Title: Thinking Technology: William Golder and Samuel Butler in the pre-history of New Zealand as a modern technological society

Author: Brian Opie

Publication details: Victoria University of Wellington Library, 2014, Wellington

Part of: William Golder Electronic Edition

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Progress and Civilisation

The principal documents to be considered in this section are Butler’s publications in The Press from 1863 to 1865, and Golder’s poem, ‘The Crystal Palace of 1851’, which was published in his third volume of poems, The New Zealand Survey, in Wellington in 1867.²⁵ A larger context for Golder’s poem is provided by the title poem for this collection, which is a scientific epic of the origin and development to the present of New Zealand.

Butler’s energetic, witty and challenging interpretations of the new significance of technology (the machines) have been much discussed, although (given the remarkable insights which his observations produced) it is surprising that he does not figure much more largely in contemporary discussions of computing, artificial intelligence, and the new subjectivities brought into being by the interactions between technologies of all kinds, but especially cognitive technologies²⁶. Dyson writes of ‘Darwin Among the Machines’ that ‘Butler’s essay did more than spoof a fashionable theory: it coupled a meticulous analysis of Darwin’s thesis to a keenly unencumbered view of the world as it stood in 1863.’²⁷ Comparing Whewell’s analysis of the Great Exhibition with Cellarius’s argument in ‘Darwin Among the Machines’ provides a good example of this judgment; both agree that it is technology which is integral to human evolution, but Cellarius inverts the conventional assumption of human dominance over technology by arguing that mechanical evolution will reduce humanity to willing subservience (DM, pp.211-213). More specifically, Dyson relates Butler’s essays in The Press directly to the opening of the first telegraph in New Zealand, which linked Lyttleton and Christchurch in 1862, and quotes the question asked by Lunaticus: ‘Why should I write to the newspapers when I can write to the machines themselves …?” (LU, p.196). While each essay adopts a rather different position on the evolution of technology, they are bound together by a conception of human evolution which makes it dependent on the interactivity of matter and thought, body and mind, device and knowledge and the collective or social process of representation and reproduction of the effects of these interactions. Nimmer Beschweift argues that the principle of natural selection should be applied to the human mind, not the human body, because that is the source of evidence of progressive improvement (NB, 193); and ‘Darwin and the Novelists’ argues that ‘the new science of language’ ‘creates a vast and impassable chasm between man and all other created beings’ (DN, 190). It is in ‘Lucubratio Ebria’ and the essay published under the pseudonym of Lunaticus that the evolutionary implications of the development of cognitive technologies are the primary focus. As he affirms, ‘it must be remembered that men are not merely the children of their parents, but they are begotten of the institutions of the state of the mechanical sciences under which they are born and bred. These things make us what we are. We are the children of the plough, the spade, the ship; we are the children of the extended liberty and knowledge which the printing press has diffused’ (LE, 218).

At the core of machinic extension of the human mind-body is symbolic representation, what Lunaticus calls ‘intentional marks made for the purpose of attracting the attention of others’(198).²⁸ He provides a list of examples – ‘pyramids, hieroglyphics, Roman inscriptions, parchment, paper, letters, printing, newspapers, the penny-post, Mudie’s library, the electric telegraph, and the Great Exhibition of 1862’ – and affirms that ‘there is one great principle underlying them all, and that principle is increased facility for the action of mind upon mind’ (LU, 198).

Dyson quotes the following section of this essay to demonstrate that, in one respect at least, the development of the Web, the future may have been closer than Butler imagined:

We will say that a considerable advance has been made in mechanical development when all men, in all places, without any loss of time, are cognizant through their senses, of all that they desire to be cognizant of in all other places, at a low rate of charge, so that the back country squatter may hear his wool sold in London and deal with the buyer himself – may sit in his own chair in a back country hut and hear the performance of Israel in Egypt at Exeter Hall – may taste an ice on the Rakaia, which he is paying for and receiving in the Italian opera house Covent Garden. This is the grand annihilation of time and place which we are all striving for, and which in one small part we have been permitted to see actually realized. (LU, 196-197)

But shift the date from 1863 to 2010 and the same may be said of the Web. Dyson comments that ‘Computers may turn out to be less important as an end product of technological evolution and more important as catalysts facilitating evolutionary processes’²⁹ The crucial point is the general social principle (democratic in its refusal to rank human interests and purposes on a scale of class value) on which Butler premised this view of the future:

Whatever has tended to promote this matrimonial alliance of mind with mind will be found to have been attended with material progress; and nothing has been found so real and permanent a parent of good solid material welfare, as those things which have increased the facility of the interchange of thought, experience and opinion…[few perceived] that the minds of men who had been dead for fifteen hundred years would suddenly come to life [in the reformation], reassert themselves, and show their revived influence in the language, architecture, painting, laws, and customs of the world. Letters had done their work: they had fixed mind and bottled it, corked it, labelled it, laid it in bins, or libraries if you like it better, and so time was annihilated as regards the action of mind on mind. Hence the progress. What the reformation did was this – it afforded few fresh facilities for the interchange of opinion – but it gave freedom to form opinion, freedom to utter opinion … and a secure home for freedom has, in consequence of the reformation, been at last founded in the British empire. (LU, 199-200)

In the detail and emphases of this letter it is not difficult to perceive the lineaments of an earlier consideration of these issues which is also a potent example of ‘bottled’ mind and a foundational document in the development of British science, Bacon’s Advancement of Learning (1604). Bacon also brings into the foreground the profound alteration of time-space relations which is accomplished by the preservation of books, comparing printed thought to seeds and to a transport technology which is still primary importance for Golder and Butler:

The images of men’s wits and knowledges remain in books, exempted from the wrong of time and capable of perpetual renovation. Neither are they fitly to be called images, because they generate still, and cast their seeds in the mind of others, provoking and causing infinite actions and opinions in succeeding ages. So that if the invention of the ship was thought so noble, which carrieth riches and commodities from place to place, and consociateth the most remote regions in participation of their fruits, how much more are letters to be magnified, which as ships pass though the vast seas of time, and make ages so distant to participate in the wisdom, illuminations, and inventions, the one of the other?³⁰

The transport of the mind’s work around the globe, and its link with progress, was of equal importance to Golder. In the preface to his poem celebrating and interpreting the significance of the Great Exhibition of 1851, which is dated March 4, 1853, he noted that the poem was the result of ‘contemplating a picture of the Crystal Palace.’ He explained his interest and response as follows:

though living, I may say, at the ends of the earth, I yet feel a deep and lively interest in whatever takes place in father-land, when the object of the movement or occurrence tends (or is so meant) to the great and beneficial advancement of man in his social capacity. Thus I could not but regard the project of the great exhibition, with some admiration, feeling convinced that its ultimate results might lead to great moral revolutions, all tending to the welfare of the human family at large. Such were my conceptions of the great scheme when I first heard of it, and such do I still regard it, esteeming it as a precursor of great moral events yet to take place in the history of the world.³¹

Such a project exemplified the connection between scientific, technological and moral evolution in the advancement of civilisation, an historical process in which Golder had enrolled New Zealand in the poem he wrote on arrival, ‘Stanzas, Written while on the Voyage out to New Zealand on board the "Bengal Merchant”, January 14, 1840’³², as well as the nature of this process, in which specific events, actions, items of new knowledge, inventions and so on are never complete in themselves but portend (prophesy) a future state beyond what they make possible both actually and conceptually or imaginatively. In one respect, everything accomplished in this way of thinking is not an end in itself; it is also a precursor of something greater but as yet unperceived. Furthermore, as ‘Stanzas’ indicates, while individuals make their distinctive contributions the civilising project is collective, the outcome more than or other than the sum of its parts at any moment. Individuals conceive, collectivities tend; the work of the poem is to relate these different dimensions of ‘great moral events’, and to bring into words what is implicit or not yet articulated. In this way, the work of mind represented and enacted in the poem is diffused through society by the poem and becomes another agent in these socially transformative processes.

As does Butler in the opening section of ‘Lucubratio Ebria’, Golder invokes a state of dreamlikeness, not jokingly but with the same intent, to preface an account of a state of affairs which is perceived to be beyond the boundaries of conventional thought and experience. The picture invokes ‘th' imaginary past / Of strange romantic story, as a dream/Brought to reality … a palace great,/Of iron pillars rear'd, inlaid with glass’ (86). Although the palace has all the attributes of imaginative fiction, its reality transcends the ‘visionary scenes’ congenial to the imagination. In Golder’s estimation, there is no precedent knowledge which can adequately or in detail interpret this phenomenon:

In this I see the hand of Providence
Marking the course of great events to come;
Aye such events, that will an aspect give
Unto the history of the world, which have
Been never dreamed of by the wisest sage
Deep read in politics; and who has conn'd
Th' economy of nations, or the affairs
Of man, as he's connected with the world.
God's ways are on the waters! who can mark
His foot-prints? or upon the passing winds
Discern His movements? How He hastes along
Appointing, to His servants, each his task
To be performed, and that with ready mind!
For in their hearts alone His will's declared;
And blest indeed is he who thus receives
Some great appointment of importance full
To all mankind, bespeaking one esteem'd
As worthy of that trust on him imposed!—
And well may Britain as a nation rise
To show obedience ready, and rejoice
At being so distinguished as the scene
Of much that's good; but more to be employ'd
As Heav'n's great Herald, in proclaiming peace
And concord to the nations far and near. (87)

The poet sees the marks sufficiently to recognise the Crystal Palace as a sign, not just a building, encouraging the discernment of other signs which together comprise an imminent ‘moral revolution’. Locating the ultimate cause in Providence does not lead Golder to adopt a passive or acquiescent attitude; to the contrary, God’s design is accomplished through human agents, individuals and nations, the prime requirement being ‘a ready mind.’ The first canto explores a sociable and instructive function of the palace; it is a ‘mean to gather strangers from afar, … to aid the bonds/Of mutual friendship.’The effect of this meeting of the human family is to encourage new perception and self-judgment among the nations about the degrees of progress made ‘To civ'lizations goal, or to the heights / Of truth and science,’ and hence to remove the shackles impeding ‘The progress of the intellectual march/To civ'lization's height’ (88-90). The most important shackle for Golder (as for Butler) is lack of freedom, and he envisages New Zealand’s future specifically in relation to its accomplishment of this quality:

So may this colony, New Zealand, though
The youngest of her progeny, yet prove
In its importance not the least, and shew
Itself full worthy of Britannia's care!
And when to full maturity 't has grown
In after-ages, as a nation great, …
To see a happy people who possess
A nobleness of soul,—ev'n 'mongst the poor;—
Which quite outshines that of their pompous peers
In outward splendour clad;—while among whom
All freedom circulates, as through one's veins
Flows the life giving fluid in good health
Imparting joyous vigour through the frame;—
Such freedom that appreciated can be
Best by its daily use—becoming part
And parcel of existance [sic]— (93)

The second canto takes up the ‘march of intellect’ as manifested in the process of technological invention and instances a variety of tools and machines which are ‘[thoughts] transformed/ To something real’ (97), produced by a mind ‘engaged/In active labour to unfold its web/Of intricacies’ (98) but limited by its ‘finitude’: others follow ‘acute / To see where vast improvements might be made / So as t’extend th’invention far beyond/The author’s first design’ (99). Among the various examples³³, the most succinct is the account of vehicular evolution, and it also reads most like Butler’s way of making the point:

See the rude wain, or sled, how it has grown
To light spring chariots or the railway train! (100)

The Crystal Palace brings together in one place a representative sample of modern technology, the aim being ‘To shew progression's nature, in the arts / Of life, so beneficial for mankind!’ (101) and for nations either to ‘make known th' advancement each has / In all those arts becoming social life’ (102) or to stimulate awareness of possibilities never before considered or suppressed in societies cut off from developments in other parts of the world. An exemplary instance of such a society is Erewhon.