Abstract
The issue of “The Machine as Metaphor and Tool” has an epistemological aspect that needs to be brought to the surface and discussed for what it is. The title implies that the Machine has played á dual role in modern consciousness. On the one hand, machines are productive: in this role, they are instruments with which we transform Nature to meet our needs. On the other hand, the idea of a “machine” was a key metaphor in the development of modern physical science: in this role, its metaphorical character should inoculate us against taking the “mechanistic” notions of physics too much to heart.
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© 1993 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Toulmin, S. (1993). From Clocks to Chaos: Humanizing the Mechanistic World-View. In: Haken, H., Karlqvist, A., Svedin, U. (eds) The Machine as Metaphor and Tool. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-77711-0_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-77711-0_9
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-77713-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-77711-0
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