Original scientific paper
"AHEAD INTO NOWHERE". LEWIS MUMFORD AND THE ECOLOGICAL CRITICISM OF TECHNOLOGICAL CIVILIZATION
Tomislav Markus
; Hrvatsi institut za povijest, Zagreb
Abstract
The author analyzes the philosophical and sociological attitudes of the American intellectual, philosopher and literary historian Lewis Mumford (1895-1990). Special attention is paid to those attitudes that are important for the contemporary environmental crisis. During his long activity as an author, Mumford changed his main attitudes - from moderate optimism between the two world wars up to an overtly negativist approach in the 1960's. In his early works written between the 1920's and 1960's Mumford warned from increasing environmental problems caused by the modern technological civilization due to its faith in technology and the readiness to identify the technological expansion with progress. However, he still believed in the possibility of a different development, especially with respect to a different use of technology. In his main works from the 1960's, "The City in History" and "Myth on the Machine 1-2", Mumford came closer to a radical criticism of modern civilization. Many of his attitudes of that period - insisting on organic paradigm, condemning of technolatry, consumerism and mechnistic atomism, environmental interdependences, plead for a reduction of cities and technological intervention, stressing of primary importance of individual change - are close to many concepts of contemporary radical environmentalism, especially of the deep ecology.
Keywords
Bacon's programme; environmental criticism; Lewis Mumford; radical environmentalism; technological civilization; technology
Hrčak ID:
48157
URI
Publication date:
16.6.2003.
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