MDDM23: From Inertia toward Independence ...

[Dave Monroe]

"'Who knows? that final superaddition of erotick
Machinery may have somehow nudg'd the Duck across some
Threshold of self-Intricacy, setting off this
Explosion of Change, from Inertia toward Independence,
and Power.'" (M&D, Ch. 37, p. 373)

>From Otto Mayr, Authority, Libery and Automatic
Machinery in Early Modern Europe (Baltimore, MD: Johns
Hopkins UP, 1986), Chapter 2, "The Rise of the Clock
Metaphor," pp. 28-53 ...

"In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the
clock metaphor became strikingly frequent, more
frequent, probably, than any other." (p. 29) 

"... 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." (p. 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."
(p. 34)

   "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." (p. 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." (p. 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." (p. 44)

"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." (p. 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." (p. 45)

   "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....
   "The mood was quite different in England." (p. 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." (p. 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." (p. 50)

   "Englishmen also found it amusing to ue the clock
as an unflattering illustration of certain allegedly
feminine characteristics." (p. 50)

   "The frequency with which the disliked clocks were
identified as German is significant." (p. 51)

[e.g., Wm. Shakespeare, Love's Labours Lost, III.i]

   "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." (p. 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, of a
reality that one had to accept but that one could not
be forced to like." (p. 53)

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0103&msg=53596&sort=date

Chapter 3,
"The Clockwork Universe," pp. 54-101 ...

"In Britain the clock metaphor flourished best in the
second half of the seventeenth century ....  This
flowering of the clock metaphor ... roughly coincided
with a series of revolutionary changes of major
importance.  The clock metaphor, it seems, became
popular in the last years of the English Civil War,
culminated during the Restoration, began its decline
after the Glorious Revolution, and was put to rest
when the installation of the Hanoverian kings cemented
the permanent establishment of a constitutional
monarcy.  The same time span also covered the triumph
of the Scientific Revolution, from the founding of
the Royal Society to the Newtonian synthesis, and the
conclusion and final settlement of the religious
struggles that had been set in motion by the
Reformation." (p. 81)

"To identify the clock image as an accessory of
determinism and, by implication, an enemy of liberty
was as accurate as it was effective before an English
audience." (p. 100)

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0103&msg=53608&sort=date

Ch. 11, "Self-regulation and the Liberal Conception of
Order," pp. 181-89 ...

"The concept of self-regulation was at the center of a
new liberal conception of order which was antithetical
to the older authoritarian one." (p. 181)

   "Before the rise of liberalism in Great Britain,
liberty and order tended to be viewed as mutually
exclusive opposites, and the notion of a liberla order
would have been dismissed as a contradiction in
terms....  In the seventeenth century, when Britain
began to base its political and social life on liberal
principles, it faced the challenge of devising a
conception of order that did not compromise its ideal
of liberty." (p. 181)

   "As imagery of balance and equilibrium was employed
to plead for moderation between political opponents,
it also served as a point of toleration among
ideological adversaries." (p. 184)

[William Penn, by the way, is discussed here at some
length, see pp. 184-5]

"This pehnomenon was frequently labeled concordia
discors (or also, without change in meaning, discordia
concors) ....  Concordia discors designated quite
generally the paradoxical harmony said to prevail in a
community that tolerates disagreement, competetion,
and dissent among its individual memebrs." (p. 185)

   "The system performs this feat without help from
outside; all the system's elements are of equal rank,
and equilibrium is acheived as an automatic outcome of
their free interplay, not by the purposeful activity
of a specialized agent.  Therefore, the
self-regulating system may be described as
autonomous." (p. 187)

   "In its fully developed state as an abstract,
cybernetic concept, the notion of the self-regulating
(or feedback) system is a product of the twentieth
century....  The increasing frequency and clarity,
however, with which the concept appeared in
eighteenth-century British literature and with which
it shaped important debates are a measure of the
concept's popularity and of the power it held over the
collective imagination....  What won the concept such
popularity was its promise of linking the values of
equilibrium and liberty."
   "The idea of a system that would keep itself in
balance without direction from higher authority was
irresistible to the liberal mentality ..." (pp. 187-8)

   "Practical life under the liberal conception of
order exhibited a good deal less order than under its
authoritarian alternative.  There was less discipline,
regularity, and predictability." (p. 188)

"While the authoritarian conception of order had a
firm grasp on the collective mentalities of
Continental European societies in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, the thinking of the British
public fell more and more under the influence of this
liberal alternative ...." (p. 188)

Okay, spun this one off from ...

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