Science & Tech Quote by Lewis Mumford

Mumford’s line flatters modernity with one hand and scolds it with the other. He opens by conceding that “modern science and techniques” have “fallen short of their inherent possibilities” - a pointed rebuke from a thinker who spent his career worrying that industrial society could build dazzling systems without building a better life. The phrasing implies squandered potential: the problem isn’t lack of capability, it’s misdirection, a civilization that can land metaphorical rockets but can’t consistently deliver humane cities, sane work, or democratic control over its machines.

Then he pivots to the real payload: even in failure, technics has taught a psychological lesson. “Nothing is impossible” isn’t a celebration so much as a diagnosis. In the 20th century, the West watched engineering and organized research turn yesterday’s fantasy into tomorrow’s infrastructure - and also watched that same capacity scale war, bureaucracy, and ecological damage. Mumford’s subtext is that possibility is morally neutral. Once a society internalizes the idea that limits are merely technical obstacles, it starts treating every boundary - natural, ethical, political - as negotiable.

The sentence works because it’s double-edged: it captures the intoxication of progress while warning about its cultural side effects. Mumford is not arguing that science has made us wiser; he’s arguing that it has made us bolder, and that boldness, untethered from values, can become a kind of collective hubris. The “lesson” is less a gift than a burden: if nothing is impossible, then responsibility is no longer optional.