高级英语Lesson-6-(Book-2)-Disappearing-Through-the-Skylight-课文

Lesson 6

Disappearing Through the Skylight

Osborne Bennet Hardison Jr.

1

Science

is

committed

to

the

universal.

A

sign

of

this

is

that

the

more

successful

a

science

becomes,

the

broader

the

agreement

about

its

basic

concepts:

there is not a separate Chinese or American or Soviet thermodynamics, for example;

there

is

simply

thermodynamics.

For

several

decades

of

the

twentieth

century

there

was a Western and a Soviet genetics, the latter associated with Lysenko's theory that

environmental

stress

can

produce

genetic

mutations.

Today

Lysenko's

theory

is

discredited, and there is now only one genetics.

2

As

the

corollary

of

science,

technology

also

exhibits

the

universalizing

tendency.

This

is

why

the

spread

of

technology

makes

the

world

look

ever

more

homogeneous.

Architectural

styles,

dress

styles,

musical

styles--even

eating

styles--tend

increasingly

to

be

world

styles.

The

world

looks

more

homogeneous

because

it

is

more

homogeneous.

Children

who

grow

up

in

this

world

therefore

experience

it

as

a

sameness

rather

than

a

diversity,

and

because

their

identities

are

shaped

by

this

sameness,

their

sense

of

differences

among

cultures

and

individuals

diminishes.

As

buildings

become

more

alike,

the

people

who

inhabit

the

buildings

become

more

alike.

The

result

is

described

precisely

in

a

phrase

that

is

already

familiar: the disappearance of history.

3

The

automobile

illustrates

the

Point

With

great

clarity.

A

technological

innovation like streamlining or all-welded body construction may be rejected initially,

but if it is important to the efficiency or economics of automobiles, it will reappear in

different

ways

until

it

is

not

only

accepted

but

universally

regarded

as

an

asset.

Today's

automobile

is

no

longer

unique

to

a

given

company

or

even

to

a

given

national culture, its basic features are found, with variations, in automobiles in general,

no matter who makes them.

4

A few years ago the Ford Motor Company came up with the Fiesta, which it

called

the

Car.

Advertisements

showed

it

surrounded

by

the

flags

of

all

nations. Ford explained that the cylinder block was made in England, the carburetor in

Ireland, the transmission in France, the wheels in Belgium, and so forth.

5

The Fiesta appears to have sunk Without a trace. But the idea of a world car

was inevitable. It was the automotive equivalent of the International Style. Ten years

after the Fiesta, all of the large automakers were international. Americans had Plants

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in

Europe,

Asia,

and

South

America,

and

Europeans

and

Japanese

had

plants

in

America and South America, and in the Soviet Union Fiat Fiat (= Fabbrica Italiana

Automobile Torino ) workers refreshed themselves with Pepsi- Cola). In the fullness

of time international automakers will have plants in Egypt and India and the People's

Republic of China.

6

As

in

architecture,

so

in

automaking.

In

a

given

cost

range,

the

same

technology

tends

to

produce

the

same

solutions.

The

visual

evidence

for

this

is

as

obvious for cars as for buildings. Today, if you choose models in the same price range,

you will be hard put at 500 paces to tell one makefrom another. In other words, the

specifically American traits that lingered in American automobiles in the 1960s-- traits

that

linked

American

cars

to

American

history--are

disappearing.

Even

the

Volkswagen Beetle has disappeared and has taken with it the visible evidence of the

history

of

streamlining

that

extends

from

D'Arcy

Thompson

to

Carl

Breer

to

Ferdinand Porsche.

7

If

man

creates

machines,

machines

in

turn

shape

their

creators.

As

the

automobile is universalized, it universalizes those who use it. Like the World Car he

drives, modern man is becoming universal. No longer quite an individual, no longer

quite

the

product

of

a

unique

geography

and

culture,

he

moves

from

one

climate-controlled shopping mall

to

another, from one airport

to

the next,

from

one

Holiday

Inn

to

its

successor

three

hundred

miles

down

the

road;

but

somehow

his

location never changes. He is cosmopolitan. The price he pays is that he no longer has

a home in the traditional sense of the word. The benefit is that he begins to suspect

home

in

the

traditional

sense

is

another

name

for

limitations,

and

that

home

in

the

modern sense is everywhere and always surrounded by neighbors.

8

The

universalizing

imperative

of

technology

is

irresistible.

Barring

the

catastrophe

of

nuclear

war,

it

will

continue

to

shape

both

modern

culture

and

the

consciousness of those who inhabit that culture.

9

This

brings

us

to

art

and

history

again.

Reminiscing

on

the

early

work

of

Francis Picabia and Marcel Duchamp, Madame Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia wrote of the

discovery of the machine aesthetic in 1949:

thought he owed it to himself to turn his back on the Eiffel Tower, as a protest against

the

architectural

blasphemy

with

which

it

filled

the

sky....

The

discovery

and

rehabilitation of ... machines soon generated propositions which evaded all tradition,

above all, a mobile, extra human plasticit

y which was absolutely new....”

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10

Art

is,

in

one

definition,

simply

an

effort

to

name

the

real

world.

Are

machines

real

world

or

only

its

surface?

Is

the

real

world

that

easy

to

find?

Science has shown the in substantiality of the world. It has thus undermined an article

of faith: the thingliness of things. At the same time, it has produced images of orders

of reality underlying the thingliness of things. Are images of cells or of molecules or

of

galaxies

more

or

less

real

than

images

of

machines?

Science

has

also

produced

images that are pure artifacts. Are images of self-squared dragons more or less real

than images of molecules?

11

The

skepticism

of modern

science

about

the

thingliness

of

things

implies

a

new

appreciation

of

the

humanity

of

art

entirely

consistent

with

Kandinsky's

observation

in

On

the

Spiritual

in

Art

that

beautiful

art

from

inner

need,

which springs from the soul.

there

or

the

mind.

It

is

a

world

radically

emptied

of

history

because

it

is

a

form

of

perception rather than a content.

12

The

disappearance

of

history

is

thus

a

liberation--what

Madame

Buffet-Picabia refers to as the discovery of

absolutely

new.

Like

science,

modern

art

often

expresses

this

feeling

of

liberation

through play--in painting in the playfulness of Picasso and Joan Miro and in poetry in

the nonsense of Dada and the mock heroics of a poem like Wallace Stevens's

Comedian as the Letter C.

13 The playfulness of the modern aesthetic is, finally, its most striking--and also

its

most

serious

and,

by

corollary,

its

most

disturbing--feature.

The

playfulness

imitates the playfulness of science that produces game theory and virtual particles and

black holes and that, by introducing human growth genes into cows, forces students of

ethics

to

reexamine

the

definition

of

cannibalism.

The

importance

of

play

in

the

modern aesthetic should not come as a surprise. It is announced in every city in the

developed

world

by

the

fantastic

and

playful

buildings

of

postmodernism

and

neo-modernism and by the fantastic juxtapositions of architectural

styles that typify

collage city and urban adhocism.

14 Today modern culture includes the geometries of the International Style, the

fantasies of facadism, and the gamesmanship of theme parks and museum villages . It

pretends at times to be static but it is really dynamic. Its buildings move and sway and

reflect

dreamy

visions

of

everything

that

is

going

on

around

them.

It

surrounds

its

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