He went on to discuss accounts of simulacra in the classical world, including “cosmological simulacra,” which were apparently rarer and later in arriving than “biological models” (12), but which wedded concepts of mathematical and geometric regularity in celestial motion to mechanical devices. He argues that ancient water clocks and sundials probably were built for “the aesthetic or religious satisfaction derived from making a device to simulate the heavens,” rather than for a “utilitarian purpose” (13). He notes that such devices were certainly used to drive celestial models in the Chinese context. And then, of course, there was the extraordinary sophistication of the Antikythera mechanism, which, when Price wrote, had only begun to be fathomed. According to Price, “Amongst historians of technology there seems always to have been private, somewhat peevish discontent because the most ingenious mechanical devices of antiquity were not useful machines but trivial toys.” And it was for this reason that mechanical explanations were assumed to derive from the example of practical technology. But, in his view, the sheer sophistication and near-contemporaneous development of astronomical and biological simulacra were evidence that they developed in tandem with attempts to understand and explain the world: mechanisms and philosophical ideas “represent complementary facets of man’s urge to exhibit the depth of his understanding and his sophisticated skills by playing the role of do-it-yourself creator of the universe, embodying its two most noble aspects, the cosmic and the animate”
Posted on: Tue, 13 Jan 2015 20:27:31 +0000