Can a society adopt another society's machinery without adopting its ways of life?
Yes4
- 1861Feng Guifen, Protests from the Jiaobin Studio
China should adopt Western mathematics, mechanics and arms while keeping Chinese ethical teaching as the foundation; the principle later summarized as Chinese learning for substance, Western learning for application.
- 1898Zhang Zhidong, Exhortation to Learning
To sum up : Chinese learning is moral. Western learning is practical. Chinese learning concerns itself with moral conduct. Western learning, with the affairs of the world. What matters it, then, whether Western learning is mentioned in the Classics or not, if it teaches nothing repugnant, or antagonistic, to the genius of our books? If the Chinese heart throbs in unison with the heart of the sages, expressing the truth in irreprovable conduct, in filial piety, brotherly love, honesty, integrity, virtue; if government is loyalty and protection, then let government make use of foreign machinery and the railway from morning to night, and nothing untoward will befall the disciples of Confucius.
OCR corrected
SummaryChina should keep the Confucian basis of society and take Western learning only to strengthen its material basis.
- 1915Veblen, Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution
It was this dynastic power of the Prussian State, resting on an authentic tradition of personal fealty, unlimited in the last resort, that was the largest single factor of a cultural kind entering into the Imperial era from the German side. It is at least conceivable that in the course of time, the protracted disintegrating impact of the discipline exercised by modern industrial habits would have brought this dynastic State and its coercive organisation to much the same state of decay as that which once overtook its smaller and feebler counterpart in Elizabethan England. But the course of time has not had a chance to run in this Prussian case. Elizabethan England, and its soaring imperialistic aspirations, was exposed to the slow corrosion of peace and isolation, with the comjmon interest converging more and more on the industrial arts and the fortunes of trade; and it took a hundred years and more to displace dynastic statecraft and eliminate imperialist politics — in so far as these ele- ments of the ancient regime can be said to have been lost — and it took another two-hundred years to reach the farthest point along the line of liberal policy and peaceable ideals eventually attained by the English community.
SummaryGermany borrowed English machine technology without the English institutions that grew up with it, which let a dynastic state use it; Veblen holds that the machine discipline will erode those older institutions over time.
Summary disputed by reviewer: Veblen presents the erosion of the dynastic state as 'at least conceivable' and not yet realized, which is weaker than the summary's 'will erode'.
- 1931Spengler, Man and Technics
Alle »Farbigen« sahen in das Geheimnis unserer Kraft hinein, begriffen es und nützten es aus. Die Japaner wurden binnen 30 Jahren technische Kenner ersten Ranges und bewiesen im Kriege gegen Rußland eine kriegstechnische Überlegenheit, von welcher ihre Lehrmeister lernen konnten. Heute sind allenthalben, in Ostasien, Indien, Südamerika, Südafrika, Industriegebiete entstanden oder in Bildung begriffen, die infolge ihrer niedrigen Löhne eine tödliche Konkurrenz darstellen. Die unersetzlichen Vorrechte der weißen Völker sind verschwendet, verschleudert, verraten worden. Die Gegner haben ihre Vorbilder erreicht, vielleicht mit der Verschmitztheit farbiger Rassen und der überreifen Intelligenz uralter Zivilisationen übertroffen. Wo es Kohle, Erdöl und Wasserkräfte gibt, kann eine [86] neue Waffe gegen das Herz der faustischen Kultur geschmiedet werden. Hier beginnt die Rache der ausgebeuteten Welt gegen ihre Herren. … Für die Farbigen aber – die Russen sind hier immer einbegriffen – ist die faustische Technik kein inneres Bedürfnis. Nur der faustische Mensch denkt, fühlt und lebt in ihrer Form. Sie ist ihm seelisch nötig, nicht ihre wirtschaftlichen Folgen, sondern ihre Siege : navigare necesse est, vivere non est necesse. Für »Farbige« ist sie nur eine [87] Waffe im Kampf gegen die faustische Zivilisation, eine Waffe wie ein Baumast im Walde, den man fortwirft, wenn er seinen Zweck erfüllt hat.
All the 'coloured' peoples looked into the secret of our strength, grasped it and exploited it. Within thirty years the Japanese became technical experts of the first rank and in the war against Russia showed a superiority in military technique from which their teachers could learn. Today, everywhere, in East Asia, India, South America, South Africa, industrial regions have arisen or are forming which, because of their low wages, represent a deadly competition. The irreplaceable privileges of the white peoples have been squandered, thrown away, betrayed. The adversaries have caught up with their models, and perhaps, with the cunning of coloured races and the over-ripe intelligence of ancient civilizations, surpassed them. Wherever there is coal, oil and water power, a [86] new weapon can be forged against the heart of Faustian culture. Here begins the revenge of the exploited world against its masters. … For the coloured peoples, however (the Russians are always included here), Faustian technics is no inner need. Only Faustian man thinks, feels and lives in its form. It is spiritually necessary to him, not its economic consequences but its victories: navigare necesse est, vivere non est necesse [to sail is necessary, to live is not necessary]. For the 'coloured' it is only a [87] weapon in the struggle against Faustian civilization, a weapon like a branch in the forest that one throws away when it has served its purpose.
machine translation
SummaryWestern technics has become detachable from the Faustian culture that made it, so non-Western peoples can take it up and turn it against the West.
No3
- 1875Fukuzawa Yukichi, An Outline of a Theory of Civilization
Japan cannot take Western technical novelties while keeping its old spirit; it must adopt the spirit of civilization, the independence of the individual and the nation, that produced them.
- 1902Yan Fu, Letter to the Editor of the Waijiao bao
Chinese and Western learning each have their own substance and application; combining Chinese substance with Western application makes both lose their meaning.
- 1909Gandhi, Hind Swaraj, or Indian Home Rule
Machinery has begun to desolate Europe. Ruination is now knocking at the English gates. Machinery is the chief symbol of modern civilisation; it represents a great sin. The workers in the mills of Bombay have become slaves. The condition of the women working in the mills is shocking. When there were no mills, these women were not starving. If the machinery craze grows in our country, it will become an unhappy land. It may be considered a heresy, but I am bound to say that it were better for us to send money to Manchester and to use flimsy Manchester cloth, than to multiply mills in India. By using Manchester cloth, we would only waste our money, but by reproducing Manchester in India, we shall keep our money at the price of our blood, because our very moral being will be sapped, and I call in support of my statement the very mill-hands as witnesses. And those who have amassed wealth out of factories are not likely to be better than other rich men. It would be folly to assume that an Indian Rockfeller would be better than the American Rockfeller.
OCR corrected
SummaryMachinery is the chief sign of modern civilization and has impoverished India; India cannot take it up and remain itself.
Chapter XIX, Machinery
Conditional1
- 1917Tagore, Nationalism
The real truth is that science is not man's nature, it is mere knowledge and training. By knowing the laws of the material universe you do not change your deeper humanity. You can borrow knowledge from others, but you cannot borrow temperament. But at the imitative stage of our schooling we cannot distinguish between the essential and the non-essential, between what is transferable and what is not. It is something like the faith of the primitive mind in the magical properties of the accidents of outward forms which accompany some real truth. We are afraid of leaving out something valuable and efficacious by not swallowing the husk with the kernel. But while our greed delights in wholesale appropriation, it is the function of our vital nature to assimilate, which is the only true appropriation for a living organism. Where there is life it is sure to assert itself by its choice of acceptance and refusal according to its constitutional necessity. The living organism does not allow itself to grow into its food, it changes its food into its own body. And only thus can it grow strong and not by mere accumulation, or by giving up its personal identity. Japan has imported her food from the West, but not her vital nature. Japan cannot altogether lose and merge herself in the scientific paraphernalia she has acquired from the West and be turned into a mere borrowed machine. She has her own soul, which must assert itself over all her requirements.
SummaryJapan can take Western science only if it assimilates it to its own character; if it copies Western nationalism it becomes a borrowed machine left with only borrowed weapons.
Nationalism in Japan