Of Clovis Points and Automobiles

Posted on February 16, 2004 in Crosstalk Culture Myths & Mysticism Thinking

First in a series written in response or inspired by this article by Yule Heibel.

The man (or woman) who chipped the stone into the shape of a pointed leaf thought of these problems that went with ensuring the kill: how to be certain of penetration; how to be certain that the point did not break inside the muscle or when the missile missed the target and hit a rock instead; how to combine the lightness of wood with the durability of stone; how to keep the warhead affixed on the haft; and, how to propel it from the hand into the humongous game beast. As flint chips fell on the ground, the man thought only of these perfections and the need that he sought to answer, the insistance of his stomach on being filled, of his whole body on having new raw materials to repair the incidental damage of every day living. He hollowed out a flute at the end opposite the point so he could attach a handle. Then he split a stick and wrapped sinews so that the Clovis Point that he had made would form part of a dart which would be sent flying to the kill. I do not think that when he finished this advance in human technology that he foresaw the extinction of the mammoths upon which his people depended.

Yule Heibel wrote the other day of the seeming split between what she calls “inventive science” (the giver of gadgets) and “transformative science” (the emancipator from superstition and the giver of freedom to investigate, to think beyond the present). If I am reading her right, she feels that where we welcome inventive science unquestioningly, we do our best to thwart the findings of the more moral science where they might afflict our dearly held superstitions. If I am reading her right, she seems to believe that this chasm between inventive science and transformative science, being that which gives us new objects to use versus that which allows us to proceed forward from the past is a new phenomenon:

….inventive science is on the verge of going out of control, but it would be a mistake to try to reign it in by smashing the philosophical underpinnings (transformative science) which make up the project of modernity. That’s precisely what the fundamentalists would have us do, but it would be a disaster to pitch the world back into the dark ages. Inventive science is out of control insofar as transformative science can’t provide reasons or parameters: if in the philosophical tradition, the question is “if it’s possible, why not do it?”, for the practical scientist the table is turned completely. The first question posits free agency, free will, and choice. But the practical scientist has almost come full circle, in a kind of dialectical round, returning again to a beginning in which there was no choice and humans weren’t free.

Yule’s great circle route of philosophy requires a world where the inventor of the Clovis Point was controlled by gods. I doubt that this is the case. Like many weapons, the Clovis Point served the special purposes of rending, tearing, puncturing, and, in finality, killing. Clovis points — like pottery, the wheel, cooked food, etc. — met needs. It may be that people invented religion around these needs to attempt to control forces of nature more complex and less concentrated than a beating mammoth heart, but I do not think that the rift Yule describes is anything new.

The Clovis Point existed to kill big hairy elephants. It did it’s job well, so well, that the species disappeared not just from the North American continent but from the entire world. There may or may not have been people who tried to turn the users of Clovis Points away from their “evil”, extinction-provoking ways. What is clear is that the real chasm was between inventive science as the bringer of new powers for human kinds and the failure of the philosophers of science to think past the advance, to observe nature as she was, to forsee that the unbridled use of the device would end in a radical change of lifestyles and dependencies.

I bring up Clovis Point as an example of the real problem facing human progress: that through all these centuries, we have not addressed many technological advances wisely. Who, for example, saw the disaster wreaked by the automobile a century ago? The automobile solved problems: it allowed greater and freer mobility. People could travel farther than they could on a horse and they could go places off the railroad lines. In the Los Angeles Basin where I live, this glorious advance produced several predictable natural disasters:

• Air pollution from petroleum fired engines has left its scars on the lungs of hundreds of thousands, if not millions;
  
• Space which could be used for farmland or residences has been converted over entirely to the care, access, and housing of automobiles — more than 50% of the land here in the Southern California metropolitan area. This means less land is being used for growing food. Much of the land is under soul-killing concrete and asphalt.
  
• Related to this is that populations are no longer concentrated. Urban areas spread or sprawl so that there are no longer open areas between the towns. You cannot tell, for example, when you pass from Irvine into Lake Forest unless there happens to be a sign marking the city limits. More importantly, it means that we’re placing our homes at the ends of long avenues far from our workplaces and our markets. We get less exercise. If the car were to be rendered suddenly obsolete, we would be marooned. The ruins that we will leave future generations shall be extensive.
  
• Ironically, though cars are capable of travelling at speeds of excess of 60 miles per hour, commute times are longer than they might be with rapid transit because of the impossibility of tens of thousands of automobiles occupying the same space. This has added time to our work day and increased stress.

For all its pleasures, the automobile has been a disaster. No God commanded it so and I know of no modern Fundamentalists who protest against its use (the Amish don’t count). No godlessness made the automobile possible: if anything, it’s human nature or, rather, human purblindness that has led us to the disaster of spreading concrete, stifling smog, and battering noise that characterizes Southern California car culture. The car is a modern invention, but the lack of foresight comes from ancient shortcomings that all our science and philosophy has yet to transform.

To be continued.