The Human Machine.
For most of human history, muscle power was the only energy harnessed to work, to production, to the transformation of the material world. It was usually human muscle. Though, from the Neolithic onwards, certain domesticated animals were used for carrying, pulling and pushing. Wind power was used in sails, but ships always had oars. And it was only in the 3rd century AD that the first water-mills were built (1).
By the time of Heron of Alexandria (c. 10 - 70 AD), Greek engineers had gone far beyond Aristotle’s five machines (lever, pulley, winch, screw and wedge). They knew about valves and siphons, cylinders and pistons, cog-wheels and gears. They used the forces of torsion and of metal springs. They understood basic hydraulics, the principles of a suction-pump and the power of steam. Yet nothing came of it all. Most of these notions remained theoretical and, when they did go beyond the drawing-board, were used to make ingenious toys (thauma)(2).
The Greeks’ consideration for the arts and crafts had changed with time. Homer’s techné applied just as well to the work of smiths and carpenters as it did to the magic of Hephaistos and the spells of Proteus (3). Some three centuries later Greek culture had reached its high mark. Artisans were no longer magicians, awesome and almost god-like. They were reduced to craftsmen who had learnt the use of tools. As the division of labour progressed, the production process lost its aura of mystery. Craftsmen remained freemen, but had no political role in Plato’s Republic. Later still, under the Roman Empire, they were mostly slaves working for masters, and the material arts had become mere repetitions of the past.
With the exceptions of war and government, the Romans were not innovators. Slaves and muscle power in abundance were doing the hammering, chipping, sawing and spinning, while patricians and plebeians took care of conquest and dominion. But all expansions seem to have limits and, when the Romans reached them, the great flow of slaves became a trickle (4). By then, the Empire’s dependence on slave labour was complete. So that, when the supply of what had seemed a limitless source of energy (human muscle) peaked and dropped, the Greco-Roman world dominion was condemned to a slow decline. The mind-set of the times was such that other sources of energy could not be put to use. The Empire faded and passed (5).
Coal has probably been dug up since prehistoric times. But vast forests meant that wood and charcoal were the usual fuels for heating, from cooking to smelting. However, as the forests of Western Europe receded and wood (oak in particular) became scarce, coal came to seem an attractive alternative. Transport was the major problem. But, because making war and making steel were inseparable, canals were built to bring fuel to the forges. And then came the steam engine. The conversion of heat into driving power completely modified production and transportation. Force was no longer limited to muscle. Even multiplied and combined, men and beasts could not compete with the energy of the coal furnace.
In the course of the 19th century, roughly from the time of James Watt’s steam engine (1780’s) to that of Rudolf Diesel’s compression-ignition engine (1890’s), coal became the world’s principal source of mechanical energy (6). This dependence on coal in the race for arms and industrial growth led quite naturally to war. Or, at least, added its own considerable momentum (7). The construction of railways had resulted in an enormous increase in the production of steel, while guns and dreadnoughts remained a side line. But, as the century advanced and the railway networks approached the commercial limits of their expansion, the makers of steel became the “Masters of War”. And steel needed coal, as did the steam engines driving trains, ships and factories, and all the gas works.
Petroleum had been seeping out of the ground in Mesopotamia since who knows when. The Babylonians used petroleum tar as cement for their brick buildings and surfaced their brick roads with it. The Greeks called it asphaltos and the Romans bitumen, and both used it as an unguent. No other use was found for mineral oil until distillation was applied. A fairly simple process primitively used to make perfume. It was perfected by oriental alchemists (al ambiq) and medieval liqueur drinking monks. This finally led to mass alcoholism and petrol, endangering public health but probably saving the whale population from extinction (blubber was for oil lamps and candle wax). It also led to John Rockefeller founding the Standard Oil Company in 1882 (8).
At the dawn of the 20th century, three companies controlled the petrol market. Standard Oil covered all the United States. Royal Dutch Shell was exploiting the resources of the Dutch East Indies, later to become Indonesia. And British Petroleum was in Iran and Kuwait. In 1911, Standard Oil was split into several entities by anti-trust proceedings. Then, by the Sevres Treaty of 1920, Turkey lost its control of the Middle East, opening up the huge oil fields of Mesopotamia and Arabia. By 1950, the Persian/Arabian Gulf was an Anglo-American mare nostrum. (9)
After the Second World War, America largely dominated the world economy, producing at least half of global wealth. America’s cities had not been bombed, nor its citizens starved. And America’s industry had supplied huge quantities of arms and ammunitions not only to its own colossal fighting machine, but also to its British and Soviet allies. And, as the war had been motorised, the brief peace and the wars that followed were motorised too. So petroleum became as necessary to human industry as were food and coal. Meanwhile, electricity’s particular form of distribution allowed the use of nuclear fission, and coal gas was progressively replaced by “natural” gas.
Carbon is no longer burnt by the pound for muscle power. At present it is burnt by the ton for mechanical horse-power. And humanity is consuming the non-renewable fossil fuel reserves of the planet, at an ever faster rate. This consumption may have already reached its peak. In which case, the use of mechanical power will become rarer and more costly. It might eventually become a thing of the past. But the mass consumption of these resources is not only a perpetual cause of conflict, it is also modifying the composition of Earth’s fine and fragile atmospheric skin.
Plants take carbon dioxide from the air (photosynthesis), break up the molecule to extract the carbon atom and expel the two oxygen atoms that make up the stable form of that element. Animals ingest plants (and each other), break up the carbohydrate molecules to burn the carbon atoms for energy and expel carbon dioxide back into the air. Animals are biofuel engines that produce enough power for their survival, for the renewed gathering of their carbon intake and for their reproduction.
It seems probable that life forms on Earth were, from the start, both animals and plants. Plants, however, were the first to leave the oceans and develop gigantic structures. The coal seams of the planet are witnesses of the Carboniferous Age. When fast growing ferns bigger than trees covered the land accumulating carbon from the atmosphere, and minuscule anaerobic animals were processing vegetable deposits to give them the forms that were to become petroleum and methane.
The exuberance of early plant life suggests heat, humidity and high levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide. The reasons behind the change in these conditions are unknown (insufficient carbon dioxide, the moon's arrival?), but the change occurred and, as a result, incalculable quantities of carbon were buried for eternity. And the new atmosphere with a high level of oxygen meant that animals could in turn become over-sized. However, the Jurassic Age also disappeared mysteriously (insufficient oxygen, a rogue asteroid?). And, with successive ups and downs, plants and animals reached a fairly stable cohabitation within the carbon cycle. That is until humans found a way to modify the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere. By burning fossil carbon we are progressively restoring the atmospheric conditions that existed some 500 million years ago, during the early Palaeozoic. Were this to continue, the change could be such as to oblige life on our planet to regress beyond the muscle power age, back to the amoeboid forms it started from.
1. cf. R.J. Forbes, A History of Science and Technology. II, 580.
2. cf. J-P Vernant, Mythe et pensée chez les Grecs. II, 49.
3. The demiourgoi, the working people, those who shaped metal and wood, but also the soothsayers, physicians and bards, were on a par with the gods. Plato transformed the concept. His Demiurge is the creative force of the universe. Ever an idealist and a member of the upper class, Plato showed little respect for the material activities of the artisan section of society.
4. It seems probable that the Jewish tradition, of converting newly acquired slaves and emancipating them after seven years of service, was adopted by the early Christians. This would partly explain the rapid growth in numbers of the new sectarians and the brutal treatments they were subjected to. Freeing slaves en masse could be seen as a threat to the system in place.
5. Something similar happened in the Americas. A way of life came to an end when Britain (rules the waves) outlawed the trafficking of slaves from Africa (1797). The obvious difference was the beginning of steam engines producing horse-power on demand. As usual, a moral stand was used as a pretty façade for sordid material gains. See also K. Marx on the American Civil War.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1861/us-civil-war/index.htm
6. Diesel’s motor ran on linseed oil. His invention was a biofuel engine.
7. Coal in Virginia, steel in Pennsylvania; coal in Lorraine and Flanders, between France and Germany; Coal in Serbia, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Ukraine, Korea, Manchuria, etc.
8. A good head’s start that was an advantage for well over a century. It has only become a handicap since petroleum production peaked circa 2000 AD.
9. As an introduction to oil in the Middle East.
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/oil/2003/0425byzantine.htm
By the time of Heron of Alexandria (c. 10 - 70 AD), Greek engineers had gone far beyond Aristotle’s five machines (lever, pulley, winch, screw and wedge). They knew about valves and siphons, cylinders and pistons, cog-wheels and gears. They used the forces of torsion and of metal springs. They understood basic hydraulics, the principles of a suction-pump and the power of steam. Yet nothing came of it all. Most of these notions remained theoretical and, when they did go beyond the drawing-board, were used to make ingenious toys (thauma)(2).
The Greeks’ consideration for the arts and crafts had changed with time. Homer’s techné applied just as well to the work of smiths and carpenters as it did to the magic of Hephaistos and the spells of Proteus (3). Some three centuries later Greek culture had reached its high mark. Artisans were no longer magicians, awesome and almost god-like. They were reduced to craftsmen who had learnt the use of tools. As the division of labour progressed, the production process lost its aura of mystery. Craftsmen remained freemen, but had no political role in Plato’s Republic. Later still, under the Roman Empire, they were mostly slaves working for masters, and the material arts had become mere repetitions of the past.
With the exceptions of war and government, the Romans were not innovators. Slaves and muscle power in abundance were doing the hammering, chipping, sawing and spinning, while patricians and plebeians took care of conquest and dominion. But all expansions seem to have limits and, when the Romans reached them, the great flow of slaves became a trickle (4). By then, the Empire’s dependence on slave labour was complete. So that, when the supply of what had seemed a limitless source of energy (human muscle) peaked and dropped, the Greco-Roman world dominion was condemned to a slow decline. The mind-set of the times was such that other sources of energy could not be put to use. The Empire faded and passed (5).
Coal has probably been dug up since prehistoric times. But vast forests meant that wood and charcoal were the usual fuels for heating, from cooking to smelting. However, as the forests of Western Europe receded and wood (oak in particular) became scarce, coal came to seem an attractive alternative. Transport was the major problem. But, because making war and making steel were inseparable, canals were built to bring fuel to the forges. And then came the steam engine. The conversion of heat into driving power completely modified production and transportation. Force was no longer limited to muscle. Even multiplied and combined, men and beasts could not compete with the energy of the coal furnace.
In the course of the 19th century, roughly from the time of James Watt’s steam engine (1780’s) to that of Rudolf Diesel’s compression-ignition engine (1890’s), coal became the world’s principal source of mechanical energy (6). This dependence on coal in the race for arms and industrial growth led quite naturally to war. Or, at least, added its own considerable momentum (7). The construction of railways had resulted in an enormous increase in the production of steel, while guns and dreadnoughts remained a side line. But, as the century advanced and the railway networks approached the commercial limits of their expansion, the makers of steel became the “Masters of War”. And steel needed coal, as did the steam engines driving trains, ships and factories, and all the gas works.
Petroleum had been seeping out of the ground in Mesopotamia since who knows when. The Babylonians used petroleum tar as cement for their brick buildings and surfaced their brick roads with it. The Greeks called it asphaltos and the Romans bitumen, and both used it as an unguent. No other use was found for mineral oil until distillation was applied. A fairly simple process primitively used to make perfume. It was perfected by oriental alchemists (al ambiq) and medieval liqueur drinking monks. This finally led to mass alcoholism and petrol, endangering public health but probably saving the whale population from extinction (blubber was for oil lamps and candle wax). It also led to John Rockefeller founding the Standard Oil Company in 1882 (8).
At the dawn of the 20th century, three companies controlled the petrol market. Standard Oil covered all the United States. Royal Dutch Shell was exploiting the resources of the Dutch East Indies, later to become Indonesia. And British Petroleum was in Iran and Kuwait. In 1911, Standard Oil was split into several entities by anti-trust proceedings. Then, by the Sevres Treaty of 1920, Turkey lost its control of the Middle East, opening up the huge oil fields of Mesopotamia and Arabia. By 1950, the Persian/Arabian Gulf was an Anglo-American mare nostrum. (9)
After the Second World War, America largely dominated the world economy, producing at least half of global wealth. America’s cities had not been bombed, nor its citizens starved. And America’s industry had supplied huge quantities of arms and ammunitions not only to its own colossal fighting machine, but also to its British and Soviet allies. And, as the war had been motorised, the brief peace and the wars that followed were motorised too. So petroleum became as necessary to human industry as were food and coal. Meanwhile, electricity’s particular form of distribution allowed the use of nuclear fission, and coal gas was progressively replaced by “natural” gas.
Carbon is no longer burnt by the pound for muscle power. At present it is burnt by the ton for mechanical horse-power. And humanity is consuming the non-renewable fossil fuel reserves of the planet, at an ever faster rate. This consumption may have already reached its peak. In which case, the use of mechanical power will become rarer and more costly. It might eventually become a thing of the past. But the mass consumption of these resources is not only a perpetual cause of conflict, it is also modifying the composition of Earth’s fine and fragile atmospheric skin.
Plants take carbon dioxide from the air (photosynthesis), break up the molecule to extract the carbon atom and expel the two oxygen atoms that make up the stable form of that element. Animals ingest plants (and each other), break up the carbohydrate molecules to burn the carbon atoms for energy and expel carbon dioxide back into the air. Animals are biofuel engines that produce enough power for their survival, for the renewed gathering of their carbon intake and for their reproduction.
It seems probable that life forms on Earth were, from the start, both animals and plants. Plants, however, were the first to leave the oceans and develop gigantic structures. The coal seams of the planet are witnesses of the Carboniferous Age. When fast growing ferns bigger than trees covered the land accumulating carbon from the atmosphere, and minuscule anaerobic animals were processing vegetable deposits to give them the forms that were to become petroleum and methane.
The exuberance of early plant life suggests heat, humidity and high levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide. The reasons behind the change in these conditions are unknown (insufficient carbon dioxide, the moon's arrival?), but the change occurred and, as a result, incalculable quantities of carbon were buried for eternity. And the new atmosphere with a high level of oxygen meant that animals could in turn become over-sized. However, the Jurassic Age also disappeared mysteriously (insufficient oxygen, a rogue asteroid?). And, with successive ups and downs, plants and animals reached a fairly stable cohabitation within the carbon cycle. That is until humans found a way to modify the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere. By burning fossil carbon we are progressively restoring the atmospheric conditions that existed some 500 million years ago, during the early Palaeozoic. Were this to continue, the change could be such as to oblige life on our planet to regress beyond the muscle power age, back to the amoeboid forms it started from.
1. cf. R.J. Forbes, A History of Science and Technology. II, 580.
2. cf. J-P Vernant, Mythe et pensée chez les Grecs. II, 49.
3. The demiourgoi, the working people, those who shaped metal and wood, but also the soothsayers, physicians and bards, were on a par with the gods. Plato transformed the concept. His Demiurge is the creative force of the universe. Ever an idealist and a member of the upper class, Plato showed little respect for the material activities of the artisan section of society.
4. It seems probable that the Jewish tradition, of converting newly acquired slaves and emancipating them after seven years of service, was adopted by the early Christians. This would partly explain the rapid growth in numbers of the new sectarians and the brutal treatments they were subjected to. Freeing slaves en masse could be seen as a threat to the system in place.
5. Something similar happened in the Americas. A way of life came to an end when Britain (rules the waves) outlawed the trafficking of slaves from Africa (1797). The obvious difference was the beginning of steam engines producing horse-power on demand. As usual, a moral stand was used as a pretty façade for sordid material gains. See also K. Marx on the American Civil War.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1861/us-civil-war/index.htm
6. Diesel’s motor ran on linseed oil. His invention was a biofuel engine.
7. Coal in Virginia, steel in Pennsylvania; coal in Lorraine and Flanders, between France and Germany; Coal in Serbia, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Ukraine, Korea, Manchuria, etc.
8. A good head’s start that was an advantage for well over a century. It has only become a handicap since petroleum production peaked circa 2000 AD.
9. As an introduction to oil in the Middle East.
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/oil/2003/0425byzantine.htm
posted by le Lézard at 1:14 AM
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