Machine paradigm

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Machine paradigm is an early modern theoretical concept that seeks to understand the world as a machine .

It gave expression to the mechanistic view of the world, especially in the 17th and to some extent even in the 18th century . The concept is determined by the growing heuristic importance of descriptive-empirical thinking , which gained momentum through mechanics . As a result of the thesis of a world machine, not only the objects of classical mechanics, such as planetary orbits or rigid or inanimate bodies , but also biological organisms including psychological phenomena and the functioning of society are understood in the sense of this concept. All of these areas are actually understood as machines and not just metaphorically compared with certain features of machines. The result is a monism which , in particular, assumes metaphysics to be dispensable.

Development of the physical worldview

During the scientific progress of modern times followed the empirical comparatively easily comprehensible Newtonian mechanics , the dynamic , energetic and focused on fusion of space and time, as well as force and matter field theory . The microphysics had an emphasis on statistical aspects result. This led to an increasing abandonment of descriptive moments and thus relativized the previously assumed experience-relevant vividness and visual quality of the physical world.

Problem

Not only the scientific worldview has proven to be more and more complex in the course of history, the machine paradigm also raises its own questions about origin and destination. This is to the extent that machines represent “purpose-oriented structures” and thus the question of an ultimate purpose must be asked. Questions are also raised, since the machine paradigm sees itself as a self-contained system of the world machine. If one proceeds from the assumption of a mechanical world machine as a self-contained system, then a creator god or divine mechanic-engineer, for example as a demiurge, must of course be disregarded. If, on the other hand, the emergence of “new qualities” is understood in the context of system-immanent theories as a question of an autonomous development process ( emergence ) (“functional-relational logic”), then this view hardly appears to differ from or from an animistic conception of the animated nature of matter entelechy lying in it , as it was common in hunter-gatherer cultures . It would then by no means be seen as a "historically outstanding attempt to depict the world as a dynamic network of relationships".

The monistic conception of “body without soul” (e.g. organ medicine ), which is still widespread in its technical and practical applications, has triggered a spiritualistic and idealistic counter-movement of “soul without body”. The well-known statement by Rudolph Virchow that he has already dissected many corpses without ever encountering a soul speaks in favor of the consistent conception in the sense of the machine paradigm of “body without soul” .

In order to better understand these positions, it seems important to consider the development of the machine paradigm in the history of ideas.

Representatives of mechanistic teachings

Descartes

Fig. 1. René Descartes considered animals - in contrast to humans - to be reductively explainable automatons - De homine (1622). The illustration shows the mechanical duck by Jacques de Vaucanson from 1738. Of course, Descartes knew that a duck had no gears inside.

René Descartes (1595–1650) assigned self-confidence to humans and declared animals to be machines (Fig. 1). With this pragmatic notion he outlined the methodology of physiology . Because of his distinction between res extensa and res cogitans , Descartes is not to be regarded as the originator of the dualism of body and soul ( body-soul problem ). To explain: res extensa = physical expansion (in space); res cogitans = thinking. If these two criteria are distinguished, then thinking (as well as spirit and soul) does not belong to the spatially extended body areas. Nevertheless, Descartes assumed that the interaction between body and soul took place in the unpaired pineal gland . However, Descartes does not consider it the seat of the soul. A body-soul dualism can already be found in Plato. The play on words soma (body) = sema (tombstone) comes from him , with which the body ultimately becomes the prison of the soul. Descartes believes that the soul is connected to all organs of the body as an indivisible substance. He writes in his sixth meditation:

“… Nature teaches me through the experience of pain and hunger, thirst etc.… that I don't live in my body like the captain in a ship, but that I am deeply united with him, so to speak mixed with him, so that I seem to form a unit with him. "

Descartes' distinction between humans and animals was consistent with the church's teaching, according to which humans are to be regarded as the crown of creation.

Leibniz

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) dealt in his Monadology (1714) further with the effects of the newly discovered physical laws, which shook the authority of the church's doctrine and therefore also the common notions about connections between body and soul. The distinction made by Descartes between two substances (res cogitans and res extensa), which also contained a distinction between humans and animals, appeared too categorical. There were also doubts about the interactions between res extensa and res cogitans. Leibniz's monadology therefore contained an infinite series of substances (monads) that enabled a wide range of psychic qualities ( petites perceptions ). According to the definition of the monads by Giordano Bruno (1548–1600), these are at the same time a psychological and physical element of activity. Nevertheless, his doctrine of pre-established harmony must be viewed as distinctly mechanistic and deterministic. It is a variant of the paradigm of the two clocks going alike ( clock parable , after Arnold Geulincx 1624–1669) and embodies pronounced mechanistic and deterministic features. God thus becomes a deus ex machina , who is responsible for the problem of converting physical into mental effects ( upward effect , qualia ) and from mental to physical effects ( downward effect ) "in theory", which cannot be solved either by Descartes or Leibniz. was used. In his monadology, Leibniz drew attention to other natural laws such as the principle of maintaining the size of movement , which contradicted the change in the direction of the spirits of life (spiritus animales) postulated by Descartes in mental processes. The philosophical attitude towards the mind-body problem at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries is generally referred to as psychophysical parallelism. While Descartes still allowed the soul to be connected with all organs as an indivisible substance, the bond between body and soul is now loosened. This ribbon is also symbolically referred to as vinculum amoris (fetter of love). This means the emotionally sympathetic aspect for the concerns of one's own soul and those of others.

Wolff

Christian Wolff (1679–1754) defines:

“ A machine is a composite work, the movements of which are based on the nature of the composite. The world is also a composite thing, the changes of which are based on the way in which it is composed . "

de La Mettrie

Despite the verdicts of Voltaire and Diderot, Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709–1751) remained in the canon of philosophical literature with his work L'homme machine (1747). “Descartes and all the Cartesians, who have long included the Malebranchists, made the same mistake. They assumed two precisely distinguishable substances in the human being, as if they had seen them and counted them correctly. "

While Descartes exempted man from the machine paradigm, La Mettrie assigned him to him too. But unlike Leibniz - who seeks to spiritualize matter in his monadism, La Mettrie wants to materialize the soul, as it were in memory of a Haeckelian monism , he turns the theological production of human fantasy into a materialistic thing, the imagination into an imachination, into a biochemical apparatus the humors.

The enfant terrible of the Enlightenment thus achieved a consistent and coherent generalization of mechanistic conceptions, which was intended to remove the loopholes and false bottoms of the pious tricks of all Albrecht von Hallers.

Opposing positions

Pascal

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) described the logic of sympathy as ordre du cœur (“order of the heart”) or as logique du cœur (“logic of the heart”) : “Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point. “One can regard this ability as a specific achievement of reason or the complementarity of feeling and pure reason pursued by it.

Berkeley

George Berkeley (1685–1753) believed that nothing exists but the substance of mind, soul and self.

Kant

In his Transcendental Philosophy, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) undertakes the task of combining the new conceptions represented by the skeptics with the old ideas of the dogmatists (KrV A VIII-IX). These new conceptions were shaped by the natural sciences and the empirical thinking cultivated by them ( John Locke 1632–1704). Those of the dogmatists were shaped by metaphysics . Kant regards the physical aspects of the natural sciences as "body theory", i. H. a "physiology of objects of the external senses", the "soul doctrine" on the other hand he considered a "physiology of the inner sense" (KrV A 381). In his transcendental aesthetics he described time as the form of perception of the inner sense (KrV § 6, B 49), and space as the form of perception of the external sense (B 50). Using the example of the sentence “I think”, he assigns the rational soul doctrine, freed from all empirical impressions, to inner experience on the subject of dialectical conclusions (B 399–401). "That which is an object of the external senses is called the body (B 400)." - From this it follows, taking the example of medicine , that aspects of development (visual form of time) are more essential for psychology than for organ medicine (visual form of space) . There one speaks - as far as time is concerned - more of the course of the disease. The soul is viewed as the “principle of life” (B 403) and understood as substance. Kant refers to his table of categories. Because they are divided into four, there are 4 paralogisms (B 406 ff).

Jaspers

Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) holds the mind responsible for the development of technology. He writes:

“... The thinking of the mind invents and makes. His prescriptions can be carried out and, through endless repetition, multiply doing. A world constitution emerges in which a few heads construct the machines, creating a second world, as it were, in which the masses then serve as a function of execution. The other way of thinking, the thinking of reason, does not enable execution according to instructions en masse, but requires everyone to think as himself, to think originally. ... "

religious

Erich Fromm (1900–1980) made Aristotelian logic responsible for the development of the atomic bomb. He writes:

“... paradoxical thinking (logic of reason) led to tolerance and the effort to change oneself. The Aristotelian point of view (intellectual logic) led to dogma and science, to the Catholic Church and to the discovery of atomic energy . "

Different

Günther Anders (1902–1992) based his philosophy of technology on three main theses:

  1. “ That we are no longer up to the perfection of our products ;
  2. that we produce more than we can imagine or justify ;
  3. and that we believe that we are allowed to do what we can ... "

Günther Anders gained his experience with technology mainly as an emigrant in the USA. But also the representations of a contemporary American, Lewis Mumford, on this subject should be mentioned.

Kuhn

Thomas Samuel Kuhn (1922–1996) saw the paradigm as essential to any scientific revolution. This raises the question of the possibly dwindling “historical cargo space” ( Ernst Bloch ) for the machine paradigm in the course of postmodernism . There (l.cit.) It says:

“In view of (1) fascism and Stalinism, which seems to have been associated with the progress of natural and social technology (2) destruction of the environment as well as the (3) elimination of the critical subject and history carried out in the methodical approach of many sciences and theories of science it is a mockery to describe the present in relation to the past simply as progress or even just as the age of enlightenment. "

See also

literature

  • Ivan Illich : The Expropriation of Health . Medical nemesis . Medicine has become a major health hazard. Rowohlt 1975

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Bernd Remmele : The machine paradigm in the upheaval of logics. In: Ulrich Wenzel , Bettina Bretzinger , Klaus Holz (eds.): Subjects and society. To the constitution of sociality. Velbrück Wissenschafts-Verlag, Weilerswist 2003, ISBN 3-934730-65-5 ; Review of the article by Bernd Remmele Review of the complete work , p. 259 ff.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g Georgi Schischkoff (Hrsg.): Philosophical dictionary. 14th edition. Alfred-Kröner, Stuttgart 1982, ISBN 3-520-01321-5 ; (a) to the district “vivid-empirical thinking”, p. 536 f. in the article “physical worldview”; (b) on tax authority “Weltmaschine”, p. 443 in the article “mechanistic”; (c) on Stw. “Metaphysik”, p. 355 in the article “causal-mechanical worldview”; (d) to Stw. “Relativization of clarity and image quality”, p. 536 f. in the article “physical worldview”; (e) to resident “René Descartes”, p. 586 f. in the article "Res"; (f) on Stw. “Giordano Bruno”, p. 462 in the article “Monad”; (g) to Stw. "George Berkeley", p. 66 to the article "George Berkeley".
  3. ↑ Thure von Uexküll (Ed. And others): Psychosomatic Medicine . 3. Edition. Urban & Schwarzenberg, Munich 1986, ISBN 3-541-08843-5 , p. 4.
  4. ↑ Bernd Remmele: The emergence of the machine paradigm . Opladen: Leske & Budrich 2003.
  5. ↑ Hans-Georg Gadamer : About the concealment of health . Library Suhrkamp, ​​Volume 1135, Frankfurt / M 1993, On the problem of intelligence, p. 67.
  6. ↑ Peter R. Hofstätter (Ed.): Psychology . The Fischer Lexikon, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1972, ISBN 3-436-01159-2 , p. 206 f.
  7. ^ Herbert Weiner : Psychosomatic Medicine and the Mind-Body-Problem in Psychiatry . 1984. Descartes quoted from this source
  8. ^ Peter R. Hofstätter: Psychology . The Fischer Lexicon. 1972, p. 207.
  9. ↑ Christian Wolff : Reasonable thoughts about God, the world and the human soul, including all things in general. 1720, p. 337.
  10. ↑ La Mettrie: Man is a machine. Leiden 1747. (German translation by Adolf Ritter 1875, p. 17, quoted from the Direct Media Berlin digital library)
  11. ↑ La Mettrie dedicated his work to the Bernese poet and Prussian science star Albrecht von Haller with the false claim that he was a student of Haller. Haller almost broke because of the statements made in it with words of homage and gratitude, which grossly perverted his being and striving.
  12. ^ Blaise Pascal : Pensées . Tome IV, 277 [1670]
  13. ↑ Immanuel Kant : Critique of Pure Reason . Edited by Wilhelm Weischedel, Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1995, Volume 1 stw, ISBN 3-518-09327-4 , text and pages identical to Volume III of the work edition
  14. ^ Kant studies, founded by Hans Vaihinger ; Newly founded by Paul Menzer and Gottfried Martin , 83rd year, issue 2, 1992: - Book review - A. Sutter. Divine machines. The automatons for living things in Descartes, Leibniz, La Mettrie and Kant (R. Klockenbusch), p. 228.
  15. ↑ Karl Jaspers : The atomic bomb and the future of man. 7th edition. R. Piper, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-492-00537-3 .
  16. ↑ Erich Fromm : The art of loving . (Book No. 35258). Ullstein, Frankfurt 1984, ISBN 3-548-35258-8 , p. 92.
  17. ↑ Günther Anders : The antiquity of man . First volume: On the soul in the age of the second industrial revolution. 6th edition. CH Beck, Munich [1956] 1983, ISBN 3-406-09761-8 .
  18. ↑ Günther Anders: The antiquity of man . Second volume: On the destruction of life in the age of the third industrial revolution. 3. Edition. CH Beck, Munich [1980] 1984, ISBN 3-406-09762-6 .
  19. ↑ Lewis Mumford : Myth of the Machine . Culture, technology and power. 4th edition. Fischer, 1981, ISBN 3-596-24001-8 .
  20. ^ Hermann Krings et al. (Ed.): Handbook of basic philosophical concepts. Study edition. 6 volumes, Kösel, Munich 1973, ISBN 3-466-40055-4 , keyword enlightenment, p. 142.