Can people control what they make?

Whether a made thing can escape its maker, and who is responsible when it does.

Direction Humanlike machines
Span 1627–1947
Questions 2
Works 12
Languages English, Classical Chinese, French, Czech

  1. Q26Can inventors remain responsible for harmful uses of their inventions that they did not intend?

    Yes4

    • 1818Shelley, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus

      Victor, who never intended his creature to kill, judges himself 'not in deed, but in effect' the true murderer when his brother is killed and Justine condemned.

    • 1914Wells, The World Set Free

      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.

    • 1924Čapek, Krakatit

      In the final chapter, the old man whom Prokop recognizes as God urges him to abandon destructive work and start again with useful energy. This makes responsibility an obligation to redirect invention; it is not a legal rule about every unintended harm. Quoted from Lawrence Hyde’s 1925 English translation of the 1924 Czech novel.

    • 1947Wiener, A Scientist Rebels

      Wiener responds to a request for wartime research on controlled missiles. He treats disclosure as a moral choice because of foreseeable civilian harm. This supports responsibility for dissemination, not unlimited liability for every unforeseeable use. Brief extract; review the full paragraph before preparing a sorting pool.

    No2

    • 1924Russell, Icarus, or the Future of Science

      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.

    • 1924Haldane, Daedalus, or Science and the Future

      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.

  2. Q27Should a useful invention be restricted if its harmful consequences cannot be reliably controlled?

    Yes4

    • 1627Bacon, New Atlantis

      The scientists of Salomon's House consult on which of their inventions to publish and swear an oath to keep secret those they think fit, revealing some only to the state.

    • 1863Butler, Darwin among the Machines

      Signed 'Cellarius', the letter argues machines are evolving toward supremacy over man and that 'war to the death' should be proclaimed and every machine destroyed.

    • 1889Zhuangzi, Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu), 'Heaven and Earth'

      A gardener refuses a well-sweep that would water a hundred times more ground, saying that cunning implements produce cunning hearts unfit for the Tao.

    • 1899Conference, Declaration concerning Asphyxiating Gases (Hague Declaration IV, 2)

      The contracting powers agree to abstain from projectiles whose object is the diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gases.

    No2

    • 1835Ure, The Philosophy of Manufactures

      Defends self-acting machinery against the charge that it harasses the poor, arguing that the blessings of mechanical science to society have been too little recognised.

    • 1925Haldane, Callinicus: A Defence of Chemical Warfare

      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.