219 works selected for the 40 candidate questions. Selections approved by Ben Breen, 29 September 2026. Arguments are unverified. Quotations were chosen by machine and are unchecked.
31 of 219 works
1901MorganMorgan,RegenerationEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q08Does an organism's ability to repair itself distinguish it fundamentally from a machine?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q08Does an organism's ability to repair itself distinguish it fundamentally from a machine?
1901PearsonPearson,National Life from the Standpoint of ScienceEnglishEssayFull text
- Q34Does superiority in industrial or military technology justify one people governing another?
Yes. Progress comes through struggle between races, and a scientifically efficient nation is justified in displacing less efficient peoples.
- Q34Does superiority in industrial or military technology justify one people governing another?
1902HobsonHobson,Imperialism: A StudyEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q34Does superiority in industrial or military technology justify one people governing another?
No. Hobson rejects the claim that the struggle of races lets the 'socially efficient' justly govern or displace others, and traces imperialism to the interests of finance.
- Q34Does superiority in industrial or military technology justify one people governing another?
1904VeblenVeblen,The Theory of Business EnterpriseEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q18Does operating machinery develop or diminish a worker's skill and judgment?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q18Does operating machinery develop or diminish a worker's skill and judgment?
1907AdamsAdams,The Education of Henry AdamsEnglishOtherFull text
- Q31Can reliance on machinery become a form of idolatry?
Yes. At the 1900 Paris Exposition Adams feels the dynamos as a moral force, as early Christians felt the Cross, and finds himself inclined to pray to one.
- Q31Can reliance on machinery become a form of idolatry?
1908BennettBennett,How to Live on 24 Hours a DayEnglishManualFull text
- Q22Does organizing daily life by fixed schedules strengthen or weaken self-government?
Strengthens, if not worshipped. A daily programme gives mastery over one's time, but one must not be tied to it like a slave to a chariot.
- Q22Does organizing daily life by fixed schedules strengthen or weaken self-government?
1908DrieschDriesch,The Science and Philosophy of the OrganismEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q07Does living activity require a principle beyond physical and chemical processes?
Yes. An embryo fragment can form a whole organism, which no machine could do, so development requires a non-physical ordering factor he calls entelechy.
- Q08Does an organism's ability to repair itself distinguish it fundamentally from a machine?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q09Can the development of an organism from an egg be explained as the operation of a machine?
No. Argues from sea-urchin experiments, where a half-egg still yields a whole larva, that development cannot be the work of a machine and requires a non-mechanical agent he calls entelechy.
- Q07Does living activity require a principle beyond physical and chemical processes?
1908PoundPound,Mechanical JurisprudenceEnglishPeriodicalFull text
- Q11Should a judge follow a general rule when it produces an unjust result in a particular case?
No. Criticizes judges who deduce decisions mechanically from fixed conceptions regardless of results, and calls for law judged by how it works in practice.
- Q11Should a judge follow a general rule when it produces an unjust result in a particular case?
1909ForsterForster,The Machine StopsEnglishFictionFull text
- Q14Would machines becoming more capable than humans necessarily place humans in a subordinate position?
Yes. Depicts a humanity that lives underground wholly dependent on and worshipping a Machine, which collapses and kills them.
- Q25Does relying on machinery for ordinary necessities reduce people's ability to provide for themselves?
Yes. Kuno says the Machine has robbed people of spatial and tactile capacities, weakened relationships, paralyzed bodies and wills, and compelled worship. This is his speech, not the later narrated collapse.
- Q31Can reliance on machinery become a form of idolatry?
Yes. People consult the Book of the Machine as scripture and come to worship the Machine that serves them.
- Q14Would machines becoming more capable than humans necessarily place humans in a subordinate position?
1909SmithSmith,The Teaching of ArithmeticEnglishTreatiseFull text
1911Henry et al.Henry et al.,Sensory Disturbances from Cerebral LesionsEnglishPeriodicalFull text
- Q37Should tools used to perform bodily functions be understood as parts of the human body?
Yes. Anything that takes part in the conscious movement of the body is added to the body schema; a woman's sense of location may extend to the feather in her hat.
- Q37Should tools used to perform bodily functions be understood as parts of the human body?
1911TaylorTaylor,The Principles of Scientific ManagementEnglishManualFull text
- Q18Does operating machinery develop or diminish a worker's skill and judgment?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q18Does operating machinery develop or diminish a worker's skill and judgment?
1912FujisawaFujisawa,Summary Report on the Teaching of Mathematics in JapanEnglishTreatiseFull text
1912LoebLoeb,The Mechanistic Conception of LifeEnglishEssayFull text
- Q07Does living activity require a principle beyond physical and chemical processes?
No. Life phenomena, including development and instinct, can be explained by physics and chemistry, and experimental control of them removes the need for a vital principle.
- Q09Can the development of an organism from an egg be explained as the operation of a machine?
Yes. Argues from artificial parthenogenesis and tropism experiments that life processes, including the start of development of the egg, can be explained by physics and chemistry.
- Q07Does living activity require a principle beyond physical and chemical processes?
1913HaldaneHaldane,Mechanism, Life and PersonalityEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q07Does living activity require a principle beyond physical and chemical processes?
Neither. The mechanistic theory cannot account for the way an organism maintains and reproduces its own structure, but vitalism is no better; biology needs the organism as its own basic concept.
- Q08Does an organism's ability to repair itself distinguish it fundamentally from a machine?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q09Can the development of an organism from an egg be explained as the operation of a machine?
No. Criticizes the mechanistic theory of life, arguing that the self-maintaining and self-reproducing organization of the organism cannot be explained as the working of a machine.
- Q07Does living activity require a principle beyond physical and chemical processes?
1913MünsterbergMünsterberg,Psychology and Industrial EfficiencyEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q12Can numerical measures adequately determine a person's fitness for a position of responsibility?
Yes. Proposes selecting workers, including tram drivers and ship officers, by laboratory tests of the mental traits each job requires.
- Q12Can numerical measures adequately determine a person's fitness for a position of responsibility?
1914WellsWells,The World Set FreeEnglishFictionFull text
- Q26Can inventors remain responsible for harmful uses of their inventions that they did not intend?
Yes. The narrator describes Holsten’s fear of his discovery’s consequences and his thought that publication might be premature. His later disclaimer of unforeseeable consequences is a separate passage.
- Q26Can inventors remain responsible for harmful uses of their inventions that they did not intend?
1915VeblenVeblen,Imperial Germany and the Industrial RevolutionEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q33Can a society adopt another society's machinery without adopting its ways of life?
Yes. Germany 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.
- Q33Can a society adopt another society's machinery without adopting its ways of life?
1916LoebLoeb,The Organism as a Whole, from a Physicochemical ViewpointEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q08Does an organism's ability to repair itself distinguish it fundamentally from a machine?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q08Does an organism's ability to repair itself distinguish it fundamentally from a machine?
1916TermanTerman,The Measurement of IntelligenceEnglishManualFull text
- Q12Can numerical measures adequately determine a person's fitness for a position of responsibility?
Yes. Terman anticipates occupational intelligence-quotient thresholds and recommends psychologists to screen applicants, while denying that available tests can unerringly select a precise occupation for each person.
- Q12Can numerical measures adequately determine a person's fitness for a position of responsibility?
1917TagoreTagore,NationalismEnglishEssayFull text
- Q32Is widespread use of machinery evidence that a society is more civilized?
No. Argues the West has turned society into a machine of commerce and politics whose aim is success, not goodness, eliminating moral responsibility.
- Q33Can a society adopt another society's machinery without adopting its ways of life?
Conditional. Japan 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.
- Q32Is widespread use of machinery evidence that a society is more civilized?
1918BaumBaum,The Tin Woodman of OzEnglishFictionFull text
- Q16Would replacing bodily organs with artificial substitutes preserve the identity of the person?
Contested. The Tin Woodman, whose flesh was replaced piece by piece with tin, meets his old living head, which denies that the tin man is the same person.
- Q16Would replacing bodily organs with artificial substitutes preserve the identity of the person?
1922DarrowDarrow,Crime: Its Cause and TreatmentEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q06Can people be morally responsible for actions that follow necessarily from their bodily constitution and circumstances?
No. Conduct follows from heredity and environment like the rest of animal life, so the legal idea of free will and personal guilt is a 'gross error' and punishment should give way to treatment.
- Q06Can people be morally responsible for actions that follow necessarily from their bodily constitution and circumstances?
1922DeweyDewey,Human Nature and ConductEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q20Does making an action habitual increase a person's freedom to act?
Depends on whether habit is intelligent or routine. Habit is not mere repetition but an acquired disposition that amounts to will; routine habit enslaves, intelligent habit is the means of action.
- Q20Does making an action habitual increase a person's freedom to act?
1922FordFord,My Life and WorkEnglishOtherFull text
- Q18Does operating machinery develop or diminish a worker's skill and judgment?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q18Does operating machinery develop or diminish a worker's skill and judgment?
1924HaldaneHaldane,Daedalus, or Science and the FutureEnglishEssayFull text
- Q26Can inventors remain responsible for harmful uses of their inventions that they did not intend?
No. Uses Daedalus, who caused the death of Minos yet was never punished, to argue that the scientific worker is not concerned with gods and that mankind must adjust its morality to the powers science gives it.
- Q30Should technological invention be understood as carrying out a divine purpose?
This answer is hidden while the authors build this question’s position key.
- Q26Can inventors remain responsible for harmful uses of their inventions that they did not intend?
1924RussellRussell,Icarus, or the Future of ScienceEnglishEssayFull text
- Q26Can inventors remain responsible for harmful uses of their inventions that they did not intend?
No. Argues science only lets the holders of power realise their purposes more fully; whether it does good or harm depends on those purposes, which at present are mostly evil.
- Q26Can inventors remain responsible for harmful uses of their inventions that they did not intend?
1925HaldaneHaldane,Callinicus: A Defence of Chemical WarfareEnglishEssayFull text
- Q27Should a useful invention be restricted if its harmful consequences cannot be reliably controlled?
No. Argues gas weapons such as tear gas are more humane than shells and bayonets, and that the Hague ban on gas projectiles was well meant but misguided.
- Q27Should a useful invention be restricted if its harmful consequences cannot be reliably controlled?
1928EddingtonEddington,The Nature of the Physical WorldEnglishTreatiseFull text
- Q05Can human choices be fully explained by physical causes?
No. Quantum physics has withdrawn strict causality from the physical world, so physics no longer requires the complete determinism of mind that would rule out volition.
- Q05Can human choices be fully explained by physical causes?
1929BernalBernal,The World, the Flesh and the DevilEnglishEssayFull text
- Q16Would replacing bodily organs with artificial substitutes preserve the identity of the person?
Yes. Proposes replacing the body organ by organ with mechanisms until the person is a brain in a cylinder linked to artificial senses, and treats this as the same mind continuing.
- Q16Would replacing bodily organs with artificial substitutes preserve the identity of the person?
1931JonesJones,The Jameson SatelliteEnglishFictionFull text
- Q16Would replacing bodily organs with artificial substitutes preserve the identity of the person?
Yes. Aliens place a dead professor's preserved brain in a mechanical body and he continues as himself.
- Q16Would replacing bodily organs with artificial substitutes preserve the identity of the person?