Machine and Organism

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China, 1958.
Henri Cartier -Bresso n/Ma gnum Photos
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Machine and Organism
Georges Canguilhem
The relati onship between machine and organism has generally been st udied
in only one way. Nearly always, the organism has been explained on the basis
of a preconceived idea of the st ruct ure and functioning of the machine; but
only rarely have the st r ucture and function of the organism been used to make
the const r uct ion of the ma chine itself more underst andable. Even though
mechani sti c theory sparked some very impressive technical research, the fact
remained that the very notion of an "organology," as well as its basic premises
and methodology, remained undeveloped. I
Philosopher s and mechanistic biologists approached the machine as a set
of data, or else made it into a probl em that they could solve purely through
mental applicati on. To do t his, they called on t he engineer, who was for them
a scient ist in the truest sense. Misled by the ambiguit ies of their view of
mechanics, they saw machines only as theorems in concrete form . The opera-
ti ons necessary to const r uct machines wer e only secondary considerat ions
when compared wit h the all-important idea that the machine revealed their
theori es in concreto. To see thi s, one needed only to acknowledge what science
could accomplish, and from ther e it was simply a matter of the confident
applicat ion of that knowledge. However, I do not believe that it is possible to
t reat the biological probl em of the "living machine" by separat ing it from the
tec hnological problem it supposedly resolves - namely, the problem of the re-
lationship between tec hnology and science. Thi s problem is nor mally resolved
by star ti ng wit h the idea that , logically and chronologically, knowledge pre-
cedes application. What I want to show is that the cons truct ion of machin es
can indeed be understood by virt ue of cer tain truly biological principles, wit h-
out having at the same time to exami ne how technology relates to science.
I shall address the following topics in success ive order: what it means to
compare an organism to a machine; the relati onshi p between mechanical
processes, and t he results that might be achieved by using them; and the his-
tori cal rever sal of the tradit ional relationshi p between the machine and the
organism and the phil osophical consequences of thi s reversal.
4S
Machine and Or gan i sm
For those who have carefully studie d living beings and the forms th ey take, it
is rare - and only in the case of the ver te brates - that one notices any truly
mechanical at t r ibutes , at least in the sense that the term is commonly under-
st ood by scie nt ists. In La Pensee technique, for example, Juli en Pacotte notes
that movements of the joints and the eyeball can be paralleled with what math-
emat icians call a "mechanism,"? A machine can be defined as a man-made,
ar t ificial const ruc t ion, whi ch esse nt ially fun ctions by virt ue of mechanical
ope rat ions. A mechanism is made of a gro up of mobile solid parts that work
t ogether in suc h a way that their movement does not threaten the integrity
of the unit as a whole. A mechanism therefore cons ist s of movabl e parts that
work t ogether and periodi cally return t o a set rel ation with respect t o 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 fr eedom of movement can be
quantified means that they can ser ve as t angible guides for measuring, for
sett ing limits on the amount of movement that can be expected between any
two inte rac t ing solid obj ects. In every machine, then, movement is a function,
firs t, of the way the 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 measurabl e. 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, movement s are
simply pr opagat ed, not create d. A rather simple example of how this trans-
formation of movement takes place can be seen in sever al devices - a wheel
crank or an eccent ric crank, for example - th at ar e set into motion by an ini-
ti allateral movement but eventually produce reciprocating, ro t ary movement.
Of course, mechani cal ope rations can be combine d, either by supe r impos ing
them or adding t hem t ogether. It is even possible t o 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 stoppe d."
What const it utes the rule in human indust ry is the exce pt ion in the struc-
ture of organisms and the except ion in nature, and I must add here that in
t he hist ory of t echnology and the inventions of man assembled configurat ions
are not the 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 assembling a flint and a han-
dle, or the const ruct ion of nets or fabrics, are so many signs that the primi-
tive stage has been passed.
This brief overview of some elementary principles of kin ematics helps to
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give a fuller sense of the problem without losing sight of a central paradox:
Why was it necessary to turn to the theory of mechanism, as outlined above,
in order to explain the living organism? The answer can be found, it see ms,
in the fact that this mechanical model of living organisms does not rely on
kinematics alone. A machine, as defined above, is not totally self- suffi ci ent: 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 associ ated with an ene rgy source. "
For a long time, kinematic mechanisms wer e 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 depended
on humans or animals to run it . Consequently, it ha s been shown that mecha-
nisti c theo ry has dep ended, hi storically, 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 rel y on human or animal muscle power.
This is the general idea put forth in the following well -known t ext:
Exami ne carefully the physical eco nomy of man: What do you find ? The jaws are
armed with t eeth, which are no more than pincer s. This stomac h is nothing but a
retort, or heat chamber; the veins, the arteries and indeed the ent ire vascul ar 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 what are mu scles if not a syste m of
cables and ropes. What is the oculomotor nerve, if not a pull ey? And so on. Try
as they will, chemists cannot explain natu re and set up a separate phil osophy sim-
ply by coining a new vocabulary around words like "fusion," "sublimati on" and
"precipitation"; for thi s does not at all address either the incontrovertible laws of
equilibr ium or the laws governing the workings of the wedge, cables, pumps as
elements of mechanical theory.
This text is not where we mi ght 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 presti ge, the Italians
prefer to attribute it to Galileo.»This t ext 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
t erms 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, whereas a pump transforms a
given movement and is also a motor - admittedly, a motor t hat returns what -
ever energy it receives; but, at cer t ain intervals, it appar ently has a degree of
indep endence of movement. In Baglivi's t ext, 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
t he re are also machines that act as motors, deriving their 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 t ext see ms linked to Descartes, the idea of the body-as-
machine actually goes back t o Ar ist otle. When dealing with the Cartesian
theory of the animal-machine, it is often difficult to decide whether or not
Descart es had any precursor s for thi s idea. Those who look for Descartes's
predecessor s her e usuall y cite Gomez Per eira, a Spanish doct or of the second
half of the sixteent h cent ury: Perei ra suggested, before Descartes, that he
coul d demonstrate that animals we re wholly machines and that they do not
possess th at sens it ive soul so fre que ntly attr ibute d t o thern.? But in ot her
respect s, it is unquesti onably Aristotle who saw the congruity between ani mal
movements and aut omat ic mechanical movements, like those observed in
instruments of war, especially catapults. This idea is treated rather extensively
by Alfred Espinas, who discusses the connec t ion between the problems dealt
with by Ari st otle in De Motu atii mali um and those in his compilat ion of
Quaestiones mechani cae.8 Ari st otle draws a clear parallel between the organs
of ani mal movement and "oreana," or parts of war ma chines, like th e arm of
a cata pult about to launch a projectile. Thus cata pults, typ ical auto ma t ic
machi nes of the period, see med t o be ar t iculated 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 the analogy even fur ther by compari ng th e move-
ment of our limbs t o mechanisms; and he makes his case in much the same
way that Plato did when, in the Titnaeus, he compared the movement of ver -
t ebrates to hinges or pivots.
It is true that in Aristotle th e theory of movement is somewhat different
fro m what it woul d become in Descartes. Acco rding to Aris totle, the soul is
the principl e of all movement . All movement first presupposes immobility
and then re quires a prime mover or some moti vating force. Desire moves
the body, and des ire is explained by the soul, j ust as potentiality is explaine d
by an act . Despite their di ffer ing explanations of movement, for Ar isto tle as
for Descartes lat er, t he compar ison of t he body wit h a machine presupposes
t hat man is composed of automa te d mech ani cal parts reliant on an energy
source that pr oduces motor effects over time and cont inue to do so well aft er
th e original (human or animal) ene rgy has di ssipated. It is this di screpancy
between the sto rage of energy to be rel eased by the mechani sm and the mo-
ment of release th at allows us to forge t the relati on of dependence between
t he effec ts of the mechanism and the act ions of a body. When Descartes looks
to machi nes t o explain how organis ms work, he invokes spring-ope rated and
hydraulic automat a. As a result, he owes a great intellectual debt to the ideas
behind the t echnical creat ions of hi s own time, including clocks and watc hes,
wate r mill s and churc h organs of the early seventeenth cent ury. We can say,
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then, that as long as the conce pt of the human and animal body is inextricably
"t ied" to the machine, it is not possible to offer an explanat ion of the body
in t erms of the machine. Histor ically, it was not possible to conce ive of suc h
an explanat ion until the day th at human ingenuity create d mechanical devices
that not onl y imitated organic movements - as in the launching of a proj ec-
til e or the back-and-forth movement of a saw - but also required no human
inte rve nt ion except t o const r uct them and set them going
In two inst ances, I have asserted th at an explanat ion cannot be for mulated
wit hout the ex iste nce of certai n condit ions . Is thi s t antamount to at t ri but ing
a hi st orical necessity t o scientific explanatio n? How do I explain the abrupt
appearance in Descartes of a lucid mechani sti c interpretati on of biological
phenomena? This theory is clearl y rel ated to modi ficati ons th at occ urred in
t he eco nomic and political st ruc t ure of West ern society, but the nature of
this relation remains obscure.
This problem has been treat ed in depth by P-M. Schuhl, who has shown
th at in ancient phil osophy the oppos it ion of scie nce and technique paralleled
t he opposi t ion of freedo m and servi t ude and, at a deeper level , of art and na-
ture.? Schuh] suppo rts this par allel with Ar isto tle's assertion that natural and
violent movement are opposed - a violent movement occurs whe n mecha-
nisms are used against nature, and its charac ter istics are that it exhausts itself
rapidl y and never becomes habi tu al - whic h is to say, a permanent tendency
t o reproduce itself never obt ains .
Here I must turn t o the difficult problem of th e hi story of civilizat ion
and t he philosophy of history. With Aristotle, the hi erarchy of freedo m and
servility, of th eory and pract ice, of nature and art, is paralleled by an eco-
nomic and political hi erarchy in the cit ies, namely, the rel ati ons of freemen
and slaves. The slave, according t o Ar istotle in the Politics, is an animate d
machine. 10This is th e cr ux of t he probl em t o which Schuhl only alludes in
passing: Did the Greek conce pt ion of the digni ty of scie nce lead to their dis-
dain for t echnique and th e resultant pauci ty of invent ions? And did thi s in
turn lead t o the di fficul ty of applying the results of t echnical activity t o the
explanat ion of nature? Or, rather, did the Gr eeks' high regard for purely
speculat ive sci ence and detached contemplat ion explain the absence of tech-
ni cal invention ? Did th eir di sregard for work cause slavery, or did the abun -
dance of slaves due to military supremacy explain their low regard for work?
Are we obliged t o explain th e ideology in terms of th e socioeconomic st ruc-
ture or, rather, th e socioeconomic st r uct ure in terms of the ideology? Di d
the ease of exploit ing human beings make it easier to disdain the t echniques
th at would allow them t o exploit nature? Does t he arduousness of exploiti ng
nature just ify the exploitati on of man by man? Is there a causal relationship
at work here? And if so, in which direction does it go? Or are we dealing wi th
49
Machine and Organism
a global st r uct ure having recip rocal relati ons and infl ue nces?
A similar problem is presented by Fat he r Lucien Laberthonniere, who
cont rasts th e physics of an ar t ist or an aest he te t o that of an engineer and an
ar tisan." Laberthonniere suggests th at the determining factor her e is ideas,
given that the Car tesian transformation in the philosophy of t echnique pre-
supposes Chr istianity. It was necessary t o conceive of man as a being who
transcends nature and matter in order t o 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 could be devalorized. Next it was necessary t o conceive of men as
being radi cally and originally equal so that , as the exploit at ion of humans by
eac h other was conde mned on polit ical gro unds, there were increased tech-
nical means to exploit nature and a growing sense of du ty to do so. This analy-
sis permits Laberthonni er e t o spea k of a Chr ist ian or igin for Cartes ian physics.
However, he qualifi es hi s own claim: the physics and t echnique supposedly
made po ssible by Chr ist ianity came, for Descartes, well after Chr ist ianity had
been founded as a religion. Moreover, humani st phil osophy, whic h saw man
as mast er and pr opri etor of nature, was in direct oppos it ion t o Chr ist ianity
as humanist s saw it : the religion of salvat ion, of esca pe into the her eaft er, in-
spired by a contempt for the things of thi s life and unconcerned with whatever
fr uits t echnology might win for mankind in thi s worl d below. Laberthonnier e
asserts that "t ime does not ente r into the quest ion," but thi s is by no means
certain. In any case, several classic text s have demonstrated that cer tain techni-
cal inventions th at transformed the use of ani mal motor power - for example,
the hor sesho e and the shoulde r harness - accomplishe d more for the eman-
cipat ion of slaves t han di d the countless pr eachings of abolit ionists.
In Der Uber8an8 vomJe udalem zum biir8erlichen Weltbi ld, Franz Borkenau
argues th at ther e is a causal relati onship between mechani st ic phil osophy and
the totality of soc ial and economic conditions in which it ar ises. 12 He claims
that at the start of the seventee nth century the qualitati ve philosophy of antiq-
uity and the Midd le Ages was eclipsed by mechani sti c ide as. The success of
these new ideas was, on t he level of ideology, an effect of the eco nomic fact
of the new organizat ion and expansion of manufacturing. For Borken au, the
division of ar t isanal labor into separate, simplified ope rat ions requiring little
skill produce d the concept of abst r act soc ial labor. Once labor had been de-
composed into simple, identical and easily repeat able movements, price and
wages could be determi ned simply by comparing the hours worked - and the
result was a process th at , previously qu alit ati ve, had become quantifi able. 13
Calculat ing work in purely quantitative t erms that can be treat ed mathemat-
ically is claimed t o be t he basis and the starting point for a mechanisti c con-
cep t ion of th e life worl d. It is therefore by redu cing all value t o economic
value, "to cold hard cash," as Marx puts it in The Communist Manifesto, th at
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the mechanisti c view of the uni verse is supposed t o be funda me ntally a
Weltanschauung of the bourgeoisie. Finally, Borkenau claims that the animal-
machine gives ri se to the norms of the na scent capit alist eco nomy. Descartes,
Galileo and Hobb es are thus the unwitting heralds of thi s economic revolut ion.
Borkenau's theses have been analyzed and crit icized more forcefull y by
Henryk Grossmann. 14 According to him, Borkenau ignores five hundred years
of economic and ideological hi st ory by see ing mechanist ic theory as coinc id -
ing wi th the ri se of manufacturing at the beginning of the seventeent h cen-
tu ry: Borkenau wr ites as if Leonardo da Vinci had never existe d. Referring
t o Pierre Duhem's Les Origi nes de la statique (1905), and th e publicati on of
Leonardo's manuscripts (Herzfeld, 1904; Gabriel Seailles, 1906; Peladan,
1907) , Grossmann agrees with Seailles th at with the publication of Leonardo's
manuscripts it became cle ar th at the origins of modern scie nce could be
pushed back by more than a cent ury. Th e quantification of the noti on of work
occurs first within mathematics, well before it s economic rationali zation.
The norms of the capi talist evaluat ion of producti on , moreover, had been
defined by the It alian banker s even in the thirteenth cent ury. Relying on
Marx, Gr ossmann reminds us t hat alt hough in general there was no division
of labor in manufacturing properl y speaking, manufacturing at its inception
meant the gat he ring t ogether in the same place of ski lled art isans who had
previously worked independently. Accordi ng to Gross mann, then, it is not
the calculat ion of cost per hour of work, but the evolut ion of mech anizati on
that is the real cause of the mechanical view of the uni verse. Th e development
of mechanization begins during th e Renaissance. IS It is, therefore, more accu-
rate to say that Descartes had consciously rati onali zed a mechanisti c technique
than that he had unconsciousl y expressed the imperatives of a capit alist econ-
omy. For Descartes, mechani cs is a theory ifmachines that presupposes a spon-
t aneous invention whic h science must then consciously promote and develop.
Which machines did the most to modify the relati onship between man
and nature before the ti me of Descartes, far beyond t he wildest imaginat ions
of th e ancients - and did most t o justi fy and rationalize the hop es men had
veste d in machines? Above all there wer e firearms, whic h hardly interest ed
Descartes except in t erms of th e problem of the projectil e. 16 On the other
hand, Descartes was very interested in clocks and wat ches, in lifting machines,
in wate r-dr iven machines and other related devices. As a result, one should
say that Descartes made a human phenomenon - the const ruction of ma-
chi nes - into an integral part of hi s phil osophy; and one should avoid saying
that he transposed the soci al phenomena of capitalist production into ideology.
The key questi on becomes: How does Cartesianism account for an internal
principle of goal-directed act ivity in mechani sms, as is implied in t he compar-
ison of a machine wi t h an organi sm?
5 1
Machine and Organism
The theory of the animal -machine is insepar able from "I think therefore I
am." The rad ical distincti on between the soul and the body, between thought
and extens ion, requires the affir mation that matter, whateve r form it ado pts,
and th ought , whateve r funct ion it fulfill s, are each an undivided subs t ance. 17
Because t he only function of t he soul is judgment, it is impossible t o admit
the existe nce of a soul in anima ls, since we have no proo f that ani mals judge,
incapable as they are of language or invent ion. is
For Descartes, though, the refusal to att ribute a soul - that is, reason - t o
ani mals, does not necessarily lead to the conclus ion that animals are not alive
(since not mu ch more than a warm, beat ing heart is at issue) ; no r must ani-
mals be de nied sensibility, t o t he exte nt that suc h sens ibility is solely a func-
ti on of their orga ns.
i9
In t he same di scussion, a moral foundat ion for the ani mal-machi ne theory
comes t o light. Descartes views th e animal 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 mals than it is overly piou s t oward men , freed
from the supe rst it ions of the Pythagori ans, because it absolves them of the hint
of cri me whenever they eat or kill animals."20And it comes as no small sur pr ise
t o find the same argu me nt in reverse in a passage of Leibni z: "if we are com-
pelled t o view the ani mal as being more than a ma chine, we would have to
become and renounce our domination of animals."21 And so we
confront an attit ude typical of Weste rn thought. On the theor et ical level, tn e
mechanizat ion of life only considers animals to t he exte nt that th ey serve man' s
techno logical ends. Man can only ma ke himself t he master and propriet or of
nat ure if he denies any natural fi nality or purpose; and he mu st conside r the
whole of nature, including all life for ms other th an himself, as solely a means
to serve hi s purposes.
This is how the mechanical 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 machine. As I have already noted, Descartes based
his mecha nical model on automata, that is, on moving ma chines.22
In order t o see th e full impli cat ion s of Descartes's theory, I now int end t o
look at the beginning of hi s "Trea t ise on Man ," which was published for the
first time in Leyden in 1662. He 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 t he soul, again on its own; and finally I must showhow
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 intention of making it as much as possible like us.
Thus God not onlygives it externally the colors and shapes of all the parts of our
52
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bodies, but also places inside it all the parts required to make it walk, eat, br eathe,
enabling it to imitat e all tho se functi ons which seem to proceed from matter and
to depend solely on the int er acting movements of our organs.
We see clocks, art ificial fountains, wate r mills and ot her such machin es which,
alt hough only man-made, see m t o move of their own accor d 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 ter vari ety of movements th an I
could possibly imagine in it, and of exhibit ing more ar t istry than I could possibly
ascr ibe t o it .
23
Were we to read this text as naivel y as pos sible, the theory of the animal-
machine would seem to make sense onl y if we put forward two important
and oft en-neglected postulates. The first is the exist ence of a God who builds
things, and the 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 aft er 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 theory, which is usuall y see n as
a departure from the Aristotelian concept of causality, and show how all of
Ari stotle's types of causality ar e nonetheless found in it, but not always in the
same place or simult aneously.
If we read the t ext more closely, we see that in order to const r uct the liv-
ing machine-" it is necessary to imitate a pr eexi sting living model. The con-
st r uct ion of a mechanical model presupposes a living original (Descartes is
perhaps closer her e to Plat o th an to Aristotle). The platonic Derniurge copies
the ideas, and the Idea is the model of which the natural object is a copy. The
Cartesian God, the Art!fex maximus, works to produce something equivalent
to the living body itself. The model for the living machine is that bod y itself.
Divine art imitat es the Idea - but th e Idea is the living body. What is more,
in the same way that a regular pol ygon is inscribed in a circle, and th at one
must pass an infinite distance to deduce one from the other, there is some-
thing of the machine in every aspect of life; but to pass from one to the other
wou ld require crossing over an infinite gap, one that onl y 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 imagine in it ,
and of exhibiting more artistry than I could possibly ascribe to it ." The the-
ory of the animal- machi ne would, therefore, have the same rel ation t o life
that a set of axioms has to geometry, th at is, nothing more than a rati onal
reconstruction. Thus, the theory operates by deception: it pretends to ignore
the concrete existe nce of what it must represent, and it deni es that what it
S3
Machine and Organ ism
actually produces comes onl y afte r it ha s been rationally legitimized.
This aspect of Cartesian theory, moreover, was accurately assessed by a
contemporary anato mist, the noted Nicolaus Steno, in the Dissertati on on the
Anatomy ifthe Brain deli vered in Pari s in 1665, a year aft er the "Treatis e on
Man" had app ear ed. While paying homage to Descartes (which was remark-
able, since anatomis 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 the anatomist understands
him. One can therefore say th at by subs ti t ut ing the body for the ma chine,
Descartes removed t eleol ogy from life, but in appe ar ance onl y, because he
has conce nt rate d it in its ent irety at the point at whi ch life begins. A dynamic
st ruc t ure is repl aced by an anato mical one; but since thi s form is produced by
t echnique, all possible sense of teleology has been confined t o th e t echnique
of production. In fact, it appears that mechanical theory and purposiveness
cannot be placed in oppos it ion, nor can mechanism and ant hropomor phism.
If the funct ioni ng of a machine can be explained by relations of pure causal-
ity, the const ruc t ion of a machine cannot be understood without t aking two
things into conside rat ion: a specifi c goal-directe d activity and man himself.
A machine is made by man and for man , t o achi eve specific ends, to produce
a given series of effects. 25
The positi ve element, then, in Descartes's attempt to explain life mechani-
cally is that he eliminates the need to ti e mechanism to finality in it s anthropo-
morphic aspect. However, it seems that in doing thi s, one anthropomorphism
has been subst it uted for another. A technological anthropomorphism has been
subst it uted for a political ant hropo mor phism.
In "Descript ion of the Human Body and All of Its Funct ions," a short trea-
ti se written in 1648, Descartes addresses the questi on of voluntary movement
in man: he offers, in t erms so lucid that they were to dominate the ent ire the-
ory of re flex and automatic movements up until the nineteenth cent ury, the
explanat ion th at the body obeys th e soul onl y on condition that the body is
primed mechanically to do so. For the soul t o decide t o move is not a suffi-
cient conditio n to induce the body t o move. "The soul," writes Descartes
"cannot produce any movement without th e appropriate disposition of the
bodil y organs whic h are required for making the movement. On the cont rary,
when all the bodily organs are appropriately di spo sed for some movement,
th e body has no need of the soul in order to produce that movement."26
Descartes means that whe n the soul moves the body it does not act like a king
or a general command ing his subjects or his troops as is popularly conce ived.
Rather, by viewi ng the body as a clock mechanism he envisions each organ
drivinp the ot her like interlo cking cogwhe els. So Descartes subst it utes for
the image of the pol it ical chain of command - where commands are passed
54
zone
by signals or spo ken orders, through a type of magical causality - the techno-
logical image of "co ntrol," in whic h a desired series of ope rat ions is act ivate d
by a cont rolling device or coordi nate d by a series of mechani cal linkups.
Descartes t akes the exact oppos ite positi on of Claude Bernard who, in hi s
cr it ique of vitalism, in Lecons sur les phenomenes de la vie communs aux anima ux
er aux veBewux, refu ses t o admit th at a vital force could have a separate exis -
ten ce because it "ca nnot do anything" - but he does admit , sur prisingly, that
it can "direct phenomen a that it does not produce."27 In other words, Bernard
repl aces the noti on of a vit al-force- as-worker wi t h the idea of vital-force-as -
legislat or 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 operati on t ranscends the exec ut ion of individual
op er ations. On the contrary, according to Descartes, a mechanical ope rat ion
repla ces th e power of direction and co mmand, but God has fixed the direc-
tion once and for all: the const r uct or includes the guide-controls wit hi n the
mechani cal process itself.
In short, with the Cartesi an explanat ion, it mi ght appear th at we have not
moved beyond the idea of finality or inner pu rposiveness. The reason for thi s
is that if we limit ourselves to th e worki ngs of the machine, everything can be
explained by the theory of mechani sm; but the theory cannot account for the
const ruct ion of the machine itself. Machines do not construct other machines,
and it could even be said th at, in a sense, explaining organs or organisms
through mechanical models amounts t o explaini ng th e orga n by means of it-
self. At bottom, t he n, we are dealing wi t h a t autology; for it can be shown -
and I shall indeed t ry to just ify this view - that machines can be considered as
orBans ?J the human species.
28
A t ool or a machine is an organ, and organs are
t ools or machines. And so it is hard t o see how mechani sm can be disti n-
gui shed from purposiveness. 0 one doubts th at a mechanism is needed to
ens ure th at a given operat ion is car ried out successfully; and, conversely,
every mechani sm mu st follow a preci sely determined sequence toward per-
forming some particular t ask, since a mechani sm cannot depend on random-
ness or chance . Ther efore, the opposit ion would be between those mechanisms
whose purpose is manifest and those wh ose purpose remains lat ent. In th e
case of a lock or a watc h, their fun ction is apparent, whil e the pin cer s of the
cr ab, often cons ide re d a marvel of adaptati on, have a lat ent purpose. As a
result, it seems impossible to deny th at certain biological mechani sms serve
a set purpose. Let us cons ide r an oft-cited exa mple, whi ch mechanist ic biol -
ogist s use t o argu e their case; namely, th at of the woman's pel vis, which en -
larges just before she gives birth. To deny that thi s enlargeme nt might not in
some way be t he fulfillment of a fundamental, purposive acti vity, we need only
view th e questi on in anothe 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 would be impossibl e t o give
birth were it not for a loosening of th e symphyses and a gradual roc ki ng move-
ment t oward the sacrococcygien bone which incr eases the diameter ever so
slightly beyond it s maximum. It is under standable that one would not want t o
believe that an act with suc h a specific biol ogi cal purpose is allowed to occur
onlyby virt ue of a mechani sm with no real biological function. And "allow" is
indeed the word that applies here, since wi t ho ut this mechanism th e act sim-
ply could not t ake pl ace. It is well known that, whe n dealing wit h an unknown
mechanism, we have to make certai n th at it is in fact a mechani sm - th at is, we
have t o kn ow what ultimate purpose or func tion it is intended to serve . We
can come to no conclusions abo ut how it is to be used , simply on th e basis of
it s form or it s st r uct ure, unl ess we already know how the machine or similar
machines are used . As a resul t , it is necessary fir st to see the machine at work
before attempt ing t o deduce the fun cti on from the st ructure.
We are now at the point where we can see the historical rever sal of the Cartes ian
rela t ions hip between the machi ne and the organis m. It is a well- known fact
- and so need not be belabo red - that in all organis ms we obse rve the phe-
nomena of autoconst r uction, automainte nance, autoregula t ion and autorepai r.
In the case of the ma chine, it s cons t r uc t ion is beyond it s power and dep ends
on the skill of the mech anic. It s mainten ance requires the consta nt attenti on
and watc hfulness of the ma chinist; for we all know how the complex workings
of a machine can be irremedi ably damaged du e to inattenti on and carelessness.
As for maintenance and repair, they demand the same peri odi c intervention
of human act ion. While there are machines that ar e sel f-regulat ing, these are
in fact mach ines that man has grafte d onto anot her machine. The const ruc-
t ion of servomecha nisms or elect roni c automata merely displaces the qu esti on
of the man- mac hi ne relati onshi p witho ut changing it in any fundame ntal way.
Further, in th e case of the machine ther e is a st r ict adhe 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 machine functions
wit hin narrowly defined limits, and these limits become all the more rigid with
the pr acti ce of st andardizat ion. St andardizat ion leads t o the simplificat ion of
basic models and spare parts, and t o unified st andards 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 meant for the same place - wi t hi n, of
course, a margin of t olerance dete r mi ned by manufacturing const raints.
Now th at the propert ies of a machine have been defined in relati on to those
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 t he re is more purposiveness in machines
than in organisms, since a machine see ms t o move uniformly, unidirecti onally
toward complet ing a particular activity. A machine cannot repl ace ano t her
ma chine. The more specific the end-result desir ed , the more the margi n of
tol erance is reduced , and the mo re the ma chine's dir ectiveness seems con-
cent rated, focused on a particular end. It is well known that fun ct ion s in t he
organism ar e substitutabl e, organs are polyvalent . Alt hough this substi tutabil-
ity of funct ions and polyvalence of organs is not absolute, in comparison with
the same qualities in the machine, it is so conside rable that any compar ison
is quite obviously abs urd.s? As an example of t he 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 ri ght side of the child's brain is almost never accompani ed
by aphasia, because the other ar eas 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 ni ne mont hs old,
any exist ing aphasia di sappears very qui ckl y.30As for th e problem of the pol y-
valent organs, I need simply note the fact that for a majori ty of organs , whic h
we have traditionally bel ieved t o serve some definite fun ction, t he t r ut h is
that we have no idea wh at ot he r fun ctions they mi ght indeed fulfill. Thi s is
the reason that the stomach is said to be, in principl e at leas t , an organ of
di gestion. However, it is a fact that after a gast rec to my performed to treat an
ul cer, there ar e fewer problems wi t h di gestion than wi th those we ob serve
wit h hematopoiesis. It was finall y discovered that the stomach behaves 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 recent exper ime nt performed by the biol ogist Courrier, at the College de
Fr ance. Courrier made an incision in the uterus of a pregnant rabbit, ex-
tracted a placenta from the uterus and placed it in the peritoneal cavity. This
placenta graft ed it self onto the intestine and fed it self normally. When t he
gr aft was performed, the rabbit's ovari es were ablate d - meaning that the
funct ion ful filled by th e cor pus lute um during pregnancy was supp ressed. At
that moment, all the placentas present in the uterus were aborte d and only
the pl acenta sit uate d in the perit oneal cavity came to t erm. Here is an exam-
ple of the intestine behaving like a uterus, and perhaps, one might even say,
more success fully.
In this case, then, it is tempting to reve rse one of Ari stotle's formulati on s
in hi s Politics: "For nature is not st ingy, like th e smi th who fashions the Del -
phi an knife for ma ny uses; she makes each thing for a single use, and every
in strument is best made whe n intended for one and not for many uses." 31
On the cont r ary, it seems that thi s definition of finality or purposiveness
would be more applicable to a machine 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 mmodate a diver sity of functi ons. Clearly, an organism has a greate r range
of act ivity than a machine. It is less bound by purposiven ess and more op en
t o potentialiti es.P Every aspect and every movement of the ma chine is calcu-
lat ed ; and the wo rki ng of the machine confirms how eac h calculat ion holds
up to certain norms, measures or est imates; whereas the living body funct ions
according to exper ience. Life is exper ience, meaning improvisation, acting as
circums ta nces per mit; life is tentat ive in every respect . Hence the overwhel m-
ing but often mi sunder sto od fact that life permits monstrositi es. Ther e are no
monst rou s machines. Th er e is no mechanic al pathology, as Xavier Bichat noted
in 1801 in his General Anatomy, Applied to Physiolo8Y and Medicine.33 Whereas
monster s are still living things, ther e is no way to di stinguish between th e nor-
mal and the pathologi cal in physics and mechanics. Only among living beings
is there a disti nc t ion between the normal and th e pathol ogical .
Above all, it is work in experime nt al embryology that has led t o the aban-
do ning of such mech ani st ic representati ons when interpreting living phenom-
ena, primarily by demonstra ting that once the embryo starts to develop, it
does not cont ain any ki nd of "specific mech ani sm" intended t o produce auto -
mat ically one organ or another. There can b e no d. oub t that this was Descartes' s
conception as well. In hi s "Descr ipt ion of the Human Body," he wrote: "If we
had a goo d knowl edge of what makes up the seme n of some species of animal
in particular, for exa mple man, then we would be able t o deduce from this
alone, using cer tain and mathemati cal reasoning, the complete sha pe and
conforma t ion of eac h of it s members, and likewi se, reciprocally, if we kn ew
many par ti cul ar iti es about thi s conforma tion, it would be possible to deduce
fro m th at what the seme n is."34 However, as Paul Guillaume remarks, it see ms
that the more we compare living beings to auto ma t ic machines, the mor e we
see m to understand their functi ons but th e less we under st and their genesis.
35
If the Cartesian concept ion were accurate, th at is, if the living organis m were
both preformed in th e embryo and developed mech ani stically, any modifica-
t ion ma de in the earliest stages wo uld t end t o di srupt the development of the
egg or prevent development alt oget he r.
However, thi s is hardl y th e case. According to a st udy in pot ential egg devel-
opment, based on research by Driesch, Horst adius, Speman and Mangold, it
was shown t hat embryonic development cannot be reduced t o a mech ani cal
model witho ut running into anomalies. Let us take the example of the exper-
iments conduc ted by Horst adius on the egg of a sea urchin. He cut an egg A
from a sea urchin at st age sixteen so that eac h part of the egg maintained a
horizontal symmetry, and then he cut egg B, wit h each part being ver tically
symme t r ical. He joined half of A wi t h half of B and th e egg developed nor-
mally. Driesch t ook th e sea urchin egg at stage sixteen and pressed the egg
between two thin layer s of cells, while modi fying the recip ro cal positi on of
S8
zone
the cells at the two poles; sti ll, the egg developed normally. The results of these
two st udi es allow us to conclude that the same effect is achi eved regardless of
how conditions are var ied.
There is an even more st r iking exper iment , in whic h Dr iesch t ook blasto-
mer es from th e sea ur chin egg at stage two. By removing the blast omer es, eit her
mechanically or chemically in sea wat er lacking calcium salts, t he result was
t hat eac h of the blastomeres gave bir th to a lar va which was perfectl y normal
down t o the smallest detail. Here, then, the result is t he same regar dl ess of
how t he cha rac t erist ics of a facto r are changed. The qu antitati ve cha nge in
a given fact or does not lead t o a qualitative cha nge in the result . Conversel y,
whe n two sea urchin eggs are joined they result in a single larva that is larger
than normal. Thi s is yet another confirmatio n that t he result is un affected by
t he qu antitati ve cha nge in one of the factors. Whe t her the factors are multi-
pli ed or di vided , 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 ki nds of eggs at issue: regulated eggs, like the eggs of sea
urchins, and mosaic eggs, like those of frogs, whos e firs t blast omeres develop
in exactly th e same way, whether th ey are dissociated or remain together. Most
biol ogist s have recently come around to admitting that wha t distinguishes t he
two phenomena is simply that de te r minat ion occurs earlier in the so-called
mosaic eggs. On the one hand, the regul at ed egg sta rts t o act like a mosaic
egg at a certa in stage; on the ot her hand, at stage two the blast omer e of the
frog egg yiel ds a complete embryo, as do es a regul at ed egg, if it is rever sed .Jf
Thus, it is illusory to de ny the idea of purposiveness in orga nis ms and to
attr ibut e it to automa tic funct ions, however complex we might imagine these
to be. As long as a machi ne cannot const ruct it sel f, and as long as an orga n-
ism is not equal to the sum of its parts, it mi ght see m legitimat e t o think th at
biol ogical organiz ati on is th e bas is and the necessary condit ion for the exi s-
t en ce and purpose of a machi ne. Fr om the philosophical point of view, it is
less important to explain the operation of a machine than to un derst and it .
And t o underst and it mean s to inscribe it in human hist ory by inscribing
human hi st ory in life - not overlooking the fact that with the advent of man
ther e appeared a cult ur e that was no longer ent irely reducibl e to natural causes.
And so we arrive at th e point where the machi ne is seen as ajGct ifculture,
expressed in mechani sms that are themselves nothing more than an explain-
ablefact ifnature. In a celebrated t ext in "Pr inci ples of Philosophy," Descart es
writes, "It is cer tai n that all the rules of mechanics belong t o physics, to the
extent that all artifi cial thinBs are thereby natural . Sinc e, for example, whe n a
watc h counts 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 uit ."37 But, fro m our point
59
Ma c hi ne and Or gani sm
of view, we can and must reverse the relation ship of the watc h t o the tree and
say that the cogs and ge ne rally all the compone nts that make up a watc h ar e
des igned to produce a desir ed effect : all the parts of the mechani sm ar e prod-
uct s of imaginat ion , each piece fulfilling some final purpose or design that at
one time was only imagined or dreamed of; they are thus the direct or indirect
products of a t echnical acti vity that is as authe nt ically organi c as the flower-
ing of trees. And, on a more funda me ntal level, the process wo rks with great
efficiency even though there is no more conscious obse rvance of the rules
and laws of physics than there mi ght be within vegetal life. Although the con-
st r uct ion of a ma chine might presuppose at some st age the understanding of
the logics of physics, it should not and cannot be forgotten that, as a matter
of chro nology and biology, const ruct ion of machines took place well before
ther e was any understanding of physics.
However, another author has asserted, cont rary to Descartes, that living
organisms cannot be reduced t o a machine and, similarly, art cannot be re-
du ced to science. The author in qu esti on is Kant, in hi s Critique rJJ ud8ment.
While 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 inter est ed in
this questi on , especially aft er 1870, ha ve don e so.
In the "Cr it ique of Teleol ogical Judgment," Kant di stinguishes between
the machine and the organis m, whi le drawing on Descartes' s favorite exam-
ple of the watch. In a machine, he st ates, each part exists for the ot he r but
not because of the ot he r : no part produces anot he r part; no one part is pro-
duced by the ent ire unit; nor does one part produce ano t he r part of simi lar
kind. There is no watc h that makes othe r watc hes. 0 part can replace it self.
And no machine can repl ace one of it s own mi ssing parts. And so, while a
machine possesses motor power, it has no transformational ene rgy th at mi ght
propagate it self or be transmitted t o an object outside the ma chine it self. Kant
draws a di stinction between human skill and t echnology, whic h ar e marked
by int enti on ality, as opposed to involuntary life processes. But in an impor-
t ant passage of the "Crit ique of Aesthetic Judgment," Kant defines the origi-
nality ofhuman skill as it relates to knowledge:
Art, regarded as human skill, differs from science (as ability differs from knowledge)
in the same way that a practi cal 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 sufficientlycognizant 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 Weltsinn der Technik , and, following
Kant, he acknowledges that all technique is essent ially primordi al, meaning th at
60
z o ne
it cannot be reduced to a simple questi on of rationality.39 Indeed , we tend to see
the skille d hand that adjus ts a machine or the mind that carefully orches t rates
a production process as examples of "ingenuity," having their basis in instinct;
but these are in fact as difficult to explain as the production of mammalian eggs
outside t he ovary, even in the event that the physio chemical composit ion of
protoplasm and of sexu al hormones had been made ent irely clear to us.
This is why the wor k of anthrop ol ogi sts (and not engineers) seems t o she d
more light, however faint, on the qu estion of the cons t r uct ion of machines.40
Cur rently in Fr ance, et hnologists have co me closest to creat ing a philosophy
of t echnique in which the philosophers themselves seem t o have lost interest ,
their main concern having been chiefly the philosophy of science. On the co n-
trary, the et hnographe rs have gene rally focused their atte nt ion on th e rela-
ti onship between the production of the earliest t ool s, the fir st instruments
that were used to act upon and modify nature, and the ways these t ools we re
assembled or groupe d together. The only philosopher in France I know to
have posed these qu estions is Alfred Espinas, in hi s classic text on Les Oripines
de la tecbnoloqie." This work includes an appendix, the outl ine for a co urse
t aught at the Faculte des Lettres at Bordeaux around 1890, whic h dealt wi th
the wi ll, and in which Espi nas addressed, under the guise of wi ll, the qu es-
ti on 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 r man writer Ernst
Kapp, Espinas was able to explain the cons t r uc t ion of the first tool s. Kapp
fir st made his th eori es known in 1877.
42
According t o the theory of exte n-
sion, whose philosophical bases go back to Hartmann' s The Philosophy ifthe
Unconscious and further ba ck st ill to Schopenhauer, the ear lies t t ool s were
simply exte nsions of moving human organs. The flint, the club and the lever
exte nd and magni fy t he orga nic movement of t he ar m and it s ability t o strike.
This theory, like all theories, has it s limits and runs into cer ta in st umbling
bl ocks, especially whe n it is used t o ex plain fundame ntal inventi ons, suc h
as fir e and the wheel. In these cases, we would searc h in vain for the body
movements and the organs that fire and the wheel are supposed to pr olong or
extend; but the explanat ion certainly works for instruments like the hammer
or the lever and all suc h related t ool s. In France, then, it was the ethnogra-
ph ers who sought out and compiled not only th e facts but also the hypotheses
from which a bi ol ogi cal 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 Alar d Du Bois-Reymond in his EifindunB
und Eifinder (1906), or again, by Oswald Spe ngler in DerMensch und die Tecbnik,
which presented the theory that machines are cons t r uc te d as a "life t acti c"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 techniques. Leroi-Gourhan at te mpts t o ex plain the ph e-
nomen on of the cons t r uct ion of t ool s by compar ing it t o the movement of
the amoeba, which exte nds subs tances out beyond its mass so that it might
seize and capture an object it wis hes t o diges t:
If we are drawn to view the act of percussion as the fundament al techni cal activ-
ity, it is because we wit ness 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 - whet her we view the material bei ng 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 striki ng organs.
45
In the last cha pte rs of thi s work one finds a theory of machi ne that is alto-
get he r di fferent from the traditional theories that, for lack of a better term,
I sha ll classify as Car tesi an - where t echnical invention amounted t o the
application of a given syste m of knowledge.
Tra ditiona lly, the locomotive is presented as a clas sic example of a "ma r-
vel of science." However, the cons t r uc t ion of the steam engine is only under-
sta ndable whe n pl aced in light of t heoretical knowledge that preceded it , as
the cul minat ion of an age -old probl em, and a speci fically t echnological one
at that - how to pump wate r out of mines. And so it would be necessary to
underst and the natural hist ory of the development of the pump, and to know
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 atmospheric
press ure act ing as a motor t o lower the pi st on) in orde r to see that the essen-
t ial "organ" in a locomoti ve is a cylinde r and a piston .w
Tr acing a similar progression of ideas, Leroi-Gourhan goes even further,
pointing back t o the wheel as one of th e locomotive's ancesto rs, in the bi ol og-
ical sense of th e word . " It is machines like the wheel," he states , "that gave ri se
t o st eam engi nes and modern-day motors. All of the highest t echnologi cal
achi evement s of the most inventive minds of our time can be grouped aro und
the ci rcular move me nts of t he crank, th e pedal, the drive belt."47 He the n goes
on t o add: "The way i nvent ions influenced eac h ot he r ha s not been st udied
sufficiently and we don't see m to take note of the fact th at , without the whe el,
we would not have the locomotive."48 Furt her 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 neously.f?
62
zone
In light of these rema rks, we see how scie nce and technique mu st be consid-
ered as two separate areas; that is, they do not graft onto each ot her but, rather,
each t akes from the other either its solut ions or its problems. It is the rati onal-
izing and ordering imposed by t echnology th at makes us forget th at machines
have their origin in the irrational. In thi s area as in all others, it is necessary to
know how to accommo date the irrati onal, even whe n - and especially whe n
- we want t o defend rati onali sm.50
It must be added that the reversal of the relati onship between the machine
and the organism, brought about by a systema tic under st anding of t echnical
inven ti ons as if they were exte ns ions of human beh avior or life processes,
is in someway confirmed by the beli ef th at th e gene ralized use of machines
has slowly imposed conte mporary industrialized soc iety on man . George
Fr iedmann has shown very clea rly th e ste ps by which "bo dy" gradually
became a fir st-order t erm in th e human ma chine-body equat ion. 51 With
Frederick Taylor and the first technicians to make scient ific st udies of work-
task movements, th e human body was measured as if it fun cti oned like a
machine. Ifwe see their aim as the elimi nat ion of all unnecessary movement
and t he ir view of output as bei ng expresse d only in te rms of a ce rtain nu m-
ber of mathemat ically determi ned facto rs, then rati onalizati on was, for all
intents and pu rposes, a mechanizatio n of the body. But the realizati on th at
t echnologically supe rfluous movements were bi ologically necessary move -
ments was the fir st st umbling block t o be enc ountered by th ose who insist ed
on viewing th e probl em of human-body-as- machine in excl usively t echno-
logical t erms. From here on , the syste mat ic exa minat ion of cert ain physio-
logical , psychotechnological and even some psychological condit ions (since
a cons iderat ion of values leads inevit ably t o questi ons at the very center of
the origin of human per sonality) finall y culmi nated in a reversal, called an
inevi table revolution by Fr iedma nn, in which t echnology would ada pt ma-
chines t o the human body. As Friedmann saw it , thi s industrial technology
appeared t o take the form of a scient ific rediscovery of the same ent irely
empi r ical procedures through whic h primitive peopl es had always sought
t o have their to ols meet the highest organic norms: that is, thei r t ools had t o
carry out a given acti on effect ively while maintaining a biological eco nomy;
and thi s occur red at the op timum level, when it most closely approximate d
the movement of the body at work, as whe n th e body de fends it sel f sponta-
neou sly from becomi ng excl usively subordinate to t he mechani caJ.S2 In this
way, Fr iedmann could speak, wi t hout irony or paradox, of the legitimacy of
co nside r ing the industrial development of the West from an et hnographic
point of view.53
In summary, by cons ide ring technology as a uni versal biological phe norn -
eno nv' and no longer simply as an intellectual ope rat ion to be carried out by
Machi ne and Or ga nism
man , I am led to the following conclusions : on the one hand, the creative
autonomy of the ar ts and skilled crafts in relation to all forms of knowledge
th at are capable of annexing them or expanding on th em; and, on the ot he r
hand, to inscribe the mech anical into the organic. It is no longer then , a ques-
ti on of determining the ext ent to which an organism can be thought of as a
machine, whether by virt ue of it s st r uct ure or of it s fun ctions. But it is neces-
sary to find the reasons that gave ri se t o the opposit e view, the Cartesian one.
I have attempted t o shed light on thi s probl em, 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 t empted
to offer would insist on showing that t echnology allows man to live in cont i-
nui ty with life, as opposed to a solut ion that wo uld see humankind as living
in a st ate of rupture for whic h we ourselves are responsibl e because of sci-
ence. Ther e is no doubt that thi s answe r appears to lend crede nce to th e list
of acc usat ions that all to o many writers have offer ed up no stalgi cally from
time to time, wit h no apparent regard to th eir lack of ori ginality, as th ey point
out the faults of t echnol ogy and progress. I have no intention of rushing t o
suppor t their cause . It is clear that if human society has embrace d the idea of
a t echnol ogy ba sed on a mechanistic model, the implications ar e enor mo us,
and the whole question cannot easily be treated lightly or recalled on demand.
But that model is altogether different from the one just exa mine d.
NOTES
1. After having been dogmaticall y accepted by biologists for many years, the mechanis-
tic theory of the organism is now considered narr ow and inadequate by those scient ists who
call t hemselves di alecti cal mater ialists. But the fact t hat t hey still concern t hemse lves with
formulat ing a philosophical pos itio n could easily support the rather wi desp read idea th at
philosophy does not possess its own domain, th at it is a poor rel ati on of speculat ion, and
must clothe itself in the hand-me- downs scient ists have used and then di scarded . It will be
my aim to show that the problem of machine and organis m is much broader in scope and
more philosophically important th an is commonly thought; and that it is far mor e t han a
theoretical and methodological dispu te among biologist s.
2. Juli en Pacott e, La Pensee technique (Paris: Alcan , 1931) .
3. One example of t he fundamental principles of a general th eory of mechani sms un-
derstood in t his way can be found in Franz Reul eaux's Theoretiscbe Kinetnati k: Grundz iiBe
einer Theorie des Maschinwesen (Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1875) .
4. For everything conce 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 Publisher s, 196 7) , vol. 1, pp. 374-79.
z one
6. For more on t his, see Charles Victor Daremberg, Hi stoire des sciences medicales
(Paris: Bailliere, 1870) , vol. 2, p. 879.
7. Go mez Per eira, Antoniana MarBarita: Opus pbysicis, medicis ac theoloqis non minus
utile quam necessarium (Medi na del Campo, 1555-58).
8. Alfr ed Espinas, "L'Organisa tio n ou la machine vivante en Grece au Ive 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 ppocrates G. Apostle and Lloyd P. Gerson (Gr innel ,
Iowa : Peripateti c Pr ess, 1986) , bk. I, ch. 2, sees. 4- 7.
II. Lucien Labert honniere, Les Etudes sur Descartes (Paris: Vrin, 1935) , especially the
append ix t o volume 2: " La Physiqu e de Descartes et la physique d'Ar ist ote,"
12. Fra nz Borken au, Der UberBanB vomJeudalem zum biirqerlichen Weltbi/d (Paris :
Alcan, 1934) .
13. Jean de la Fontaine's fable, "The Cobbler and the Businessman" (in La Font ai ne:
Selected Fables, t ran s. Jami e Michi e [New York: Viking, 1979] , pp. 188-91) is an excellent
illustration of the two different conceptions of work and its remunerati on .
14. Henryk Grossmann, "Die gesellschaftlic hen Grundlagen der mechanisti schen
Phil osophi e und di e Manufakt ur," Zeitschrij:f ur Sozialiorschunp, 4th ser., vol. 2 (1935) ,
pp. 161-231.
15. "Mechanizat ion" her e means the gene ralized use of machines to repl ace human
labor. However, it was also used to descr ibe Descartes's theory of animals as machines
befor e the nineteenth century when t he above usage was in force - T RANS.
16. In Descartes's " Pr inci ples of Phil osophy" (4.187 [AT 8A.314], Descartes: Selected
Philosophical WritinBs, trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff and Dugald Murdoch
[New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988] , pp. 199-200) , there are a few passages
th at reveal Descartes t o be equally interest ed in gunpowder, but he did not look for an
analogous explanat ory principl e for the animal organi sm in the explosion of gunpowd er
as a source of energy. It was an English doct or, Th omas Willi s, who explicitly formulated
a t heory of muscula r movement based on the analogy wi t h what occurs when the powder
explodes in a harquebus. In the seventeent h cent ury, Will is compared t he nerves to pow-
der lines in a manner th at remai ns valid today in some qu art er s - most notably, W M.
Bayliss comes to mi nd . Nerves are a sort of Bickford cord. They produce a spark th at wi ll
set off, in th e mu scle, an explosion t hat, in Willi s's view, is the onl y thing capable of ac-
count ing for th e phenomen a of spas m and prol onged cont ract ion observed by th e doctor.
17. " For th er e is withi n us bu t one soul, and thi s soul has wit hi n it no diversity of
parts: it is at once sens it ive and rati on al too, and all its app et ites are volit ions" ("The
Passions of the Soul" 47, in Selected Philosophi cal Writ inBs, P: 236) .
18. " Discourse on Met hod" 5 (AT 6.56 ff.) , in ibid. , p. 44 ff. Letter to th e Marqu is of
Newcastl e, Nov. 23, 1646.
19. Letter to Morus, Feb. 21, 1649, in Descartes, Correspondence, ed. Charles Ada m
and Ge rard Milhaud (Paris: P.U.F., 196 3), vol. 8, pp. 121- 39. In orde r to under st and
6S
Machine and Organ ism
adequately the relationship of sensib ility to th e arrangement of the organs, we must be
familiar with the Car tesian theory of the degrees of sense; on thi s subject , see Descartes,
"Aut hor 's Repli es to the Sixth Obj ecti on s" 9 (AT 7.436- 39), in The Philosophical WritinBs
ifDescartes, t rans. John Cot t ingham, 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 tadt: Reichl , 1926), 2d ser., vol. I, pp. 397-401. Leibniz's outline of
crite r ia in particu lar, whi ch would allow us to distinguish an animal from an automaton,
should be compared to t he analogous arguments addu ced by Descartes, and also t he pro-
found reflections of Edgar Allan Poe on the same subjec t in his "Maelzel 's Chessp layer."
On the Leibnizian distincti on between the machine and the organism, see "A New Syst em
of the Nature and the Communi cati on of Substances" 10, in Leibniz: Philosophical Papers
and Letters, trans. and ed. Leroy Loemker (Chicago: University of Chicago Pr ess, 1956),
vol. 2; and "Mo nado logy" 63-66, in Monadol0B.Y and Other PhilosophicalEssays , trans. Paul
Schrec ker and Anne Martin Schrecker (New York: Macmi llan , 1985) .
22. It is important to point out th at Leibniz was no less interest ed th an Descartes in
th e invent ion and const r uct ion of machines, as well as in the pr oblem of automatons. See
especially 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 AtifrichwnBeiner Academie oder Societdt in Deutschlandzu Atif"nehmen der Kunste und
Wissenscheifien, Leibniz exalts the supe riority of German art, whi ch 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 itself excl usively to t he fabricat ion of lifeless obj ec 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 if
Poetry, trans. Joseph W Evans ( ew York: Scribners, 1962) , P: 156.
23. "Treat ise on Man" (AT XI. 11 9-20), in The Philosophical WritinBs ifDescartes, trans.
Joh n Cottingham, Rob ert Stoothoff and Dugald Murdoch (Cambridge, Eng: Cambridge
University Pr ess, 1985) , vol. 1, p. 99.
24. This phrase is a traditional equivalent of " the human body," especially in the
eighteent h cent ury - TRANS .
25. Moreover, Descartes can only express t he meaning of God's const r uction of ani -
mal-machines in terms of finality: "conside r ing th e machi ne of t he human body as having
been formed by God in order to have in itself all the movements usuall y manifest ed there"
("Sixth Meditati on ," in Philosophical Works ifDescartes [1913] , trans. Elizabeth S. Haldane
and G. R. T. Ross [New York: Cambridge University Press, 1967], vol. I, P: 83). [Here the
wording of the 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 the 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 Bernar d, Lecons sur les phenomenes de la vie communes aux animaux et aux
veBhaux: 1878-1879 (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 ther efor e to
livinp . Artificial or human or anthropomorphic are distinguished from whatever is only
living or vital. Anyt hi ng 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 object or a spo ntaneo 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 . Pichon, 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. 75-81), has remarked that it is those living thi ngs th at are the least
specialized that are the most difficult to explain by the mechanisti c idea, pace the mecha-
nists, because in their case all functi ons are carried out by th e whole organism. It is only
wit h the gro wing differ enti ati on of funct ions and t he incr eased complexity of the ner vou s
system that st ructures which resembl e a machine in somefashion tend to appear.
33. GeneralAnatomy, Appliedto PhysioloBY and Medicine, trans. George Hayward
(Bosto n: Richardson and Lord, 1822) .
34. "Description du corps hu main" I (ATII. 225) , in Charles Adam and Paul
Tannery, eds., Ouevres de Descartes (paris: Vrin, 1974) , vol. II , P: 225. [Thi s pasage is omi t-
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 st udy "Descar tes
et la technique," Tra vaux du CanBres International de Philosophie, vol. 2: Et udes cartesiennes
(Paris: Hermann, 1937) , p. 77 ff.
38. "An organized being is not a mer e machine, for th at has mer ely moving power, but
it possesses in itself formative power of a self- pro pagating kind which it communicates to
its materi als though they have it not of themselves; it organizes t hem, in fact , and this can-
not be explained by the mer e mechani cal 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 and Organis m
40. The start ing point for these works must be sought in Darwin , The Descent ifMan -
whose ideas Marx saw clearly as immensely signi ficant.
41. Alfred Espinas, Les OriBin es de la tecbnoloqi e (Par is: Alcan, 1897 ) .
42. Erns t Kapp, Grundlinien einer Philosophie der Technik (Braunschweig:
West ermann, 1877) . Thi s work, which was a classic in Ge rmany, has remained so misu n-
der st ood in France that certain psychologist s who took up th e problem of how ani mals
utili ze tool s, and animal intelligence, and who took t he research of Kohl er and Guillaume
as their start ing point, at t ributed thi s th eory of projecti on to Espin as himself, without
noting th at Espinas states explicitly, at numer ous junctures, th at he borrowed it from
Kapp, I am alluding here to the excellent littl e book by Gast on Viaud, L'Intelliqence: Son
evol ution 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 Erfi nde r (Berlin: Springer, 190 6) ; and
Oswald Spengler, Der Me nsch und die Techni k (Munich: Beck, 1931) . Alain outlined a
Darwini an int erpretation of technical const r uct ions in a fine remark (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
pertinent to our probl em. The same idea is referred to many times in the Systeme des
Beaux-Arts, conce rning th e making of the violin (4.5) , furniture (6.5) , houses in the coun-
try side (6.3, 6.8) .
45. Andre Leroi- Gourhan, Evol utio n et technique, vol. 2: Milieu et techniques (Paris:
Michel, 1945) .
46. Th e double-a cting engine , in whi ch the st eam acted on the upper and lower sides
of the pist on alt ernately, was perfect ed by Watt in 1784. Sadi Carno t' s Riflexions sur la
puissa nce motrice duJe u dat es from 1824, and we know that it was ignored until the middle
of the ninetee nth cent ury. On thi s subject , see Pierre Du casse, Histoires des techni ques
(Par is: P.U.F., 1945), which stresses th at technique pr eced es theory.
On th e subject of the empirical succes sion of the various organs and uses of the stea m
engine, consult Arth ur Vierendeel's Esquisse d' uoe hi stoire de la technique (Brussels and
Par is: Vromant, 1921) , which summarizes Thurston's exte nsive work, Hi story ifthe Steam
Enpine , For more about the hist ory of Watt's work as an engineer read the chapter ent i-
tled "James Watt ou Ar iel ingeni eur," in Pierre Devaux's Les Aventures de la science (Paris:
Gallimar d, 1943) .
47. Ler oi-Gourhan, Milieu et techniques, P: 100. Th e same view can be found in an
art icle by A. Hadri court on "Les Moteurs anirn es en agri culture" (Re vue de botanique
appliq uee et d'aqricult ure tropicale 20 [1940] , P: 762) : "We must not forget that we owe our
inanimate mot or s to irrigati on : the nori a is at the 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 st udy sets out th e principl es for
exp laini ng tools from th e per specti ve of th eir relationship to organic commodit ies and
t he t radi tion al ways they were used .
48. Ler oi- Gourhan, Mi lieu et techniques, P: 104.
49. Ibid ., P: 406.
68
z one
50. In hi s The Two Sources rfMorali ty and Religi on (t rans. R. Ashley Andra and
Cloudesley Brereton [New York: Holt , 1949]) , He nr i Bergson thinks very explicitly that
the spirit 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). The fact is t hat Bergson
is also one of the rare French philosophers, if not t he only one, who has considered me-
chanical inventi on as a biological function, 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 coquille" and "Di scours aux chir ur giens," in Variete V (Paris: Gallimard,
1945), and hi s description of boat building in Eupalinos.
And , finall y, read th e admirable "In Praise of Hands" in Henri Focillon , The Life rf
Forms in Art (New York: Zone Books, 1989) , pp. 157-84.
51. George 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 biologist s. In particular,
see L. Cuenot, In venti on etflnalite en biolopie (Par is: Flammarion, 1941); and Andree Tetry,
Les Outils chez les etres vivants (Paris: Gallimard, 1948) - espec ially the latter 's refl ecti ons
on "Adapt at ion and Invention" (p. 120ff.) . It is impossible to mistake the impetu s given to
t hese t reatments by the ideas of Teilhard de Chardin.
A new discipline, Bioni cs, whi ch eme rged around ten years ago in th e United States,
st ud ies biological struct ur es and systems able to be util ized as models or analogues by
technology, notably by bui lders of syste ms for detection, direct ion and equilibration
meant for equipping planes or missil es. Bionics is th e ext reme ly subtle art of information
t hat 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 whi ch tr aces the blood
of its pr ey at night, the common fly, balancing itself in flight by mean s of two vibrati le
filaments, have all furni shed models for thi s new br eed of engineers. In many Ameri can
universiti es, special training in Bioengineering is available, for which the Massachusetts
Inst itute of Technology seems to have been the instigator. See the articl e by J. Dufre noy,
"Systernes biologiqu es servant de mod eles 11 la tec hno logie," Cabiers des ingenieurs agronomes
(Ju ne-July, 196 2) , p. 21.
Translated from the French by Mark Cohen and Randall Cherry

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