2013年3月5日 星期二

The Lewis Mumford Reader 劉易斯‧芒福德著作精萃



「建築不僅僅只是蓋房子的藝術，而是一種更大的、要改變人類全部習慣的藝術。這一觀念在加州已經紮了根，因為那裡的伯克萊建築學院已經改組，並且重新定名為「環境設計學院」。」

《劉易斯‧芒福德著作精萃》，北京: 中國建築工業出版，2010，頁104
The Lewis Mumford Reader. Donald L. Miller, ed. (1986 New York: Pantheon Books)


讀 Lewis Mumford 談 1792年華府都市規劃的教訓，對我們這外邦人而言， National Mall 已經是了不起的成就了……



他在精神上屬於樂觀主義者，雖然他對有條件出現的 possibilities保持著樂觀主義者的心態
，但卻在先進時代裡對於可能出現的 probabilities 變得越來越像個悲觀主義者。

某譯者將possibilities 譯為好結局，probability譯為壞結局。

 其實，上段是說對有條件出現的可能性，表樂觀。然而在先進時代裡實際的發生概率上，他是悲觀的。




Published 1995 by University of Georgia Press in Athens .
Written in English.

Edition Notes


Includes bibliographical references (p. 371-373) and index.
Originally published: New York : Pantheon Books, c1986.



劉易斯‧芒福德著作精萃
　叢書名稱： 劉易斯‧芒福德經典著作系列
　作　　者： (美)劉易斯‧芒福德
　北京：中國建築工業出版
　出版日期： 2010.11

這些篇章涵蓋了美國這位偉大批評家和評論家一生的寫作歷程！
芒福德在他的重要著作中都闡釋了他一生的最高關注，本書就從這些著作裡選編有代表性的章節集中出版，以饗讀者。 馬爾科姆·考利曾讚揚芒福德是“人類最後一位偉大的人文主義者。”他一生辛勤筆耕完成大量著述，他的文化批評、建築評論，領域之廣，探索之深，在當代美國 文化界都是無與倫比的。 他留下了無數論文和三十多部專著，其中包括兩部標誌性名著《城市文化》、《城市發展史》，因而或許可以說，他是20世紀美國最重要的建築評論家。 此外，在一些最重要的公共決策辯論過程中，芒福德也發揮過決定性影響。 他筆鋒雄健，涉獵了城市發展、交通決策、用地規劃、環境保護、裁減核軍備等許多學術領域，還探索了技術發展帶來的問題和希望。
作者簡介：
劉易斯·芒福德(Lewis Murnford，1895-1990年)是《日晷》雜誌的副總編輯，社會學評論(倫敦)的代理主編以及美國文學年報的幾位主編之一。 他於1935年至1937年擔任紐約市高等教育董事會董事，1938年至1944年擔任美國教育理事會理事。 芒福德先生還是美國哲學學會會員和美國藝術與科學院院士。
圖書目錄：中文版譯者序——時代呼喚大手筆
導言
第一章 城市之子
引言
紐約東區，紐約西區
都市巡禮
我們都市的盛裝遊行和精彩項目
第二章 建築——人類家園
引言
紐約城的布魯克林大橋
走向現代建築
聲討“現代建築”：與勒·柯布西耶商榷
建築的象徵含義與實際功能
第三章 城市——人類文明
引言
城市的本質
城市的消亡
中世紀城市
巴洛克城市
華盛頓哥倫比亞特區的教訓
第四章 城市的未來
引言
現代城市的理想形式
明天，城市會消失嗎？
膏藥敷癌聊勝於無：與雅各布斯商榷
恢復溝通，更新生活
人類文明的區域框架形式
理想國的基礎
未來的抉擇
第五章 美國研究
引言
美國國家精神的起源
黃金時代
新大陸的希望
第六章 技術與文化
引言
技術與人類發展
第一架巨型機器
修道院與鍾表
巨型機器的再度發明
藝術與技術
第七章 跋
你們就稱呼我約拿吧！
資料來源
致謝
索引



***
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Lewis Mumford
Born 19 October 1895(1895-10-19)[1]
Flushing, New York[1]
Died 26 January 1990(1990-01-26) (aged 94)[1]
Occupation Historian,
Writer
Nationality American
Genres History, Philosophy
Notable work(s) The City in History, Technics and Civilization, The Myth of the Machine
Lewis Mumford (October 19, 1895 – January 26, 1990) was an American historian, philosopher of technology and science, and influential literary critic. Particularly noted for his study of cities and urban architecture, he had a broad career as a writer. Mumford was influenced by the work of Scottish theorist Sir Patrick Geddes.
Mumford was also a contemporary and friend of Frank Lloyd Wright, Frederic Osborn, Edmund N. Bacon, and Vannevar Bush.

Contents

[hide]

[edit] Life

Mumford was born in Flushing, Queens, New York, and graduated from Stuyvesant High School in 1912.[2] He studied at the City College of New York and The New School for Social Research, but became ill with tuberculosis and never finished his degree. In 1918 he joined the navy to serve in World War I and was assigned as a radio electrician.[1][3] He was discharged in 1919 and became associate editor of The Dial, an influential modernist literary journal. He later worked for The New Yorker where he wrote architectural criticism and commentary on urban issues.
Mumford's earliest books in the field of literary criticism have had a lasting impact on contemporary American literary criticism. The Golden Day contributed to a resurgence in scholarly research on the work of 1850's American transcendentalist authors and Herman Melville: A study of His Life and Vision effectively launched a revival in the study of the work of Herman Melville. Soon after, with the book The Brown Decades, he began to establish himself as an authority in US architecture and urban life, which he interpreted in a social context.
In his early writings on urban life, Mumford was optimistic about human abilities and wrote that the human race would use electricity and mass communication to build a better world for all humankind. He would later take a more pessimistic stance. His early architectural criticism also helped to bring wider public recognition to the work of Henry Hobson Richardson, Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright.
In 1963, Mumford received the Frank Jewett Mather Award for art criticism from the College Art Association.[4] Mumford received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964.[1] In 1975 Mumford was made an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire.[1] In 1976, he was awarded the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca.[1] In 1986, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts.[1]
A white house with black shutters and brick chimneys seen from its front left corner. Shrubs and trees obscure the view on the sides.
Mumford's house in Amenia
He served as the architectural critic for The New Yorker magazine for over 30 years. His 1961 book, The City in History, received the National Book Award.[1]
Lewis Mumford died at the age of 94 at his home in Amenia, New York on January 26, 1990.[1] Nine years later it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

[edit] Ideas

Mumford believed that what defined humanity, what set human beings apart from other animals, was not primarily our use of tools (technology) but our use of language (symbols). He was convinced that the sharing of information and ideas amongst participants of primitive societies was completely natural to early humanity, and had obviously been the foundation of society as it became more sophisticated and complex. He had hopes for a continuation of this process of information “pooling” in the world as humanity moved into the future.[5]
Mumford's choice of the word "technics" throughout his work was deliberate. For Mumford, technology is one part of technics. Using the broader definition of the Greek tekhne, which means not only technology but also art, skill and dexterity, technics refers to the interplay of a social milieu and technological innovation - the "wishes, habits, ideas, goals" as well as "industrial processes" of a society. As Mumford writes at the beginning of Technics and Civilization, "other civilizations reached a high degree of technical proficiency without, apparently, being profoundly influenced by the methods and aims of technics."

[edit] Megatechnics

In The Myth of the Machine Vol II: The Pentagon of Power (Chapter 12) (1970), Mumford criticizes the modern trend of technology, which emphasizes constant, unrestricted expansion, production, and replacement. He explains that these goals work against technical perfection, durability, social efficiency, and overall human satisfaction. Modern technology—which he calls 'megatechnics'—evades producing lasting, quality products by using devices such as consumer credit, installment buying, non-functioning and defective designs, built-in fragility, and frequent superficial "fashion" changes. "Without constant enticement by advertising", he explains, "production would slow down and level off to normal replacement demand. Otherwise many products could reach a plateau of efficient design which would call for only minimal changes from year to year."
He uses his own refrigerator as an example, explaining that it "has been in service for nineteen years, with only a single minor repair: an admirable job. Both automatic refrigerators for daily use and deepfreeze preservation are inventions of permanent value ... if biotechnic criteria were heeded, rather than those of market analysts and fashion experts, an equally good product might come forth from Detroit, with an equally long prospect of continued use."

[edit] Biotechnics

Mumford describes an organic model of technology, or biotechnics, as a contrast to megatechnics. Organic systems direct themselves to "qualitative richness, amplitude, spaciousness, and freedom from quantitative pressures and crowding. Self-regulation, self-correction, and self-propulsion are as much an integral property of organisms as nutrition, reproduction, growth, and repair." Biotechnics models life in seeking balance, wholeness, and completeness.

[edit] Polytechnics versus monotechnics

A key idea, introduced in Technics and Civilization (1934) was that technology was twofold:
  • Polytechnic, which enlists many different modes of technology, providing a complex framework to solve human problems.
  • Monotechnic which is technology only for its own sake, which oppresses humanity as it moves along its own trajectory.
Mumford commonly criticized modern America's transportation networks as being 'monotechnic' in their reliance on cars. Automobiles become obstacles for other modes of transportation, such as walking, bicycle and public transit, because the roads they use consume so much space and are such a danger to people. Mumford explains that the thousands of maimed and dead each year as a result of automobile accidents are a "ritual sacrifice" the American society makes because of its extreme reliance on highway transport.

[edit] Megamachines

Mumford also refers to large hierarchical organizations as megamachines—a machine using humans as its components. These organizations comprise Mumford's stage theory of civilization. The most recent Megamachine manifests itself, according to Mumford, in modern technocratic nuclear powers—Mumford used the examples of the Soviet and US power complexes represented by the Kremlin and the Pentagon, respectively. The builders of the Pyramids, the Roman Empire and the armies of the World Wars are prior examples.

[edit] Features

He explains that meticulous attention to accounting and standardization, and elevation of military leaders to divine status are spontaneous features of megamachines throughout history. He cites such examples as the repetitive nature of Egyptian paintings which feature enlarged Pharaohs and public display of enlarged portraits of socialist leaders such as Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin. He also cites the overwhelming prevalence of quantitative accounting records among surviving historical fragments, from ancient Egypt to Nazi Germany.
Necessary to the construction of these megamachines is an enormous bureaucracy of humans which act as "servo-units", working without ethical involvement. According to Mumford, technological improvements such as remote control by satellite or radio, instant global communication, and assembly line organizations dampen psychological barriers against the end result of their actions. An example which he uses is that of Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi official who conducted logistics behind the Holocaust. Mumford collectively refers to people willing to carry out placidly the extreme goals of these megamachines as "Eichmanns".

[edit] The clock as herald of the Industrial Revolution

One of the better-known studies of Mumford is of the way the mechanical clock was developed by monks in the Middle Ages and subsequently adopted by the rest of society. He viewed this device as the key invention of the whole Industrial Revolution, contrary to the common view of the steam engine holding the prime position, writing: "The clock is a piece of machinery whose 'product' is seconds and minutes."

[edit] Urban civilization

In his influential book The City in History, which won the National Book Award, Mumford explores the development of urban civilizations. Harshly critical of urban sprawl, Mumford argues that the structure of modern cities is partially responsible for many social problems seen in western society. While pessimistic in tone, Mumford argues that urban planning should emphasize an organic relationship between people and their living spaces.
Mumford uses the example of the medieval city as the basis for the "ideal city," and claims that the modern city is too close to the Roman city (the sprawling megalopolis) which ended in collapse; if the modern city carries on in the same vein, Mumford argues, then it will meet the same fate as the Roman city.
Mumford wrote critically of urban culture believing the city is "a product of earth ... a fact of nature ... man's method of expression."[6] Further Mumford recognized the crises facing urban culture, distrusting of the growing finance industry, political structures, fearful that a local community culture was not being fostered by these institutions. Mumford feared "metropolitan finance," urbanisation, politics, and alienation.
"The physical design of cities and their economic functions are secondary to their relationship to the natural environment and to the spiritual values of human community."

[edit] Writing style

While Mumford's writing exhibits much original research and a uniquely "Mumfordian" approach to history and technology, his style often incorporates powerful rhetorical subtleties and psychoanalytical interpretations of philosophical figures. A Mumford essay also tends to be multidisciplinary, combining references and images from an often startlingly wide range of studies.

[edit] Influence

Mumford's interest in the history of technology and his explanation of "polytechnics", along with his general philosophical bent, has been an important influence on a number of more recent thinkers concerned that technology serve human beings as broadly and well as possible. Some of these authors—such as Jacques Ellul, Witold Rybczynski, Richard Gregg,[7] Amory Lovins, J. Baldwin, E. F. Schumacher, Herbert Marcuse, Murray Bookchin, Thomas Merton, Marshall McLuhan, James Howard Kunstler, and Colin Ward[8]—have been intellectuals and persons directly involved with technological development and decisions about the use of technology.
Mumford also had an influence on the American environmentalist movement, with thinkers like Barry Commoner and Bookchin being influenced by his ideas on cities, ecology and technology.[9] Ramachandra Guha noted his work contains 'some of the earliest and finest thinking on bioregionalism, anti-nuclearism, biodiversity, alternate energy paths, ecological urban planning and appropriate technology."[10]
Mumford's influence is also evident in the work of some artists including Berenice Abbott's photographs of New York City in the late 1930s.[11]

[edit] Bibliography

Incomplete - to be updated
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Lewis Mumford
  • The Story of Utopias (1922)
  • Sticks and Stones (1924)
  • The Golden Day (1926)
  • Herman Melville: A Study of His Life and Vision (1929)
  • The Brown Decades: A Study of the Arts in America, 1865-1895 (1931)
  • The City (1939, a film)
  • "Renewal of Life" series
  • Values for Survival (1946)
  • Art and Technics (1952)
  • In the Name of Sanity (1954)
  • The Transformations of Man (1956 New York: Harper and Row)
  • The City in History (1961) (Awarded the National Book Award)
  • The Highway and the City (1963, essay collection)
  • The Myth of the Machine (2 volumes)
    • Technics and Human Development (1967)
    • The Pentagon of Power (1970)
  • The Urban Prospect (1968, essay collection)
  • My Work and Days: A Personal Chronicle (1979)
  • Sketches from Life: The Autobiography of Lewis Mumford (1982 New York: Dial Press)
  • The Lewis Mumford Reader. Donald L. Miller, ed. (1986 New York: Pantheon Books)

技术及文明

- [ 轉為繁體網頁 ]2010年11月21日 ... 作者简介刘易斯·芒福德（Lewis Murnford，1895-1990年），是《日晷》杂志的副总编辑，社会学评论(伦敦)的代理主编以及美国文学年报的几位主编之一。 ..

[edit] Articles

  • Mumford, Lewis (8 January 1949). "The Sky Line: The Quick and the Dead". The New Yorker 24 (46): 60–65.
Reviews the Esso Building, Rockefeller Center
  • Mumford, Lewis (4 February 1950). "The Sky Line: Civic Virtue". The New Yorker 25 (50): 58–63.
Reviews Parke-Bernet Galleries, Madison Avenue

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j "Chronology of Mumford's Life". Lewis Mumford Center. http://mumford.albany.edu/mumford/chronology_lm.htm. Retrieved 12 October 2010.
  2. ^ Wojtowicz, Robert (January 2001). "City As Community: The Life And Vision Of Lewis Mumford". Quest (Old Dominion University) 4 (1). http://www.odu.edu/ao/instadv/quest/cityascommunity.html. Retrieved 2007-10-31.
  3. ^ Sorensen, Lee (ed). "Mumford, Lewis". Dictionary of Art Historians. http://www.dictionaryofarthistorians.org/mumfordl.htm. Retrieved 12 October 2010.
  4. ^ "Awards". The College Art Association. http://www.collegeart.org/awards/matherpast. Retrieved 11 October 2010.
  5. ^ Mumford, Lewis (1974). "Enough Energy for Life & The Next Transformation of Man [MIT lecture transcript]". CoEvolution Quarterly (Sausalito, CA: POINT Foundation) 1 (4): 19–23.
  6. ^ Mumford, The Culture of Cities, 1938
  7. ^ Gregg, Richard. The Value of Voluntary Simplicity. Pendle Hill, 1936, p. 32.
  8. ^ Ward, Colin. Influences: Voices of Creative Dissent. Green Books, 1991, pp. 106-07.
  9. ^ Wall, Derek. Green History, Routledge, 1994, pg. 91.
  10. ^ Quoted in Guha, Ramachandra & Martinez-Alier, J. (1997) Varieties of Environmentalism: Essays North and South. London: Earthscan (1997). For other works on Mumford’s ecological and environmental thought, see: David Pepper Modern Environmentalism, Routledge, 1996, Max Nicolson, The New Environmental Age, Cambridge University Press, 1989, and BA Minteer, The Landscape of Reform: Civic Pragmatism and Environmental Thought in America MIT Press, 2006.
  11. ^ Barr, Peter. "Becoming Documentary: Berenice Abbott's Photographs, 1925-1939," PhD dissertation, Boston University, 1997.

[edit] Further reading

[edit] External links

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