"It reflects a prevailing myth that production technology is no more amenable to human judgment or social interests than the laws of thermodynamics, atomic structure or biological inheritance"
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Commoner is puncturing a convenient superstition: that the way we make things is as fixed and untouchable as physics. By pairing “production technology” with thermodynamics and atomic structure, he mimics the tone of hard science only to expose how often it’s misused as a rhetorical shield. The move is surgical. He isn’t denying natural law; he’s denying the alibi. Calling it a “prevailing myth” frames technological systems not as neutral progress but as stories we tell to protect decisions from scrutiny.
The intent is political in the best sense: to drag engineering and industrial design back into the realm of choice, accountability, and democratic argument. “Amenable to human judgment or social interests” signals the pressure point. If technology is treated like biology or inheritance, then inequality, pollution, labor exploitation, and planned obsolescence can be waved away as unfortunate but inevitable. Commoner’s subtext is that inevitability is a strategy: it converts value-laden tradeoffs into “just how it works.”
Context matters. Commoner rose to prominence as an ecologist and public intellectual in the postwar era, when the U.S. wrapped industrial expansion, chemical agriculture, and nuclear systems in a triumphalist language of expertise. His larger body of work pushed back against environmental harm being blamed on consumers or “overpopulation,” arguing instead that corporate and state choices about production were driving ecological crises. This line does what his best writing does: it challenges the authority of “the natural” as a cover for the man-made, insisting that what humans design can be redesigned.
The intent is political in the best sense: to drag engineering and industrial design back into the realm of choice, accountability, and democratic argument. “Amenable to human judgment or social interests” signals the pressure point. If technology is treated like biology or inheritance, then inequality, pollution, labor exploitation, and planned obsolescence can be waved away as unfortunate but inevitable. Commoner’s subtext is that inevitability is a strategy: it converts value-laden tradeoffs into “just how it works.”
Context matters. Commoner rose to prominence as an ecologist and public intellectual in the postwar era, when the U.S. wrapped industrial expansion, chemical agriculture, and nuclear systems in a triumphalist language of expertise. His larger body of work pushed back against environmental harm being blamed on consumers or “overpopulation,” arguing instead that corporate and state choices about production were driving ecological crises. This line does what his best writing does: it challenges the authority of “the natural” as a cover for the man-made, insisting that what humans design can be redesigned.
Quote Details
| Topic | Technology |
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