation remains obsc ure.

This problem has been treated in depth by P-M. Schuhl, who has shown

th at in ancient phil osophy th e oppos it ion of scie nce and technique paralleled

the opposi t ion of freedo m and servi t ude and, at a deeper level , of art and na­

ture .? Schuh] suppo rts this parallel with Ar isto tle's assertion th at natural and

violent movement are opposed - a violent movem ent occurs whe n mecha­

nisms are used against nature, and its charac te r istics are th at it exhausts itself

rapidly and never becomes habitu al - whic h is to say, a permanen t tendency

to re produce itself never obtains .

Here I must turn to th e difficu lt problem of th e history of civilizat ion

and the philosophy of history. With Aristotle, th e hierarchy of freedo m and

servility, of th eory and pract ice, of nature and art, is paralleled by an eco­

nomic and political hierarchy in the cit ies, namely, the relati on s of freemen

and slaves. The slave, according to Ar isto tle in the Politics, is an an imate d

machine.10This is th e cr ux of the problem to which Schuhl only alludes in

passing: Did th e Greek conce pt ion of the digni ty of scie nce lead to th eir dis ­

da in for technique and th e resultant pauci ty of invent ions? And did thi s in

turn lead to th e difficul ty of applying the results of technical activity to the

ex planation of nature? Or, rather, did the Greeks' high regard for purely

speculat ive science and detached conte m plat ion explain th e absence of tech­

nical invention ? Did th eir disregard for work cause slavery, or did the abun ­

dance of slaves du e to military supre macy explain their low rega rd for work?

Are we obliged to ex plain th e ideology in terms of th e socioeconomic st ruc­

ture or, rather, th e socioeconomic st ruc ture in te rms of th e ideology? Di d

the ease of ex ploit ing human bein gs make it easier to disdain th e techniques

th at would allow them to ex ploit nature? Does the arduo usness of exploiti ng

nature ju st ify the ex ploita tion of man by man? Is th ere a causal relation ship

at work here? And if so, in which direction does it go? Or are we dealing with

49

Machine and Organism

a global struc ture having recip rocal relations and influe nces?

A similar problem is presented by Fathe r Lucien Laberthonniere, who

cont rasts th e physics of an ar t ist or an aesthe te to that of an engineer and an

ar tisan." Laberthonniere suggests th at th e determining factor her e is ideas,

given that the Car tesian transformation in th e philosophy of technique pre­

supposes Chr istianity. It was necessary to conceive of man as a bein g who

transcends nature and matter in order to then uphold his right and his du ty

to exploit matter ruthlessly, In other words, ma n had to be valorize d so that

nature co uld be deva lorized. Next it was necessary to co nceive of men as

being radically and originally equal so that, as th e ex ploitat ion of human s by

eac h other was co nde m ned on polit ical gro unds, there were inc reased tech­

nical means to exploit nature and a growing sense of du ty to do so. This analy­

sis pe rmits Laberthonniere to spea k of a Chr istian or igin for Cartes ian physics.

However, he qualifies his own claim: th e physics and technique supposed ly

made po ssible by Chr ist ianity came, for Descartes, well afte r Chr ist ianity had

been founded as a religion. Mo reover, humani st phil osophy, whic h saw man

as master and pr opri etor of nature, was in direct oppos ition to Chr ist ianity

as humanists saw it: the religion of salvat ion , of esca pe into the her eafter, in­

spired by a conte mpt for th e things of thi s life and un concerned with whatever

fruits technology might win for mankind in thi s world belo w. Laberthonniere

asserts th at "time does no t ente r into the quest ion," but thi s is by no means

certa in. In any case, several classic texts have demon strated th at cer tain techni­

cal invention s th at transformed th e use of animal motor power - for example,

the hor sesho e and the shoulde r harness - accomplishe d more for the eman­

cipat ion of slaves than di d the co untless pr eachings of abolit ionists.

In Der Uber8an8 vomJe udalem zum biir8erlichen Weltbi ld, Fra nz Borkenau

argues th at ther e is a causa l relationship between mechani st ic phil osophy and

the totality of soc ial and economic cond itions in which it ar ises. 12 He claims

that at th e sta rt of th e seventee nth century th e qualitative philosophy of antiq­

uity and the Midd le Ages was eclipsed by mech anisti c ide as. The success of

these new ideas was, on the level of ideology, an effect of the eco nomic fact

of th e new organization and ex pansion of manufacturing. For Borken au , the

division of ar t isanal labo r into separa te , sim plified ope rations requiring little

skill pro duce d th e concept of abstract soc ial labor. Once labor had been de­

composed into simple, identical and easily repeat able movem ents, price and

wages could be de termined simply by comparing th e hours worked - and th e

result was a process th at , previously qu alit ati ve, had become qu antifiable. 13

Calculat ing work in purely qu antitative terms that can be treated mathem at­

ically is claimed to be the basis and the sta rting point for a mechanisti c co n­

cep t ion of th e life world. It is therefore by redu cing all value to econo mic

value, "to co ld hard cash," as Marx puts it in The Communist Manifesto, th at

50

zone

th e mechanisti c view of the uni verse is supposed to be funda me ntally a

Weltansch auung of the bourgeoisie. Fin ally, Borkenau claim s that the animal­

machine gives rise to th e norms of th e na scent capitalist eco no my. Descartes,

Galileo and Hobb es are thus the unwitting heralds of thi s eco nomic revolution.

Borken au's theses have been analyzed and crit icized more forcefull y by

Henryk Gro ssmann.14 According to him, Borkenau ignores five hundred years

of economic and ideological history by see ing mechanist ic th eory as co inc id ­

ing with the ri se of manufacturing at the beginning of the seventeenth cen­

tu ry : Borkenau wr ites as if Leonardo da Vinci had never existe d . Referring

to Pierre Duhem's Les Origi nes de la sta tique (1905), and th e publicati on of

Leonardo's manuscripts (Herzfeld, 1904 ; Gabriel Seailles, 1906; Peladan ,

1907) , Gro ssmann agrees with Seailles th at with the publication of Leonardo's

m anuscripts it becam e cle ar th at the origins of modern scie nce could be

pushed back by more than a century. Th e quantification of the noti on of work

occurs first within mathematics, well before it s economic rationalization.

The norms of the capita list evaluat ion of producti on , moreover, had been

defined by th e Italian banker s even in the thirteenth century. Relying on

Marx, Grossm ann reminds us that altho ugh in general there was no division

of labor in manufacturing prop erl y speaking, manufacturing at its inception

meant the gathe ring together in th e same place of skilled art isans who had

previou sly worked independently. Acco rding to Gross mann, th en, it is no t

th e calculat ion of cost per hour of work, but the evolution of mech anizati on

that is th e real cause of th e mech anical view of the uni verse. Th e development

of mechanization begins during th e Renaissan ce. IS It is, therefore, more accu ­

rate to say that Descartes had consc iously rati onali zed a mechanistic technique

than that he had un consciously expresse d th e imperatives of a capitalist eco n­

omy. For Descartes, mechanics is a theory ifmachines th at presupposes a spon­

taneous invention whic h science m ust then co nsciously promote and develop.

W hich machines did th e most to modify the relation ship between man

and nature before th e ti me of Descartes, far beyond the wildest imag inat ions

of th e ancients - and did most to ju sti fy and rationalize th e hop es men had

veste d in machines? Above all th ere were firearms, whic h hardly interested

Descartes except in terms of th e problem of the projectil e. 16 On the othe r

hand, Descartes was very interested in clocks and watches, in lifting machines,

in wate r-dr iven machines and other related devices. As a result, one sho uld

say that Descartes m ade a human phenomenon - th e const ruction of ma­

chines - into an integral part of his phil osophy; and one sho uld avoid saying

th at he transposed th e soci al phenomena of capita list production into ideology.

The key qu esti on becomes: How does Cartesianism account for an internal

principle of goal-directed activity in mech anisms, as is implied in the com par­

ison of a ma chine with an organi sm ?

5 1

Machine and Organism

The theo ry of the animal -machine is inseparable from "I think therefore I

am." The rad ical distincti on between th e soul and the body, between thought

and extens ion, requires the affirma tion that matter, whateve r form it ado pts,

and th ough t, whateve r funct ion it fulfill s, are eac h an undivided subs tance. 17

Because t he only function of the soul is judgment, it is impossible to admit

the ex iste nce of a soul in anima ls, since we have no proo f that anim als judge,

incapable as they are of langu age or invention . is

For Descartes, though , the refu sal to att r ibute a soul - that is, reason - to

anima ls, does not necessarily lead to the conclus ion that anima ls are not alive

(since not mu ch m ore than a warm, beat ing heart is at issue) ; no r must ani­

mals be de nied sensibility, to the ex te nt that suc h sens ibility is so lely a func­

ti on of their orga ns. i9

In the same di scu ssion, a moral foundat ion for the ani mal-machine theory

co mes to light. Descartes views th e anim al as Ari stotle had viewed the slave,

devalorizing it in order to j ust ify man 's using it to serve his own purp oses: "My

opinion is no mo re cr uel to ani ma ls than it is overly piou s toward men , freed

from the supe rst it ions of the Pythagori ans, becau se it abso lves them of the hint

of crime whenever they eat or kill anim als."20 And it comes as no small sur pr ise

to find the same argu me nt in reverse in a passage of Leibniz: " if we are com ­

pelled to view the animal as being more than a ma chine, we would have to

become Pytha~orians and renou nce our do mination of an imals."21 And so we

confront an attitude typ ical of Weste rn thought. On the th eoret ical level, tn e

mechanizat ion of life only considers animals to the exte nt that th ey serve m an' s

techno logical ends. Ma n can only ma ke himself the m aster and propriet or of

nat ure if he denies any natural finality or purpose; and he mu st co nside r the

whole of nature, including all life for ms other th an himself, as solely a means

to serve his purposes.

This is how the mechan ical model of the living organism , including the hu -

man body, was legitintized; for already in Descar tes the human body, ifnot An imal testing, c. 1970.

man's enti re self, is seen as a machin e. As I have already noted, Descartes based

his mecha nica l model on au tomata, that is, on moving ma chines.22

In order to see th e full implicat ion s of Descartes's theory, I now intend to

look at the beginning of his "Trea tise on Man ," which was published for the

first time in Leyden in 1662. H e wrote there :

These men will be composed, as we are, of a soul and a body. First I must describe

the body on its own, then the soul, again on its own; and finally I must show how

these two natures would have to be joined and united in order to consti tute men

who resemble us.

I suppose the body to be nothing but a statue or machine made of earth, which

God forms with the explicit inten tion of making it as much as possible like us.

Thus God not only gives it externally the colors and shapes of all the parts of our

52

zone

bodies, but also places inside it all the parts required to make it walk, eat, breathe,

enabling it to imitate all tho se functi ons which seem to proceed from matter and

to depend solely on th e int eracting movem ents of our organs .

We see clocks, art ificial fountains, wate r mills and other such machin es which,

altho ugh only man-made, see m to move of th eir own accord in var ious ways;

but I am supposing this machine to be made by the hands of God , and so I think

you may reason ably think it capable of a grea te r vari ety of movem ents th an I

could possibly imagine in it, and of exh ibit ing more art istry th an I could possibly

ascr ibe to it .23

Were we to read this text as naively as pos sible, the theory of th e anima l­

machine would seem to make sense onl y if we put forward two important

and often-neglected postulates. The first is th e existence of a God who builds

things, and th e second that living bodies are given in essence before machines

are constructed. In other words, to understand the machine-animal, it is

necessary to see it as being preceded, logically and chronologically, by God,

who is an efficient cause, and by a preexi sting living model after which it is

to be modeled or imitated, whi ch is a formal and final cause. With all thi s in

mind , I propose to take the animal-machine th eory, which is usually see n as

a departure from th e Aristotelian concept of causality, and show how all of

Ari stotle's types of causality are nonetheless found in it, but not always in th e

same place or simult aneously.

Ifwe read th e text more closely, we see that in order to const ruc t the liv­

ing ma chine-" it is necessary to imitate a preexi sting living model. The con­

struc t ion of a mechanical model presupposes a living original (Descartes is

perhaps closer here to Plato th an to Aristotle). The platonic Derniurge copies

the ideas, and the Idea is th e model of which th e natural object is a copy. Th e

Cartesian God, the Art!fex maximus, works to produce som ething equivalent

to th e living body itself. The model for th e living machine is that bod y itself.

Divine art imitates the Idea - but th e Idea is th e living body. What is more,

in th e same way that a regular polygon is in scribed in a circle, and th at one

must pass an infinite distance to deduce one from the other, there is some ­

thing of th e machine in every aspect of life; but to pass from one to the other

wou ld require crossing over an infinite gap, one that only God can close. Thi s

is the idea bro ught out at the end of the text: "but I am supposing thi s machine

to be made by the hands of God, and so I think you may reasonably think it

cap able of a great er var iety of movements than I could possibly im agine in it ,

and of exhibiting more artistry than I could po ssibly ascribe to it ." The th e­

ory of th e animal-machine would, th erefore, have th e same relation to life

that a set of axioms has to geometry, th at is, nothing more than a rati onal

reconstruction. Thus, the th eory operates by deception: it pretends to ignore

th e conc rete existe nce of what it must represent, and it deni es that what it

S3

Mach ine and Organ ism

actu ally produces comes only afte r it ha s been rationally legitimized .

This aspect of Cartesian theory, moreover, was accurately assessed by a

contemporary anato mist, th e noted Nico laus Ste no, in th e Dissertation on the

Anatomy if the Brain deli vered in Pari s in 1665, a year after the "Treatis e on

Man" had app eared. While paying homage to Descartes (which was remark­

able, since anato mis ts had not always been very accepting of Cartesian anat­

omy), he notes that Descartes's man was man reconstituted by Descartes

with God as a foil, but that this was not man as th e anatomist understands

him. O ne can th erefore say th at by subs ti tut ing the body for the ma chine,

Descartes rem oved teleol ogy from life, but in appe arance only, because he

has conce nt rate d it in its ent ire ty at the point at whi ch life begins. A dynamic

st ruc ture is replaced by an anato mical one; but since thi s form is produced by

technique, all possible sense of teleology has been co nfined to th e technique

of production. In fact, it appears that mechanical theory and purposiveness

canno t be placed in oppos it ion , nor can mechanism and anthropomorphism.

If th e funct ioni ng of a machine can be ex plained by relation s of pure causal­

ity, th e co nst ruc tion of a machine canno t be understood without taking two

things into co nside rat ion: a specific goal-directe d activity and man himself.

A machine is made by man and for man , to achi eve specific ends, to produce

a given series of effec ts. 25

The positive elem ent, th en, in Descartes's attem pt to explain life mechani­

cally is th at he eliminates the need to tie mechanism to finality in its anthropo­

morphic aspect. However, it seems that in doing this, on e anthropomorphism

has been subst ituted for anothe r. A technological anthropomorphism has been

subst it uted for a political anthropo morphism.

In "Descript ion of the Human Body and All of Its Func tions," a short trea­

ti se written in 1648 , Descartes addresses th e qu esti on of voluntary movement

in man: he offers, in terms so lucid that th ey were to dominate the entire th e­

ory of re flex and automatic movements up until th e nineteenth century, the

explanat ion th at th e body ob eys th e soul only on condition that th e body is

primed mechanically to do so. For th e soul to decide to move is not a suffi­

cient conditio n to induce th e body to move. "The soul," writes Descartes

"cannot produce any movement without th e appropriate disposition of th e

bodil y organs whic h are required for making the movem ent. On th e contrary,

when all th e bodily organs are appropriately dispo sed for some movement,

th e body has no need of th e soul in order to produce that movem ent."26

Descartes means th at whe n th e soul moves the body it does not act like a king

or a gene ral com mand ing his subjects or his troops as is popularly conce ived.

Rather, by viewing th e body as a clock mechanism he envisions each organ

drivin p the othe r like interlo cking cogwhe els. So Descartes subst itutes for

th e image of th e pol it ical chain of co mmand - where commands are passed

54

zone

by signals or spo ken orde rs, through a type of magical causality - th e techno­

logical image of "co ntrol," in whic h a desired series of ope rat ions is act ivate d

by a co nt ro lling device or coordi nate d by a series of mechanical linkups.

Descartes takes th e exact oppos ite positi on of Claude Bernard who, in his

cr it ique of vitalism, in Lecons sur les phenomenes de la vie communs aux anima ux

er aux veBewux, refu ses to admit th at a vita l force co uld have a sepa rate exis ­

ten ce because it "ca nno t do anything" - but he does admit , surprisingly, that

it can "direct phenom en a that it does not produce."27 In other words, Bernard

replaces th e notion of a vital-force- as-worker with the idea of vita l-force-as ­

legislator or guide. This is a way of admitting that one can direct events with­

out taking action - which bo rde rs on a kind of magical conce pt of direction,

implying that th e overall op eration transcends the exec ut ion of individual

op er ations. On th e contrary, according to Descartes, a me chanical ope rat ion

repla ces th e power of direction and co mmand, but God has fixed th e direc­

tion on ce and for all: the constr uctor includes the guide-controls withi n th e

mech ani cal process itself.

In sho rt, with th e Cartesian ex planat ion, it might appear th at we have not

moved beyond the idea of fin ality or inner pu rposiveness. The reason for thi s

is that if we limit ourselves to th e workings of th e ma chine, everything can be

explained by the th eory of mechanism ; but the th eory cannot account for the

construct ion of th e machine itself. Machines do not construct other mach ines,

and it co uld even be said th at, in a sense, ex plaining organs or organisms

through mechanical models amounts to ex plaini ng th e orga n by means of it­

self. At bottom, the n, we are dealing with a tautology; for it can be shown ­

and I shall indeed t ry to ju st ify this view - that machin es can be considered as

orBans ?J the human species.28 A tool or a machine is an organ, and organs are

tools or machines. And so it is hard to see how mech ani sm can be d isti n­

gui shed from purposiveness. 0 one doubts th at a mechanism is need ed to

ens ure th at a given operation is car ried out successfully; and, co nversely,

every mech ani sm mu st follow a preci sely determined sequence toward per­

forming some particular task, since a mechani sm cannot depend on rand om­

ness or chance . Th erefore, the opposition would be between those mechanisms

whose purpose is manifest and those wh ose purpose remains latent. In th e

case of a lock or a watc h , their fun ction is apparent, whil e the pin cer s of th e

crab, often cons ide re d a marvel of adaptati on, have a latent purpose. As a

result, it seems impossible to deny th at certa in biological mechani sm s serve

a set purpose. Let us cons ide r an oft-cited exa mple, which mech anist ic biol­

ogists use to argu e th eir case; namely, th at of th e woman's pelvis, which en ­

larges ju st before she gives birth. To deny that thi s enla rgeme nt might not in

some way be the fulfillment of a fundam ental, purposive acti vity, we need on ly

view th e qu esti on in ano the r way: given th at th e largest-sized fetus exceeds

ss

Machi ne and Organism

the ma ximum size of the pelvis by 1 or 1.5 em, it wo uld be impossibl e to give

birth we re it not for a loosening of th e symphyses and a gradual roc king move­

ment toward the sacrococcygien bone which increases the d iameter ever so

slightly beyond it s maximum. It is under standable that one would not want to

believe that an act with suc h a specific biol ogical purpose is allowed to occur

only by vir tue of a mechani sm with no real biological function. And "allow" is

indeed the word that applies here, since wi tho ut this mechanism th e act sim ­

ply co uld not take place. It is well known that, whe n dealing with an unknown

mech anism , we have to make certai n th at it is in fact a mech anism - th at is, we

have to kn ow what ultimate purpose or func tion it is intended to serve . We

can co me to no conclusions abo ut how it is to be used , simply on th e basis of

it s form or its st r uc ture, unl ess we already know how the machine or similar

m achines are used . As a resul t , it is necessary first to see the machine at work

before attempting to deduce th e fun cti on from th e structure.

We are now at the point where we can see th e historical reversal of th e Cartes ian

rela t ions hip between the machine and the organis m. It is a we ll-known fact

- and so need no t be belabo re d - that in all organis ms we obse rve the phe­

nom en a of au tocons truc tion, auto main te nance, auto regula t ion and auto repai r.

In the case of the ma chine, its cons tr uc tion is beyond its power and dep ends

on the skill o f the mech anic . It s mainten ance requires the co ns ta nt attention

and watc hfulness of the ma chinist; for we all know how th e complex workings

of a m achine can be irrem edi ably damaged du e to inattention and carelessness.

As for mainten ance and repair, they demand the same periodic intervention

of human act ion . W hile there are machines that are self-regulat ing, these are

in fact mach ines that m an has grafte d onto ano ther machin e. The co ns t ruc­

t ion of servomecha nisms or elect ronic auto mata merely displaces the qu esti on

of the ma n- mac hine relati on ship witho ut changing it in any fundame nta l way.

Further, in th e case of the machine ther e is a st r ict ad he re nce to rati onal,

economical rul es. The whole is rigorously th e sum of its parts. The final effect

dep ends on the orde r ing of the causes . What is more, a m achine functions

within narrowly defined limits, and th ese limits becom e all th e more rigid with

th e pr acti ce of standardization . Standardizat ion leads to th e simplificat ion of

basic models and spare parts, and to unified standards of measurement and

quality, whic h allows for the interchangeabili ty of parts. Any individual part

can be excha nge d for any other part mean t for the same place - wi thin, of

co urse, a margin of tolerance dete rmi ne d by manufacturing const ra ints.

Now th at th e prope rt ies of a machine have been defined in relation to th ose

of an organism, can one say that there is more or less purposiven ess in a ma­

chine th an in an organism ?

zo ne

One would surely agree that the re is more purposiven ess in m achines

than in organisms, since a machine see ms to move uniformly, unidirecti on ally

toward completing a particular activ ity. A m achine cannot repl ace ano ther

ma chine. The more specific the end -result desired , the more the m argin of

tol erance is reduced , and the mo re the ma chine's directiveness seems co n­

centrated , focu sed on a particular end . It is well known that fun ct ion s in t he

organ ism are substitutable, organs are polyvalent . Although this substi tu tabil­

ity of func t ions and po lyvalence of organs is not absolute, in compa rison with

the same qualities in the m achine, it is so conside rable that any com par ison

is quite obviously abs urd .s? As an exa m ple of the substi t utability of funct ions,

I can give a very simple and well- kn own case, that of aphasia in children. A

hemiplegia on the right side of the child's brain is almos t never accompani ed

by aphasia , because the other areas of the brain ensure the continuance of t he

linguist ic fun ctions. In th e case of t he child who is less than nine m on ths old,

any ex ist ing aphasia disappea rs very qui ckly.30As for th e problem of the poly­

valent organs, I need sim ply note the fact that for a majori ty of organs , whic h

we have traditionally bel ieved to serve some definite fun ction, the t r uth is

that we have no idea wh at ot he r fun ctions they might indeed fulfill. This is

the re ason that the stomach is said to be, in principl e at leas t, an organ of

digestion. However, it is a fact that after a gast rec to my performed to treat an

ulcer, there are fewer problems wi th digestion than wi th those we ob serve

with hematopoiesis. It was finall y discovered that the sto m ach be haves like

an internal sec re t ive gland. And I might also cite yet ano ther example - and

not at all to be taken as some sort of mira cle - whic h came to light during

a re cent exper ime nt performed by the biol ogist Courrier, at the College de

France. Courrier made an incision in the uterus of a p regnant rabbit, ex­

tracted a placenta from th e uterus and placed it in the peritoneal cavity. This

placenta grafted it self onto the intestine and fed itself normally. When t he

graft was performed, the rabbit's ovaries were ablate d - meaning that the

funct ion fulfilled by th e cor pus lute um during pregn ancy was supp ressed. At

that moment, all the placentas present in the uterus we re aborte d and only

the placenta situate d in the peritone al cavity came to term. Here is an exa m ­

ple of the intestine beh aving like a uterus, and perhaps, one might even say,

m ore success fu lly.

In this case , then, it is tempting to reve rse one of Ari stotle's formulati on s

in his Politics: "For nature is not st ingy, like th e smi th who fashions the Del­

phi an knife for ma ny uses; she m akes each thing for a single use, and every

in strument is best m ad e whe n intended for one and not for m any uses." 31

On the contrary, it seems that thi s definition of finality or purposiveness

would be more applicable to a m achine than to an organi sm . One must be

willing to acknowledge, ultimately, t hat in an organism, a given organ can

57

Machine and Organism

acco mmo date a diver sity of fun cti on s. Clearly, an organism has a grea te r range

of act ivity than a m achine. It is less bound by purposiven ess and more op en

to potentialities.P Every aspect and every movement of the ma chine is calcu­

lated ; and the wo rki ng of the m achine co nfirms how eac h calcu lat ion holds

up to ce rtain norms, measures or est imates; whereas the living body functions

according to exper ience. Life is exper ience, meaning improvisation, acting as

circums ta nces per mit; life is tentat ive in every respect . Hen ce th e overw helm­

ing but often misunder sto od fact that life permits monstrositi es. There are no

mon st rou s machines. Th ere is no mech anic al pathology, as Xavie r Bichat noted

in 1801 in his General Anatomy, Applied to Physiolo8Y and Medicine.33 Whereas

monster s are still living things, there is no way to distinguish between th e nor­

mal and the pathological in physics and mechanics. Only among living beings

is there a disti nc tion between the normal and th e pathological .

Above all, it is wo rk in experime ntal em bryology that has led to the aba n­

do ning of such mech anist ic representation s when interpreting living phen om­

ena, primarily by demonstra ting that once the em bryo starts to develop, it

does not contain any ki nd of "specific mech anism" intend ed to produce auto ­

mat ically one organ or ano ther. There can b e no d.oub t that this was D escartes's

conception as we ll. In his "Descr ipt ion of the Human Body," he wrote: " If we

had a goo d knowledge of what m akes up the seme n of some species of animal

in particular, for exa mple man , then we wo uld be able to deduce from this

alon e, using ce r tain and mathemati cal reasoning, the complete sha pe and

conforma tion of eac h of its members, and likewi se, reciprocally, if we kn ew

many par ti cul ar iti es abo ut thi s co nforma tion, it wo uld be possible to deduce

fro m th at what th e seme n is."34 However, as Paul Guillaume remarks, it see ms

that the more we co mpa re living be ings to auto ma t ic machines, the more we

see m to understand their functi ons but th e less we under st and their genes is.35

If th e Cartesian co ncep tion we re accura te, th at is, if the living organis m we re

both preformed in th e em bryo and developed mech ani stically, any modifica­

t ion ma de in the earlies t stages wo uld tend to di srupt the development of the

egg or prevent development altoge the r.

However, thi s is hardl y th e case . According to a study in potential egg devel­

opment, based on research by Driesch, Horst adius, Speman and Mangold , it

was shown t hat em bryonic development cannot be reduced to a mech ani cal

model witho ut running into anomalies. Let us take the exam ple of the exper­

iments co nduc ted by H orst adius on the egg of a sea urchin. He cut an egg A

from a sea urchin at stage sixteen so that eac h part of the egg maintained a

horizontal symmetry, and then he cut egg B, with each part being ver tically

symme tr ical. He joined half of A with half of B and th e egg developed nor­

mally. Driesch took th e sea urchin egg at stage sixteen and pressed the egg

between two thin layer s of ce lls, while modifying the recip ro cal positi on of

S8

zone

the cells at the two po les; sti ll, the egg developed normally. The results of th ese

two st udies allow us to conclude that the same effect is achi eved regardless of

how conditions are var ied.

There is an even more str iking exper iment , in whic h Dr iesch took blasto­

meres from th e sea urchin egg at stage two. By removing the blastomeres, eit her

mech anically or chemically in sea water lacking calcium salts, the result was

that eac h of the blastomeres gave bir th to a lar va which was perfectly no rmal

down to the sma llest deta il. Here, then, the result is the same regardless of

how t he cha rac terist ics of a facto r are changed . The qu antitati ve cha nge in

a given factor does not lead to a qualitative cha nge in the resu lt . Conversel y,

whe n two sea urchin eggs are joined they result in a single larva that is larger

than norm al. This is yet another confirmatio n that the result is un affected by

the qu antitati ve cha nge in one of the facto rs. W he ther the factors are multi­

plied or divid ed , the exper iment yields the same results.

I sho uld add that the develop ment of all eggs cannot be reduced to thi s

sche ma. For quite some time t here was a problem in knowing whet her there

were two di fferent kinds of eggs at issue : regu lated eggs, like the eggs of sea

urchins, and mosaic eggs, like those of frogs, whos e firs t blastomeres develop

in exac tly th e same way, whether th ey are dissociated or remain together. Most

biologist s have recently come aro und to ad mitting that wha t distingu ishes the

two phenomena is sim ply that de te rminat ion occurs earlier in the so-called

mosaic eggs. On the one hand , the regul ated egg sta r ts to act like a mo saic

egg at a certa in stage; on the other hand , at stage two the blastomere of the

frog egg yields a com plete embryo, as do es a regul ated egg, if it is reversed .Jf

Thus, it is illusory to de ny the idea of purposiven ess in orga nis ms and to

attr ibute it to automa tic funct ions, however complex we might imagin e these

to be. As lon g as a machine cannot co nstruct itsel f, and as long as an orga n­

ism is not equal to the sum of its parts, it might see m legitimate to think th at

biological organiz ati on is th e bas is and the necessary co ndit ion for the exi s­

ten ce and purpose of a m achi ne. From the philosophical point of view, it is

less im portan t to ex plain the operation of a machine than to un derstand it .

And to underst and it mean s to in scribe it in human history by in scribing

human history in life - not overlooking the fact that with the adve nt of man

th ere appeared a cult ur e tha t was no longer entirely reducible to natural causes.

And so we arrive at th e point where the machine is seen as ajGct ifculture,

expressed in m echani sm s that are them selves nothing more than an explain ­

ablefac t ifnature. In a cele brated text in "Pr inci ples of Philosophy," Descartes

writes, " It is ce r tai n that all the rules of mechanics belong to physics, to the

extent that all artificial thinBs are thereby natural . Sinc e, for exa mple, whe n a

watc h co unts the hou rs, by using the cogs from whic h it is made, this is no

less natural for it than it is for a tree to produ ce fr u it ."37 But, fro m our poin t

59

Ma c h ine and Or g an ism

of view, we can and must reverse the relation ship of the watc h to the tree and

say that the cogs and ge ne rally all the co mpone nts that make up a watc h are

des igne d to produce a desired effect : all th e parts of the mech ani sm are prod­

uct s of im aginat ion , each piece fulfilling some final purpose or design that at

one time was only imagined or dream ed of; they are thus th e direct or indirect

produc ts of a technical acti vity that is as authe ntically organi c as the flower­

ing of trees. And , on a more funda me nta l level, the process wo rks with great

efficiency even though there is no more co nscious obse rvance of the rules

and laws of physics than there might be within vegeta l life. Although the con­

st r uc t ion of a ma chine might presuppose at some stage the understanding of

the logics of physics, it should not and cannot be forgotten that, as a matter

of chro no logy and biology, cons t ruct ion of machines took place well before

ther e was any understanding of physics.

Ho wever, another author has asserted, cont rary to D escartes, that living

organ isms cannot be reduced to a machine and, similarly, art cannot be re­

du ced to scie nce. The author in qu esti on is Kant, in his Critique rJJ ud8 men t.

W hile it is true that the Fren ch have not tended to look to Kant as a philoso ­

pher of technique, it is no less true th at German authors greatly interested in

this questi on , especially after 1870, ha ve don e so.

In the "Cr it ique of Teleological Judgment," Kant distinguishes between

the m achine and the organism, whi le drawing on D escartes's favorite exam ­

ple of the watch . In a machine, he st ates, each part exists for the othe r but

not becau se of the othe r : no part produces anot he r part; no one part is pro­

duced by the entire unit; nor does one part produce ano the r part of simi lar

kind . T here is no watc h that makes othe r watc hes. 0 part can replace itself.

And no m achine can repl ace one of its own missing parts. And so, while a

mach ine possesses motor power, it has no transformational ene rgy th at might

propagate itself or be transmitted to an objec t outside th e ma chine itself. Kant

draws a distinction between human skill and technology, whic h are marked

by in tention ality, as opposed to involuntary life processes. But in an impor­

tant passage of the "Crit ique of Aesthetic Judgment," Kant defines the origi-

nality ofhuman skill as it relates to knowledge:

Ar t, regarded as human skill, differs from science (as ability differs from kn owledge)

in the same way that a practical aptitude differs from a theoretical faculty, as tech­

nique differs from theory. What one is capable of doing, as soon as we merely know

what ought to be done and therefore are sufficiently cognizant of the desired effect,

is not called art. Only that which a man, even if he knows it completely, may not

therefore have the skill to accomplish belongs to art. Camper describes very exactly

how the best shoes must be made, but he certainly could not make one.38

This text is cite d by Paul Krannhals in Der Welts inn der Technik , and, following

Kant, he acknowledges that all technique is essent ially primordial, meaning th at

60

z o ne

it cannot be reduced to a simple questi on of ration ality.39 Indeed , we tend to see

the skille d hand that adjus ts a machine or the mind that carefu lly orches t rates

a production process as examples of " ingenu ity," having their basis in instinct;

but th ese are in fact as difficult to explain as the production of mammalian eggs

outside the ovary, even in the even t that the physio ch emical com posit ion of

protoplasm and of sexu al hormones had been made entirely clear to us.

This is why the work of anthrop ologists (and not eng ineers) seems to she d

more light, however faint, on the qu estion of the co ns t r uc t ion of machines.40

Cur rently in Fr an ce, et hnolog ists have co me closest to creat ing a philosophy

of t echnique in which the philosophers themselves seem to have lost interest ,

their main concern having been chiefly the philosophy of science. On the co n­

trary, the ethnogra phe rs have ge ne rally focu sed their atte nt ion on th e rela­

tionship between the production of the earlie st tools, the fir st instruments

that were used to act upon and modify nature, and the ways these tools we re

assembled or grou pe d together. The only philosopher in France I kn ow to

have posed these qu estion s is Alfred Espinas, in his classic text on Les Oripines

de la tecbnoloqie." T his wo rk in cludes an appendix , the outl ine for a co urse

t aught at the Facu lte des Lettres at Bordeaux aro und 1890, whic h dealt wi th

the wi ll, and in which Espinas addressed , under the gu ise of wi ll, the qu es­

tion of practical human beh avior and especially the invention of tool s. By

borrowing the th eory of organic ex te ns ion from the Ge rm an writer Ernst

Kapp, Espinas was able to ex plain the co ns t ruc t ion of the first tools. Kapp

fir st made his th eories known in 1877.42 According to the theory of exte n­

sion, whose philosophical bases go back to Hartmann's The Philosophy iftheUnconscious and further ba ck st ill to Schopenhauer, the ear lies t tools were

simply exte nsio ns of moving human organs. T he flint, the club and the lever

ex te nd and m agni fy the orga nic movement of the ar m and its ability to strike.

This theory, like all theories, has it s limits and runs into ce r ta in st um bling

blocks, especially whe n it is used to ex plain fundame nta l invention s, suc h

as fir e and the wheel. In these cases, we wo uld sea rc h in vain for the body

movements and th e organs that fire and th e wheel are supposed to prolong or

ex tend; but the ex planat ion certa inly works for instruments like th e hammer

or the lever and all suc h related tools. In France, then, it was the ethnogra­

ph ers who sought out and compiled not on ly th e facts but also the hypotheses

fro m which a biological philosophy of technique co uld be con stituted. The

philosophical path was laid out by the Germansw - for exa mple, the theory

of the development of invention s based on th e Darwi ni an notion of var iat ion

and natural select ion, as advanced by Alard Du Bois-Reymon d in his EifindunBund Eifinder (1906), or again, by Oswa ld Spe ngler in DerMensch und die Tecbnik ,

which presented the theory that m achines are co ns t r uc te d as a "life t actic"44

- and is taken up again, indep endently it seems , by Andre Leroi- Gourhan

6 1

Ma ch ine and Organ ism

in his book Milieu et techniqu es. Leroi-Gourhan at te mp ts to ex plain the ph e­

nomen on of the co ns t r uc t ion of tools by compar ing it to the movem ent of

the amoeba, which ex te nds subs tances out beyond its mass so that it might

seize and capture an object it wis hes to diges t:

Ifwe are drawn to view the act of percussion as the fundament al techni cal activ­

ity, it is because we witness an act of touch or contact in almost every technologi­

cal process; but even though the amoeba 's expansion always leads its prey through

the same digestive process, there is no one way of explaining the working of that

process - whether we view the material being digested or whethe r we approach

the question from any given view of technology - since our view must change

according to the circumstances, just as the digestive process itself might be like

the various specialized grasping or striking organs.45

In the last cha pte rs of thi s work one finds a theory of machine that is alto ­

gethe r di fferent from the traditional theories that, for lack of a better term,

I sha ll classify as Ca rtesian - where technical invention am ounted to the

application of a given syste m of kn owledge.

Tra ditiona lly, the locomotive is presented as a clas sic exam ple of a "ma r­

vel of scie nce." However, the co ns t ruc t ion of the steam eng ine is only under­

sta ndable whe n placed in light of t heore tical kn owledge that preceded it , as

the cul mina t ion of an age -old probl em, and a speci fica lly technological one

at that - how to pump wate r out of mines. And so it wou ld be necessary to

underst and the natural hist ory of the development of the pump, and to kn ow

abo ut the fir e pump (whic h at first did not rely at all on vapor but produced a

vacuum via conde nsat ion under th e pistons, thereby allowing th e atmosph eric

p ress ure act ing as a motor to lower the pist on) in orde r to see that the essen­

t ial "o rgan" in a locomoti ve is a cylinde r and a piston .w

Tracin g a similar progression of id eas, Leroi-Gourhan goes even further,

pointing back to the wheel as one of th e locomotive's ancesto rs, in the biolog­

ical sense of th e wo rd . " It is machines like the wheel," he states , " that gave rise

to stea m engi nes and modern-day motors. All of the highest t echnological

achievements of the most inventive minds of our time can be grouped aro und

the ci rcular move me nts of the crank, th e ped al, the drive belt."47 He the n goes

on to add: "T he way invent ions influenced eac h othe r ha s not been studied

sufficiently and we don't see m to take note of the fact th at , without th e whe el,

we wo uld no t have the locomotive."48 Further on :

At the beginning of the nineteenth century no one had yet recognized how to make

use of the elemental forms that would later give birth to the locomotive, the auto­

mobile and the airplane. The underlying pr inciples of mechanics were spread

throughout twenty applications which had been known for many centuries. It is

here we find the principle that explains inventi on , but the defining characteristic

is that it in someway manifests itself sponta neo usly.f?

62

zone

In light of these re ma rks, we see how scie nce and technique mu st be co nsid­

ered as two separate areas; th at is, they do not graft onto each other but, rath er,

each takes from th e other eithe r its solut ions or its problem s. It is th e ration al­

izing and ordering imposed by technology th at makes us forget th at machines

have th eir origin in the irrational. In thi s area as in all others, it is necessary to

know how to accom mo date the irrational, even whe n - and especially whe n

- we want to defend rati onali sm .50

It must be added th at th e reversal of the relation ship between th e machine

and th e organism, brought abo ut by a syste ma tic under standing of technical

inven ti ons as if th ey were ex te ns ions of human beh avior or life processes,

is in someway confirmed by th e beli ef th at th e ge ne ralized use of machines

has slow ly imposed co nte m porary industrialized soc iety on m an . George

Fr iedmann has shown very clea rly th e ste ps by which "bo dy" gradually

becam e a fir st-order term in th e human ma chine-body equation. 51 With

Frederick Taylor and th e first technicians to make scient ific studies of work­

ta sk movements, th e human body was measured as if it fun cti on ed like a

machine. Ifwe see their aim as the eliminat ion of all unnecessary movement

and the ir view of output as being ex presse d only in te rms of a ce rtain nu m­

ber of mathemat ically de termi ned facto rs, th en rati on alizati on was, for all

inte nts and pu rposes, a mechanizatio n of th e bo dy. But th e realization th at

technologically supe rfluo us movements were biologically necessary move ­

ments was the fir st stumbling blo ck to be enc oun te red by th ose who insisted

on viewing th e problem of human-body-as-machine in exclusively techno­

logical terms. From here on , th e syste mat ic exa mination of certain physio­

logical , psychotechnological and even some psych ological condit ions (since

a cons ide rat ion of values leads inevitably to qu esti ons at the very center of

th e origin of human per son ality) finall y culmi nated in a reversal, called an

inevi table revolution by Fr iedma nn, in which technology wo uld ada pt ma­

chines to the human body. As Friedmann saw it , thi s industrial techno logy

appeared to take th e form of a scient ific rediscovery of th e same en t irely

empir ical procedures through whic h primitive peoples had always sought

to have their to ols meet th e highest organic norms: that is, th eir tools had to

carry out a given acti on effect ively while maintaining a biological eco nomy;

and thi s occur red at the op timum level, wh en it mo st closely approximate d

the movem ent of the body at work, as whe n th e body de fends it sel f spo nta ­

neou sly from becomi ng exclusively subo rdina te to the mech anicaJ.S2 In this

way, Fr iedmann could speak, without irony or paradox, of th e legitimacy of

co nside r ing th e industrial development of the West from an et hnographic

po int of view.53

In sum mary, by co ns ide ring tech nology as a uni versal biological phe norn ­

eno nv' and no longer sim ply as an intellectual ope rat ion to be carried out by

Machi ne and Or ga nism

m an , I am led to the following conclusions : on the on e hand , the creative

autono my of the ar ts and skilled crafts in relation to all forms of knowledge

th at are capable o f annexing them or expanding on th em; and, on the othe r

hand, to inscribe the mech anical into the organic . It is no longer then , a ques­

tion of determining the extent to which an organism can be thought of as a

machine, whether by vir tue of its st r uc tu re or of it s fun ctions. But it is neces­

sary to find the reasons that gave ri se to the opposite view, the Cartesian one.

I have attempted to shed light on thi s problem, suggest ing that the mechanis­

t ic concept ion of th e body was no less anthropomorphic, despite app earances,

th an a tel eological concept ion of th e physical world. The answer I am tempted

to offer wo uld insist on showing that technology allows man to live in co nt i­

nui ty with life, as opposed to a so lut ion that wo uld see humankind as living

in a st ate of rupture for whic h we ourselves are responsible becau se of sc i­

ence. Ther e is no doubt that thi s an swe r appears to lend cre de nce to th e list

of acc usat ions that all to o many writers have offered up no stalgically from

time to time, with no apparent regard to th eir lack of ori ginality, as th ey point

out the fau lts of technology and progress. I have no intention of rushing to

suppo r t their cause . It is clear that if human society has embrace d the idea of

a technology ba sed on a mechanistic model, the implications are enormo us,

and the who le qu estion cannot easily be treated lightly or recalled on demand.

But that model is altoge ther different from the one just exa mine d.

NOTES

1. After having been dogmatically accepted by biologists for many years, the mechanis­

tic theory of the organism is now conside red narr ow and inadequ ate by th ose scient ists who

call themselves dialectical mater ialists. But the fact that they still conce rn themse lves with

formulat ing a philosophical pos itio n co uld easily support the rather widesp read idea th at

philoso phy does not possess its own dom ain , th at it is a poor relation of speculat ion, and

must cloth e itself in th e hand-me- downs scient ists have used and then discarded . It will be

my aim to show that the problem of machine and organis m is mu ch broader in scope and

mo re philosophically important th an is commonly th ought; and th at it is far more than a

theoretical and methodological d ispu te among biologists.

2. Juli en Pacott e, La Pensee technique (Paris: Alcan , 1931) .

3. One exam ple of the funda mental principles of a general th eory of mechanism s un­

derstood in this way can be found in Franz Reuleaux's Theoretiscbe Kinetnatik: Grundz iiBe

einer Theorie des Maschinwesen (Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1875) .

4. For everything co nce rning machines and mec hanisms, see Pacott e, La Pensee tech ­

nique, ch. 3.

5. Accord ing to Marx, a tool is moved by human power whil e the machine is moved

by a natural force; see his Capital , trans. Samuel Moo re and Edwa rd Aveling (New York:

Intern ational Publishers, 196 7) , vol. 1, pp. 374-79.

z one

6. For more on this, see Cha rles Victor Daremberg, Hi stoire des sciences medicales

(Paris: Bailliere, 1870) , vol. 2, p. 879.

7. Go mez Pereira, Antoniana MarBarita: Opus pbysicis, medicis ac theoloqis non minus

utile quam necessarium (Medi na del Campo , 1555-58).

8. Alfred Espinas, "L'Organisa tio n ou la machine vivante en Grece au Iv e siecle avant

J. -c.," Revue de metaphvsique et de morale (1903), pp. 702-15.

9. P.-M. Schuhl, Mach inisme et philosophic (Paris: Alcan, 1938).

10. Aristotle's Politi cs, trans. Hi pp ocrates G. Apos tle and Lloyd P. Gerson (Gr innel ,

Iowa : Peripateti c Press, 1986) , bk . I, ch. 2, sees. 4- 7.

II. Lucien Labe rthonniere, Les Etudes sur Descartes (Paris: Vrin, 1935) , especially th e

append ix to volume 2: " La Physiqu e de Descartes et la physiqu e d 'Ar istote,"

12. Fra nz Borken au, Der UberBanB vomJeudalem zum biirqerlichen Weltbi/d (Paris :

Alcan , 1934) .

13. Jean de la Fontain e's fable, "The Cobbler and th e Busin essm an" (in La Fontaine:

Selected Fables, t ran s. Jami e Michi e [N ew York: Viking, 1979] , pp. 188-91) is an excellent

illustration of th e two different conceptions of work and its remuneration .

14. Henryk Grossmann, "Die gesellschaftlic hen Grundlagen der mech anisti sch en

Philosophi e und die Manufaktur," Zeitschrij:f ur Sozialiorschunp, 4 th ser., vol. 2 (1935) ,

pp. 161-231.

15. "Mecha nizat ion" here mean s th e gene ralized use of machines to replace human

labor. However, it was also used to descr ibe Descartes's th eory of animals as machines

before th e nineteenth century when the above usage was in force - T R A N S .

16. In Descartes's " Pr inci ples of Philosophy" (4.187 [AT 8A.314], Descartes: Selected

Philosophical WritinBs, tran s. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff and Dugald Murdoch

[New York: Ca mbridge U niversity Press, 1988] , pp. 199-200) , there are a few passages

th at reveal Descartes to be equally interested in gunpowder, but he did not look for an

analogous explanatory principle for th e animal organism in th e ex plosion of gunpowd er

as a source of energy. It was an English doctor, Th omas Willi s, who explicitly formulated

a theory of muscula r movem ent based on th e analogy with what occurs when th e powder

explodes in a harqu eb us. In the sevente enth century, Will is co mpared the ne rves to pow­

der lines in a mann er th at remai ns valid today in some qu arter s - most notably, W M.

Bayliss comes to mind . Nerves are a sort of Bickford cord. Th ey produce a spark th at will

set off, in th e mu scle, an explosion that, in Willi s's view, is th e only thing capable of ac­

counting for th e ph en om en a of spas m and prol onged contraction observed by th e doctor.

17. " For th ere is withi n us bu t one soul, and thi s soul has within it no d ivers ity of

parts: it is at on ce sens itive and ration al too, and all its app et ites are volit ions" ("T he

Passion s of th e Soul" 47, in Selected Philosophical WritinBs, P: 236) .

18. " Discourse on Method " 5 (AT 6.56 ff.) , in ibid. , p. 44 ff. Letter to th e Marqu is of

Newcastle, Nov. 23, 1646.

19. Letter to Morus, Feb. 21, 1649, in Descartes, Correspondence, ed . Charle s Ada m

and Ge rard Milhaud (Paris: P.U .F., 196 3), vol. 8, pp . 121- 39. In orde r to underst and

6S

Machine and Organ ism

ad equately th e relationship of sensib ility to th e arrangeme nt of th e organs, we must be

familiar with th e Car tes ian th eory of th e degrees of sense; on thi s subject , see Descartes,

"Author 's Repli es to th e Sixth Obj ecti on s" 9 (AT 7.436- 39), in The Philosophical WritinBs

ifDescartes, t ran s. John Cottingham , Robert Stoothoff and Dugald Murdoch (Cambridge,

Eng.: Cambridge Univers ity Press, 1984), vol. 2, pp. 294-96.

20. Descartes, Letter to MOTUS, Feb. 21, 1649, in Correspondence, vol. 8, p. 138.

21. Letter to Conr ing, March 19, 1678, in Gotifried Wilhelm Leibniz: Sdmtliche Schr!fien

und Briife (Darms tad t: Reichl , 1926), 2d ser., vol. I, pp . 397-401. Leibniz's outline of

crite r ia in particu lar, which would allow us to d istinguish an animal from an automaton ,

should be compared to the analogo us arguments addu ced by Descartes, and also the pro­

found reflections of Edgar Allan Poe on th e same subjec t in his "Maelzel 's Chessp layer."

On the Leibnizian distincti on between th e machine and the organism, see "A New System

of th e Nature and th e Communicati on of Substances" 10, in Leibniz: Philosophical Papers

and Letters, trans. and ed . Leroy Loemker (Chicago: U niversity of Chicago Press, 1956),

vol. 2; and "Mo nado logy" 63-66, in Monadol0B.Y and Other PhilosophicalEssays , trans. Paul

Schrec ker and Ann e Martin Schrecker (New York: Macmi llan , 1985) .

22. It is important to point out th at Leibniz was no less interested th an Descartes in

th e invent ion and constr uc tion of machines, as well as in th e problem of automatons. See

espec ially his corresponde nce with Duke Joh n of Ha nover (1676-1679) in the Sdmtliche

Schr!fien und Briife (Darmstadt: Reichl , 1927), 1st ser. , vol. 2. In a text of 1671, Bedenken

von Atifrichw nB einer Academie oder Societdt in Deutschland zu Atif"nehmen der Kunste und

Wissenscheifien , Leibniz exa lts the supe riority of German art, which has always st r ived to

produce works th at move (watc hes, clocks , hydraulic machines, and so on) , over Italian

art, which has always attached itse lf excl usively to the fabricat ion of lifeless objec ts made

to be conte mplated from without (ibid. [Darmstadt: Reichl , 1931], 4th ser., vol. I, p. 544) .

Thi s passage is cited by Jacqu es Maritain in his Art and Scholasticism and the Frontiers ifPoetry, trans. Joseph W Evan s ( ew York: Scribners, 1962) , P: 156.

23. "Treat ise on Man" (AT XI. 119-20), in The Philosophical WritinBs ifDescartes, trans.

Joh n Cottingham, Rob ert Stoothoff and Dugald Murdoch (Cambridge, Eng : Cambridge

University Press, 1985) , vol. 1, p. 99.

24 . This phrase is a traditional equivalent of " the human bod y," especially in th e

eighteenth century - TRANS .

25. Moreove r, Descartes can on ly express the meaning of God's const r uction of ani­

mal-machines in terms of fina lity: "conside r ing th e machine of the human body as having

been formed by God in order to have in itself all the movements usuall y manifested there"

("Six th Meditati on ," in Philosophical Works ifDescartes [1913] , trans. Elizabeth S. Haldan e

and G. R. T. Ross [N ew York: Cambridge University Press, 1967], vol. I, P: 83). [Here th e

wording of th e older tra nslat ion is more liter al t han is the tra ns lat ion of Cotti ngham et al.,

Philosophical WritinBs ifDescartes, vol. 2, pp. 50-62 - TRANS .]

26. " Descr ipt ion of th e Human Body and All of Its Fun cti on s" I (AT II. 225) , in

Philosophical WritinBsifDescartes, vol. I, p. 315.

66

z one

27. Claude Bernard , Lecons sur les phenomenes de la vie communes aux animaux et aux

veBhaux: 18 78-1 879 (Paris: Masson , 1936).

28. For more on thi s idea, see Raymond Ruyer, Elements de psycbo-bioloqie (Paris:

P.U.F., 1946) , pp. 46-47.

29. "Art ificial means what is aimed at a definite goal. And is opposed therefore to

livinp . Artificial or human or anthropomorphic are dis tingu ished from whateve r is only

living or vital. Anyt hing th at succeeds in appea r ing in the form of a clear and finite goal

becomes ar t ificial and thi s is what tends to happ en as consc iousness grows . It is also true

of man's work when it is intended to imitate an objec t or a spo nta neo us phenomenon as

close ly as possible. Th ought th at is consc ious of itself makes itself int o an artificial sys­

tern.... If life had a goal, it would no longer be life" (Paul Valery, Cahier B [Par is: Gallimard,

1910]) .

30. See Ed . Pich on , Le Developpetnent psychique de l 'enf ant et de l 'adolescent (Par is:

Masson , 1936) , P: 126; and Paul Cossa, PhysiopatholoBie du systeme nerveux (Paris: Masso n,

1936) , p. 845.

31. Politics, bk. I, ch. I (1252b), in The Basic Works ifAristotle, ed. Richard McKeon

( ew York: Rand om House, 1941), p. 1128.

32. Max Schele r, in his Mans Place in Nature [1928] (trans. Hans Meyer hoff [Bosto n:

Beacon , 1961] , pp . 75-8 1), has rem ark ed th at it is th ose living thi ngs th at are the least

specialized th at are the most difficult to explain by the mech anisti c idea, pace the mecha­

nists, because in their case all fun cti ons are carried out by th e whole organism. It is only

wit h th e gro wing differ entiation of funct ions and the increased complexity of the ner vou s

syste m th at st ruc tu res which resemble a machine in somefashion tend to appear.

33. GeneralAnatomy, Applied to PhysioloBY and Medicine, trans. George Hayward

(Bosto n: Rich ardson and Lord , 1822) .

34. "Description du corps hu main" I (AT II. 225) , in Charles Ada m and Paul

Tannery, eds., Ouevres de Descartes (paris: Vrin, 1974) , vol. II , P: 225. [Thi s pasage is omit­

ted from the English tr anslation of "Desc r iption of the Human Body and of AJI of Its

Functions" - TRANS.]

35. Paul Guillaume, La Psycbolopie de lafo rme (Par is: Flammar ion, 1937) , P: 131.

36. Pierre Grasse and Max Aron, Precis de bioloqie animale (2d ed., Pari s: Flammari on,

1947) , p. 647ff.

37. 4.203, in Philosophical WritinBsifDescartes, P: 288. See also my study "Descar tes

et la technique," Tra vaux du CanBres International de Philosophie, vol. 2: Etudes cartesiennes

(Paris: Hermann, 1937) , p. 77 ff.

38. "An organized being is not a mere machine, for th at has merely moving power, but

it possesses in itself formative power of a self- pro pagating kind which it comm unicates to

its materi als th ough they have it not of themselves; it organizes them , in fact , and th is can­

not be explained by the mere mech anical faculty of motion" (Critique ifJ udBment, tr ans.

J. H. Bernard [New York : Hafn er, 1951], p. 22) .

39. Krannhals, Der Weltsin der Technik (Munic h and Berlin: Oldenb ourg, 1932) , P: 68.

Machin e an d Organis m

40. The sta rt ing point for these works must be sought in Darwin , The Descent ifMan ­

whose ideas Marx saw clearly as immen sely significant.

41. Alfred Espinas, Les OriBin es de la tecbnoloqi e (Par is: Alcan, 1897 ) .

42. Erns t Kapp, Grundlinien einer Philosophie der Technik (Braunschweig:

Westermann, 1877) . Thi s work, which was a classic in Ge rmany, has rem ained so misu n­

derstood in France that ce rtain psychologists who took up th e problem of how animals

utili ze tools, and animal intelligence, and who took the research of Kohl er and Guillaume

as their sta rt ing point, att ributed thi s th eory of projecti on to Espin as him self, without

noting th at Espinas states exp licitly, at numerou s junctures, th at he borrowed it from

Kapp , I am alluding here to the excellent littl e book by Gaston Viaud , L'Intelliqence: Son

evolution et sesjormes (Paris: P.U.F. , 1946) .

43. See Eberhard Zschimmer's Deutsche Philosophen der Technik (Stuttgar t: Enke, 1937) .

44 . Alard Du Bois-Reymond , Erfin duDB und Erfinde r (Berlin: Springer, 190 6) ; and

Oswald Spengler, Der Me nsch und die Techni k (Munich: Beck , 1931) . Alain outlined a

Darwinian int erpretation of technical constr uct ions in a fine rem ark (Les Propos d'Alain

[Pari s: N.R.F., 1920] , vol. 1, P: 60), preceded and followed by some othe rs th at are most

pertinen t to our problem. Th e same idea is referred to many times in the Systeme des

Beaux-Arts , conce rn ing th e making of the violin (4.5) , furniture (6.5) , houses in the coun­

try side (6.3, 6.8) .

45. And re Leroi- Gourhan , Evolutio n et technique, vol. 2: M ilieu et techniq ues (Paris:

Michel, 1945) .

46. Th e double-a cting engine , in which the steam acted on th e upper and lower sides

of the piston alt ernately, was perfect ed by Watt in 1784. Sadi Carno t' s Riflexions sur la

puissa nce motrice du Je u dates from 1824, and we know that it was ignored until the middle

of the ninetee nth century. On thi s subjec t , see Pierre Du casse, H istoires des techniques

(Par is: P.U.F., 1945), which stresses th at technique pr eced es theo ry.

On th e subject of the empirical succes sion of the various organs and uses of the stea m

eng ine, co nsult Arth ur Vierendeel's Esquisse d 'uoe histoire de la technique (Brussels and

Par is: Vrom ant, 1921) , which summ arizes Thurston's exte nsive work, Hi story if the Steam

Enp ine , For more about the history of Watt's work as an engin eer read the chapte r ent i­

tled "James Watt ou Ar iel ingeni eur," in Pierre Devaux 's Les Aven tures de la science (Paris:

Gallimard , 1943) .

47. Leroi-Gourhan , M ilieu et techniques, P: 100. Th e same view can be found in an

art icle by A. Hadricourt on "Les Moteurs anirn es en agri culture" (Re vue de botanique

appliq uee et d 'aqricult ure tropicale 20 [1940] , P: 762) : "We mu st not forget that we owe our

inanimate mot ors to irrigati on : the nori a is at th e or igin of th e hydraulic mill, ju st as th e

pump is at the ori gin of th e steam engine." Thi s excellent study sets out th e principles for

exp laining tools from th e per specti ve of th eir relationship to organic com modit ies and

the tradi tion al ways they were used .

48. Leroi- Gourhan , Mi lieu et techniques, P: 104.

49. Ibid ., P: 406.

68

z one

50. In his The Two Sources rfM orali ty and Religi on (trans. R. Ashley Andra and

Cloudesley Brereton [New York: Holt , 1949]) , He nr i Bergson thinks very explicitly that

the sp irit of mec hanical invention, although it is fed by science, remains distinct from

it and can even , if necessary, be separated from it (pp. 329-30). Th e fact is that Bergson

is also one of the rare French philosophers , if not the only one, who has considered me­

chanical invention as a biological fun ction, an aspect of the organization of matter by life:

Creati ve Evolution (t rans. Arthur Mit chell [New York: Modern Library, 1944 ) is, in some

sense, a tr eatise of gene ral organology.

On the subject of the relationship between explanation and act ion see also Paul Valery,

"L' Homrne et la co quille" and "Di scours aux chirurgie ns," in Variete V (Paris: Gallimard,

1945), and hi s description of boat building in Eupalinos.

And , finally, read th e admirable "In Pra ise of Hands" in Henri Focillon , The Life rfForms in Art (New York: Zone Books, 1989) , pp. 157-84.

51. Geo rge Friedmann, Problemes humains du machinisme industrielle (Par is: Gallimard ,

1946) .

52 . Ibid ., p. 96 , note.

53. Ibid ., p. 369 .

54. This attitude is one that has begun to be famili ar amo ng biologists. In particular,

see L. Cuenot, In vention etflnalite en biolopie (Par is: Flammarion, 1941); and Andree Tetry,

Les Outils chez les etres vivants (Paris: Gallimard, 1948) - espec ially the latter 's reflecti ons

on "Adaptat ion and Invention" (p. 120ff.) . It is impossible to mistake the impetu s given to

these t reatments by the ideas of Teilh ard de Chardin.

A new discipline, Bionics, whi ch eme rged aro und ten years ago in th e U nited States,

stud ies biological structur es and systems able to be util ized as models or analogues by

technology, no tab ly by builders of syste ms for detection, direct ion and equilibration

meant for equipping planes or missiles. Bion ics is th e ext reme ly subtle art of information

that has taken a leaf from natural life. The frog, with its eye capable of select ing informa­

tion that is instantly usable, th e rattl esnake, with its thermoceptor which tr aces the blood

of its pr ey at night, the co mmon fly, balancing itself in flight by mean s of two vibrati le

filam ents, have all furnished models for thi s new br eed of engineers. In man y Ameri can

universiti es, special training in Bioengineering is available, for which the Massachusetts

Inst itu te of Technology seems to have been the instigator. See the articl e by J. Dufre noy,

"Systernes biologiqu es servan t de mod eles 11 la tec hno logie," Cabiers des ingenieurs agron omes

(Ju ne-July, 196 2) , p. 21.

Translated from the French by Mark Cohen and Randall Ch erry