VV(11): Any Sovereign or Broken Yo-Yo

[Dave Monroe]

"Any sovereign or broken yo-yo" (V., Ch. 8, Sec. i, p. 217)

There is, of course, a politics, a geography, a geopolitics, of automata, 
machinery, clockwork, yo-yo's, even ("sovereign").  From Otto Mayr, 
Authority, Libery and Automatic Machinery in Early Modern Europe (Baltimore: 
Johns Hopkins UP, 1986), Chapter 2, "The Rise of the Clock Metaphor," pp. 
28-53 ...

There was a widespread habit of referring to clocks in writings on almost 
any subject in the form of comparisons and metaphors. (28)

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the clock metaphor became 
strikingly frequent, more frequent, probably, than any other." (29; no puns 
whre none intended ...)

... although the clock metaphor spoke for only a small fraction of the whole 
society, this was an important fraction: it spoke for a minority that 
governed the country, controlled its economy, and, in the broadest sense, 
shaped its culture. (29)

Noteworthy is the treatment of the central element of the clock, the 
verge-and-folio escapement.  It becomes the allegorical equivalent of the 
virtue of mesure (temperance, moderation, self-control).  Love without 
mesure would lead to uncivilized, destructive passion, just as in a clock 
without escapement the force of the weight would cause an uncontrolled, 
violent motion. (34)

In the sixteenth century the metaphor began to flourish conspicuously  in 
most of Europe.... Neither handbooks nor actual literary practice always 
distinguished sharply between the mechanical clock and other timekeepers 
such as sundials and sandglasses. (41)

A more specific characteristic of most clock metaphors was the praise of 
order and regularity. (41)

Admiration for the clock was rooted partly in the aesthetic appeal of the 
regularity of its running, partly in the authority that such regularity gave 
it over its surroundings, and in the leadership a timekeeper exerted in 
human affairs.  Thus, the clock became a symbol of any authority that brings 
order into human life. (43)

The comparison of clock and prince became popular as an illustration of 
princely authority, as a metaphor in praise and support of those who govern 
the life of communities. (43)

... the clock symbolized not only princely but also divine authority; the 
point of the metaphor was to stress the unbridgeable gulf between the 
sovereignty of God or king and the hopeless dependence of the subjects (44)

... the nature of authority was illustrated by the picture of a tower clock 
with the townspeople underneath, looking up to it for guidance.  The clock 
was presented as a higher being whose inner workings were inscrutable and 
mysterious.  Later, as the internal mechanisms of the clock began to be more 
widely understood, the picture changed.  The relationship between the 
sovereign authority and its dependent subjects was illustrated as that 
between the various parts of the clock ... (45)

Elaborate clock metaphors of this kind, where the whole of society was 
interpreted as a complex clockwork, soon were to play a central role in 
political philosophy. (45)

Another class of clockwork metaphors that came into use in the seventeenth 
century--the comparison betwen clock and living creature--seemed to have 
less to do, on the surface, with regularity and order than with the 
popularity of automta and particularly with the obvious resemblance of the 
ticking of clocks with the beating of the heart. (45; cf. "ticker")

Poetic comparisons between aspects of the human body and clockwork became 
frequent in the seventeenth century. (45)

Some authors turned the fragility of clocks into a source of reassurance; 
after all, clocks could be repaired. (46)

As the clock metaphor came to be used more frequently, it continued to 
illustrate a variety of different aspects of God.  One theme began to stand 
out: the realtionship between clock and clockmaker as taken as an accurate 
analogy for that between creation and its creator. (47)

The clockmaker-God analogy was the basis of a formal argument that soon came 
to be regarded as the most compelling proof of the existence of God.  But as 
theologians refined this argument--today refrred to as the "argument from 
design"--they discovered that it contained a disturbing dilemma: it implied 
that God could not, at the same time, be both all-wise and all-powerful. 
(48)

The difficulty arose after the work of creation was finished.  If God's 
creation was indeed perfect, then it would function thereafter without 
further divine help, thus condemning God to therole of an idle spactator.  
To thos who believed in God's omnipotence, this possibility was appalling. 
(49)

Ultimately, it was decided that the root of the problem lay not in the 
nature of God but only in the nature of the design argument or, indeed, of 
the clock analogy itself. (49)

In the literatures of Continental Europe prior to the mid-eighteenth 
century, it is virtually impossible to find metaphors or any other comments 
on the mechanical clock that were in any sense negative. (49)

The mood was quite different in England. (49)

By the late sixteenth century, a pattern was beginning to emerge in English 
use of clock imagery.  Clocks were now called not only "true" and "punctual" 
but also "cold," "gloomy," and "long-faced," as well as discordant and 
dishonest. (50)

The various automata figures with their clumsy, ineffectual motions and 
their lack of a will of their own were convenient models for disparaging 
comparisons. (50)

Englishmen also found it amusing to ue the clock as an unf;lattering 
illustration of certain allegedly feminine characteristics. (50)

The frequency with which the disliked clocks were identified as German is 
significant. (51; e.g., Shakespeare, Love's Labours Lost, III.i)

... what made clocks exasperating was their evident tendency to run fastest 
when time was most precious and ther tactless insistence on announcing the 
hours when that service was not welcome. (51)

The reasons for the clock's unpopularity are thus gradually exposed: 
merciless counting out to us the elapsing of our lifetime, it reminds us of 
the objective limits that are placed on our subjective desires and of the 
larger, irresistible forces that curb our freedom. (53)

The clock delivered this message to Continental Europeans and to Englishmen 
alike, but there was a difference in how the message was received.  
Continental authors, in general, took it as a wholesome moral and as an 
incentive for purposeful activity; for many Englishmen, by contrast, it was 
a reminder of one of life's more somber truths ... (53)

In the general literature of Europe, the clock metaphor reached a peak of 
populariy and freshness sometime around the middle of the seventeenth 
century.  Several themes had emerged to which the metaphor was principally 
devoted: the praise of order and regularity, the exultation of authority, 
the construction of the animal body, and the character of the created world. 
  (53)

To be cont'd ...




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