“In the eighteenth century it was often convenient to regard man as a clockwork automaton.”

—  Thomas Pynchon , book V.

Source: V. (1963), Chapter Ten, Part II
Context: In the eighteenth century it was often convenient to regard man as a clockwork automaton. In the nineteenth century, with Newtonian physics pretty well assimilated and a lot of work in thermodynamics going on, man was looked on as a heat engine, about 40 per cent efficient. Now in the twentieth century, with nuclear and subatomic physics a going thing, man had become something which absorbs X-rays, gamma rays and neutrons.

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Thomas Pynchon 134
American novelist 1937

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