“Today, the notion of progress in a single line without goal or limit seems perhaps the most parochial notion of a very parochial century.”

—  Lewis Mumford , book Technics and Civilization

Source: Technics and Civilization (1934), Ch. 8, sct. 12

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Today, the notion of progress in a single line without goal or limit seems perhaps the most parochial notion of a very …" by Lewis Mumford?
Lewis Mumford photo
Lewis Mumford 75
American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology,… 1895–1990

Related quotes

Marilyn Ferguson photo

“All over the world, children and young people are being exposed, via the communications revolution, to such ideas. They are not limited to the parochial beliefs of a single culture.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

Source: The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Nine, Flying and Seeing: New Ways to Learn, p. 321

“It seems to me that the notion of machine that was current in the course of the Industrial Revolution – and which we might have inherited – is a notion, essentially, of a machine without goal, it had no goal ‘of’, it had a goal ‘for’. And this gradually developed into the notion of machines with goals ‘of’, like thermostats, which I might begin to object to because they might compete with me. Now we’ve got the notion of a machine with an underspecified goal, the system that evolves. This is a new notion, nothing like the notion of machines that was current in the Industrial Revolution, absolutely nothing like it. It is, if you like, a much more biological notion, maybe I’m wrong to call such a thing a machine; I gave that label to it because I like to realise things as artifacts, but you might not call the system a machine, you might call it something else.”

Gordon Pask (1928–1996) British psychologist

Pask (1972) in: Mary Catherine Bateson Our Own Metaphor: A Personal Account of a Conference on the Effects of Conscious Purpose on Human Adaptation. New York : Alfred A Knopf. Quotes in: Usman Haque (2007) " The Architectural Relevance of Gordon Pask http://www.haque.co.uk/papers/architectural_relevance_of_gordon_pask.pdf" in: Architectural Design. Vol 77, Issue 4, p. 54.

“We want to establish such an Islamic society, where there shall be appeared no heterogeneous isms in the name of progressiveness, nor any Mazhabi parochialism in the name of Islam.”

Muhammad Asadullah Al-Ghalib (1948) Bangladeshi academic

(English Translation). http://www.ahlehadeethbd.org/porichitienglish.html
Organizational leaflet

Poul Anderson photo

“So much American science fiction is parochial -- not as true now as it was years ago, but the assumption is one culture in the future, more or less like ours, and with the same ideals, the same notions of how to do things, just bigger and flashier technology. Well, you know darn well it doesn't work that way…”

Poul Anderson (1926–2001) American science fiction and fantasy writer

Poul Anderson: Fifty Years of Science Fiction (1997)

“The single most important factor that has undermined the notion of inspiration is the rise of an historical consciousness.”

Roger Haight (1936) American theologian

Source: Dynamics Of Theology, Chapter Five, The Status of Scripture in the Church, p. 91

Nick Bostrom photo

“Perhaps it is a sign of civilizational progress that the very idea of threatening a nuclear first strike today seems borderline silly or morally obscene.”

Nick Bostrom book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies

Source: Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (2014), Ch. 5

“The attachment to a rationalistic, teleological notion of progress indicates the absence of true progress; he whose life does not unfold satisfyingly under its own momentum is driven to moralize it, to set up goals and rationalize their achievement as progress.”

John Carroll (1944) Australian professor and author

Source: Break-Out from the Crystal Palace (1974), p. 34

Bill Mollison photo

“Most biologists," (says Vogel, 1981) "seem to have heard of the boundary layer, but they have a fuzzy notion that it is a discrete region, rather than the discrete notion that it is a fuzzy region.”

Bill Mollison (1928–2016) Australian permaculturist

quoting Vogel, Steven, Life in Moving Fluids; the Physical Biology of Flow, Willard Grant Press, Boston, 1981.
Source: Permaculture: A Designers' Manual (1988), chapter 4.4

Virginia Woolf photo

“Have you any notion how many books are written about women in the course of one year? Have you any notion how many are written by men? Are you aware that you are, perhaps, the most discussed animal in the universe?”

Virginia Woolf book A Room of One's Own

Source: A Room of One's Own (1929), Ch. 2, p. 26

Richard Dawkins photo

“Human vanity cherishes the absurd notion that our species is the final goal of evolution.”

Richard Dawkins book The Blind Watchmaker

Source: The Blind Watchmaker (1986), Chapter 3 “Accumulating Small Change” (p. 50)

Related topics