by Jacques Ellul
1964 Vintage Books - Division of Random House, NY
20010523
Reference to Lewis Mumford’s trilogy as presented with assurance historically
p vi of the forward by Robert K. Merton, Professor of Sociology, Columbia University "It is a civilization committed to the quest for continually improved means to carelessly examined ends."
p xxv of the Note to the Reader "technique is the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency (for a given stage of development) in every field of human activity."
method - more like algorithm
technique - more like the activity
My definition of an item in this collective idea of technique is "A repeatable prescription for modifying the state of some tangible or intangible set of initial states to some set of final states differing from the initial.
Invention: "a machine or process that supports the human accomplishment of a technique or related techniques or automates it all or a portion of that technique or those techniques.
p xxix refers to a swap of primative taboos and rituals for technological civilization, similar to Jung’s swap with the same and mental illness
p xxx "If an increasing number of people become fully aware of the threat the technological world poses to man’s personal and spiritual life, and if they determine to assert their freedom by upsetting the course of evolution, my forecast wil be invalidated."
p xxxiii "The moment man stops and resigns himself, he becomes subject to determinism."
p3 Oldham and Pierre Ducasse succummed to the habit of intellectuals to regard the forms of the past to be the same as forms of the present
p4 "Technique has now become almost completely independent of the machine"
p4 "the machine represents only a small part of techique."
p4 "technique has taken over all of man’s activity, not just his productive activity."
systematic theology
scales and arpegios
twelve steps of recovery
lunch plans
Dewey decimal classification
time out
lawn care
macrobiotics
lecture outlines
p4 list of the woes of technique
Are cities worse than mesopotamian farms?
Are slums worse than a village of the Dark Ages?
Is lack of space anything more than an interpersonal challenge?
Is polution a product of technique in general or just a small fragment of it?
Have we lost time, or just filled it?
Are all streets gloomy?
Have you ever been confused between night and day because of street lights?
p4 "technique transforms everything it touches into a machine."
p5 "Technique integrates the machine into society."
p5 "It [technique] is efficient and brings efficiency to everything."
p7 "Everyone has been taught that technique is an application of science ... it is true only for the physical sciences and for the nineteenth century."
Counterpoint
But the habitual use of technique is part of the general adaptive behavior of humans and some other mammals. Technique is responsible for a variety of characteristics of civilization that are difficult to view darkly.
Water sanitization
Removal of otherwise fatal tumors
Repair of broken tendons and bones
Shelter and heating
Conversation
Recorded history
Maintenance of important ideas and viewpoints
p9,10 "we can no longer conceive of science without its technical outcome."
p10 "science has become an instrument of technique."
Sheldon "Organization is the process which consists in assigning appropriate tasks to individuals or to groups so as to attain, in and efficient and economic way, and by the coordination and combination of all their activities, the objectives agreed upon."
Antoine Mas "Standardization means resolving in advance all the problems that might possibly impede the functioning of an organization. It is not a matter of leaving it to inspiration, ingenuity, nor even intellegence to find a solution at the moment some difficulty arises; it is rather in some way to anticipate both the difficulty and its resolution. From then on, standardization creates impersonality, in the sense that organization relies more on methods and instructions than on individuals."
Marcel Mauss has a definition of technique limited to manual (i.e. hand) operations
My own thought - the Moon Race was a display of technique, showing off economic capability, reliability of construction, efficiency of gadget development, rather than a show of scientific prowess. The essential mathematical models were available globally.