Formal logic preconditioned the mind for technological control

Evidence

The methods of logical procedure are very different in ancient and modern logic, but behind all difference is the construction of a universally valid order of thought, neutral with respect to material content. Long before technological man and technological nature emerged as the objects of rational control and calculation, the mind was made susceptible to abstract generalization. Terms which could be organized into a coherent logical system, free from contradiction or with manageable contradiction, were separated from those which could not. Distinction was made between the universal, calculable, “objective” and the particular, incalculable, subjective dimension of thought; the latter entered into science only through a series of reductions. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 526

Categorization

• XREF: This claim that logical abstraction preceded and enabled technological rationality connects to Innis’s bias-of-communication argument about how media/technologies shape thought habits. — connects to: Formal logic’s either-or structure derives from the compulsion of self-preservation. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 47; Metal’s predictable behavior seeded rational thinking, logic, and mathematics. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 165; Formal logic neutralizes contradiction and serves prediction and control — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 525 (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• Technological rule substitutes causality for choice and effaces the Other #expands (0.78) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 623
• Human freedom to begin new things resists the tyranny of logical deduction #complicates (0.75)
• Mechanized knowledge creates monopolies that endanger freedom of thought #expands (0.75) — Harold Innis, The Bias of Communication, 1123
• Freedom is compatible with determinism when thought is part of the causal mix #complicates (0.72)
• Technological rationality neutralizes guilt and conscience under reification #expands (0.72) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 346
• Humans can override environmental dictates through symbolic future-thinking #complicates (0.72) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 154