Historian of Science

Tag: Lewis Mumford

A Distorted Picture

Post author By Darin
Post date October 18, 2017

Modern man has formed a curiously distorted picture of himself, by interpreting his early history in terms of his present interests in making machines and conquering nature. And then in turn he has justified his present concerns by calling his prehistoric self a tool-making animal, and assuming that the material instruments of production dominate all […]

Press and Pop Culture

Lewis Mumford on Science

Post author By Darin
Post date January 23, 2013

In most departments, and not least in science, a certain blind assurance prevailed, distorting observation and undermining judgement. The physicists, the guild whose later discoveries would shake the foundations of civilization, were wide of the mark in their neat assumptions about the nature of the physical world: they did not, as Henry Adams soon discovered, […]