The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries witnessed, however, an increasing struggle over the

connotations of the root metaphor-“mechanists”using it with approval and extending its applications
form nature to society,romantics rejecting its appropriateness in deiverse contexts. In 1832, for
example, an American mathematis teacher (later lawyer) named Timothy Walker (1802-1856) took it
upon himself fto respond Thomas Carlyle’s criricsm of mechanics in Signs of the Times (1829).
Walker did not fully appreciate Carlyle’s contrast between mechanics and dynamics as poles of
human action and feeling, nor could he have anticipated Carlyle’s subsequent call for erintegration
of dynamics with mechanics by “Captain of Industry”(past and present, 1843) instead, walker’s
“Defense of mechanical Philosphy” makes the characteristic argument that mechanical philosophy is
the true means for emancipating the human mind in both thought and practice, and that trough its
correlate,technology, it makes democratically available the kind of freedom enjyed only by the few
in a society base on slavery

Two years Later, in 1835, the Scottish chemical engineer Andrew Ure (1778-1857) coined the
phrase “Philosophy of manufatures” to the designate his “ exposition of the general principles on
which productive industry should be conducted with self-acting machines,’’ which he contrancts to
‘’the philosophy of the fine arts” Ure’s exposition includes a number of conceptual issues that he
continued to concern the philosophy of technology: distinctions between craft and factory
production, mechanical and chemical processes, the classification of machines, the possibility of
rules for invention, and the socioeconomic implications of ‘’automatic machinery’’.

In the 20th century the interpretation of the human mind and brain as a computer has replaced the
18th century metaphor of "man as a machine." This paper traces the development of the
computational metaphor with some attention to its 18th-century roots, and then argues that its
employment does not necessarily lead to mechanization of thinking and the autonomy of technique.
An awareness of the metaphor and, therefore, hypothetical status of the computational metaphor
helps prevent technique from escaping intentional human control.

The interaction between men and machines not only changes the organization of society, but also
alters the concepts which men use to think, especially those concepts employed to reflect upon
human nature itself. Jacques Ellul describes the impact of machines as extending far beyond the
adaptation of man to the machine. When I state that technique leads to mechanization, I am not
referring to the simple fact of human adaptation to the machine. Of course, such a process of
adaptation exists, but it is caused by the action of the machine. What we are concerned with here,
however, is a kind of mechanization itself. If we may ascribe to the machine a superior form of
"know-how," the mechanization which results from technique is the application of this higher form
to all domains hitherto foreign to the machine; we can even say that technique is characteristic of
precisely that realm in which the machinc itself can play no role.

The employment of technological metaphors to explain the nature of man illustrates one way in
which technique extends the process of mechanization beyond the machine, Soon after the advent
of machines, the metaphor, "man is a machine," resulted from the discovery ofthe similarity of the
operation of the two entities. This mechanical metaphor, popular in the 18th century, led men to
think of themselves as machines. As long as men realized that they were not literally machines, but
only like machines in some aspects and different from them in others, man controlled the technique
that brought about the process of mechanization of thinking. When the metaphor came to be
treated literally, however, and the identification of machines and men became unquestioned
becomes autonomous. As Ellul suggests, technique reigns, cutting man offfrom nature and his
cultural tradition, thereby robbing man of his own humanity. Technique has become autonomous; it
has fashioned an omnivorous world which obeys its own laws and which has renounced all tradition.
Technique no longer rests on tradition, but rather on previous technical procedures; and its
evolution is too rapid, too upsetting to integrate the older traditions. 2 In the 20th century the
computational metaphor which interprets the human mind and brain as a computer has replaced
the 18th century metaphor of "man as machine." This discussion will trace the development of the
computational metaphor, with some attention to its 18th century roots, and then argue that the
employment of the computational metaphor through a process of mechanization of thinking does
not necessarily lead to the autonomy of technique. An awareness of the metaphoric and, therefore,
hypothetical status of the computational metaphor will prevent technique from escaping intentional
human control and by controlling technique man can retain his relationships with nature and
tradition. Under the computational metaphor, the brain can be viewed as a computational device
similar to a computer, and the mind emerges as a series of programs by means of which the brain
functions. Human thinking does not necessarily reduce to brain functions; rather, human thinking
and brain functions combine to produce a computational process. The "hardware" of the brain
operates under the control of the "software" of the mind to produce a computation which has
traditionally been called cognition. collapsing them into an analogy and dissolving the dissimilarities
between the two entities - then the process of metaphoric mechanization