Different attitudes to nature and machinery, east and west

Abstract

In four sequences, Simon Schaffer reflects on the ways in which nature and machines are considered in east and west. In the west, nature is seen as a complex, nested, set of machines, from which profit can be extracted. In Daoism and other eastern philosophies, people should live in harmony with machines. The profound attitudinal difference, which itself is partly the result of technology, is one of the great divergences and lies behind the industrial revolution.