Lewis Mumford

[Mark Sacha]

I think Mumford had a pretty big reputation back in the day, and have heard
he still gets taught in urban studies. As far as the optimism goes, I've
read him to a certain extent but nothing to suggest he viewed technology as
anything but a tentative social good, only insofar as its implementation
jives with so-called human purposes. He seemed to think science and
industry could become humanistic, not necessarily that it would. The
twentieth century dashed a lot of hopes in that respect, and I suppose few
of us will fail to find it surprising that society continues to grasp at
straws embracing the new as inherently advanced.

That TP got this, assimilated or cited it seems reasonable enough.

On Sun, Jan 4, 2015 at 9:56 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> GREAT, great links here.....re Mumford. And Pynchon.
>
> On Sun, Jan 4, 2015 at 9:40 AM, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> https://books.google.com/books?id=1lshMpwOA4wC&pg=PA159#v=onepage&q&f=false
> >
> >
> https://books.google.com/books?id=wpXDUHNgvQ0C&pg=PA274#v=onepage&q&f=false
> >
> > On Sat, Jan 3, 2015 at 10:17 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >> We had talked about Lewis Mumford here. How maybe some of his work was
> internalized by TRP or whether they simply had some notions in common. ( I
> do believe TRP cited him in one letter or another but I am not sure) .
> >>
> >> I've been reading in a book called Lewis Mumford, Public intellectual,
> a collection of essays about him. Mumford moved from a bright guy early in
> the 20th Century moved by the achievements of science and technology enough
> to write about them, believe in that as a great social good to an almost
> anti-technology position leading up to his 1970 book, THE PENTAGON OF
> Power, a moral trashing of science as technics controlled by the power
> elites of the West.
> >>
> >> One essayist sez he was perhaps the leading liberal public intellectual
> excoriating the madness of all who let the Bomb be built and used. This
> started in print as WW2 ended and he was constant and unwavering.
> >> It was of a piece with his work that led to THE PENTAGON OF POWER, not
> surprisingly given that title.
> >>
> >> Perhaps some parallels in their visions, at least, and the presumption
> that TRP knew of his ideas, at least.
> >>
> >> the Bomb.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Sent from my iPad-
> >> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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