Metal’s predictable behavior seeded rational thinking, logic, and mathematics.
Evidence
In passing from stone to bronze, he is able to conquer the land through his work and conquer himself as well. … He discovers his power. He finds cause and effect in the relationship between his creating arm and the object of his creation: the seed planted germinates or not, while metal always reacts in the same way to fire, to tempering, and to mechanical treatment; this world of tools can be framed in clear concepts: rational thinking, logic, and mathematics are thus able to emerge. The whole representation of the universe is overturned. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 165
Categorization
- SEED: An essay angle: technology’s determinism as the material substrate of abstract reason — how the anvil’s repeatability underwrote logic before any philosophy did.
- XREF: connects to: Electricity’s invisibility fueled idealist religious and philosophical thought — James W. Carey, Communication as Culture- Essays on…, 784; Formal logic preconditioned the mind for technological control — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 526; The atomic bombings were products of rational problem-solving mentality — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 730 (+1 more)
Broader Connections
- Electricity’s invisibility fueled idealist religious and philosophical thought
#expands(0.82) — James W. Carey, Communication as Culture- Essays on…, 784 - Formal logic preconditioned the mind for technological control
#corroborates(0.78) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 526 - Reason shifts from universal metalanguage to a plurality of axiomatic systems
#contradicts(0.75) — Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, 327 - The atomic bombings were products of rational problem-solving mentality
#exemplifies(0.72) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 730