It would be better to discard the term scientific truth altogether ...

 We must keep in mind that the exactness which the natural sciences have achieved, or are trying to achieve, no matter how far it is carried, refers only to the mechanical exactness of both the process and the subject of perception. Such exactness does not give us certainty beyond the certainty of facts found in repeatable experiences. Exactness in this sense is in fact correctness, but it is not truth, for it is meaningless to talk of truth where merely something mechanically repeatable has been ascertained. Truth is not identical with repeat ability; on the contrary, it is what absolutely cannot be duplicated. Hence truth has no place in any kind of mechanics. The term "scientific truth" is therefore quite equivocal. It is based on experiments, and it is used where some mechanically exact phenomenon has been made intelligible, provable, and capable of being repeated.

But the fact that something can be proved, tested, and repeated is no criterion of truth. If the scientist asserts that this exactness is synonymous simply with truth, or with a higher truth, the assertion shows only that the scientist's terminology itself is inexact. What sense does it make to call the proposition, "Two times two equal four," a proposition memorized by first-year school children, a truth? Truth is not learned; one does not become more truthful by learning and by knowing much. Nor do we become truthful by exact thinking. A mathematical proposition does not become true just because it describes a fact with exactness, not even if it gets repeated a million times. The apodictical certainty of mathematical propositions lies entirely and completely within the field of exactness and correctness; but their content of truth equals zero, like that of any arithmetical proposition.

Scientific truths are not "higher" truths. Where they claim to be, these claims are usurpations by the mechanical exactitude. It would be better to discard the term scientific truth altogether because its validity is merely descriptive.

The striving for exactness characteristic of the natural sciences must here be gauged in a different manner – not with those measuring instruments developed for the purpose, but from a point of vantage entirely beyond all science and scientism. No one will deny that it is needful and legitimate to seek such a point of vantage, unless, of course, we make science our religion, surround it with walls of dogma, and sanctify all its methods. But this would render all investigation and analysis impossible.

We will start from an observation which no one who has ever made it can forget. For to observe our modern civilization means to raise the question: Is there not a direct connection between the increase of knowledge concerning mechanically exact processes and the fact that modern man, in a strange manner, loses his individuality, loses his balance, his grip upon life, feels increasingly endangered and susceptible to attack in the security that is his due? This inner security, of course, means something different from the security which can be bought by any kind of measurable method. For it concerns man's place and role in life and is related to human freedom. No methodical science can ever give to man that kind of security, not even the most systematic kind of exactitude. The trend of our exact sciences is not toward purely intellectual knowledge. On the contrary, it has been sharply opposed to the way Parmenides strove after knowledge; it is typically analytical, inductive, dividing. Thus, causality and, in its train, functionalism push to the fore, and all individuality is lost. Thus too, all things mechanical predominate, and with them that brutal optimism and conceit of civilization which characterize the course of the technological age; until eventually the point is reached where a man is broken by his blind lust for power, is punished, and thereby forced to change his way of thinking.

From: Friedrich Georg Jünger 

The Failure of Technology

His failure to control his automaton with automatic regularity

 At a certain stage of technological progress, the individual begins to become aware that he has entered a danger zone. Gradually the smug satisfaction which the observer derived from the sight of some marvelous piece of machinery gets mingled with a sense of impending danger; fear befalls him. Those weavers who in a burst of blind and thoughtless hatred destroyed the power looms that had deprived them of their livelihood were not yet aware of the real menace. They tried to stop technical progress by brute force a fruitless attempt to save themselves from proletarization. The realization that man has to pay a price for every increase in power the machine gives him, that he must give an equivalent in return, is a realization that had not yet dawned in the early days of technology. In those days boundless economic confidence predominated, an unshakable optimism about the future. It is by no means accidental that the progress of the iron age was accompanied by doctrines in which progress undertook to celebrate itself, doctrines ranging all the way from praise of evolution to praise of brute force. The machine era is revolutionary not only as regards machinery.

As technology approaches perfection, however, the chorus of optimistic voices grows weaker, because experience gradually teaches not only the advantages but also the disadvantages which the new tools bring. Only by experience do we learn that our technological apparatus has its own laws, and that we must be on our guard against getting in conflict with them.

The industrial accident may serve here as an illustration. As mechanization progresses, industrial and traffic accidents increase until they far exceed even the casualties of war. Since even the most ingenious inventions cannot eliminate these accidents, it is clear that they must be due to some basic discrepancy between the operator and the mechanism he operates. The operational accident occurs where man fails to function as a human machine, where he no longer acts in accord with the automatic mechanism he is operating. The operational accident, in other words, occurs precisely where we are human, where we try to assert our independence of the machine, be it by lack of attention, fatigue, sleep, or preoccupation with non-mechanical things. It is in such moments of human weakness that the suppressed elemental forces break loose, get out of control, and wreak their vengeance by destroying both the operator and his machine. The law, now in the service of the technical organization, punishes the negligent operator for his failure to control his automaton with automatic regularity.

The disaster of the Titanic, an event whose symbolic significance is emphasized by the name, was such an operational accident. We can understand the shock it produced if we consider that this accident shattered for a moment faith in the technology which had claimed this ship to be unsinkable. The optimism based on such claims was temporarily dispelled.

The deeper and more lasting impression made upon man's mind by the Lisbon earthquake is, however, related to a change in religious concepts. It undermined the faith in Divine Providence, a shake-up which favored the formation of a causalist ideology opposed to any idea of divine providence.

From: Friedrich Georg Jünger - The Failure of Technology

Automatons

 The invention of the automaton dates from antiquity, as is shown by the dove of Archytas and the robot of Ptolemy Philadelphos. These much admired mechanisms, like the automatons of Albertus Magnus, Bacon, and Regiomantus, were ingenious toys; nothing more serious. They evoked not only wonder, but also fear. The robot of Albertus Magnus, which could open the door and greet the visitor (the fruit of decades of effort), was smashed by the startled Thomas Aquinas with a blow of his stick. The intellectual fascination which machines have held for man from the earliest times is coupled with a presentiment of the uncanny, an almost unaccountable feeling of horror. We sense this in Goethe’s remark on the advance of mechanical factory work, and in the shudder with which E. T. A. Hoffmann and Edgar Allan Poe viewed the automatons and mechanical figures of the early nineteenth century, among which the mechanical flute player, the drummer, and Vaucanson's mechanical duck are the most important.

This is the same horror that has of old seized man in the presence of clocks, water mills, wheels – in the presence of any work or contrivance which acts and moves although it has no life of its own. The beholder is not satisfied to study the mechanics; he is not satisfied with the understanding of their operation; he is disquieted by their mechanical action. This motion produces the illusion of life, and this illusion, once he has looked through it, is precisely what is so disturbing. Myths, sagas, and fairy tales recognize no distinction between animate and inanimate nature; they give life even to the lifeless by various personifications. That such a distinction is not recognized is the basis of poetry which voices itself by metaphor, analogy, and image; it is the basis, too, of all epic song. Orpheus, for example, to whom was ascribed the gift of enlivening the very stones, is the arch poet and arch singer. The machine, however, gives the impression that something lifeless penetrates into, and permeates life. This is what the observer senses and what evokes in him ideas of age, coldness, death, akin to the awareness of a lifeless, mechanically self-repeating time such as clockwork measures. It is no accident that the clock was the first automaton to achieve signal success among men. In the philosophical system of Descartes, animals, which are treated as automatons, are nothing but clocks whose movements operate under mechanical laws.

From Georg Jünger - The Failure of Technology

What makes a tale utopian?

 Just what, then, makes a tale utopian? It is the blending of things that cannot blend, the going beyond limitations, the drawing of unjustified conclusions from premises that clash. The rule, A posse ad esse non valet consequentia ("A conclusion from the possible to the actual is not valid") is not respected here. But when we examine such a utopia, a technological novel, for instance, we find that it utopian nature does not lie, as one might think, in the technical theme which the author develops. A writer who tells us of cities with moving streets where every house is a perfect residential mechanism, every roof has an airport, every housewife receives provisions in her kitchen through an unfailing system of tubes; who assures us that these cities are built of a substance which glows gently in the dark, and that the silken garments worn there are made from refuse, or from cottage cheese – that writer is not yet truly utopian. For all this, whether it will be achieved or not, lies within the possibilities of technical organization. We are content to state that such contrivances are possible, and disregard for the time the question of what would be gained if such a state were reached. The tale becomes utopian only when the writer leaves the sphere of technical organization – when, for instance, he tries to make us believe that these cities are inhabited by better and more perfect human beings; that envy, murder, and adultery are unknown; that neither law nor a police force is needed. For in so doing he steps outside the technical scheme within which he is spinning his fantasies, and combines it in a utopian manner with something different and alien which can never be developed out of the scheme itself. This is why Bellamy is more of a utopian than Jules Verne – the latter sticks closer to the technological scheme. A social utopian like Fourier believed in all seriousness that, if only his theories were accepted and applied, the very salt water of the sea would turn into sweet lemonade and the whales would cheerfully harness themselves to the ships. Thus he ascribed to his ideas power mightier than the song of Orpheus, and this even after his model community, La Reunion, had broken down. Such exuberance of the mind is ridiculous, unless one happens to be among those who are ruined by it.

From Friedrich Georg Jünger's The Failure of Technology

The machine organization gives nothing – it organizes need

Why does the contemplation of machines give us such pleasure? Because they manifest the fundamental form of man's intelligence, because before our very eyes this constructive and combining intelligence masters and amasses power, because they win a ceaseless triumph over the elements which they beat down, squeeze, and forge. Let us enter the workshop, then, to see what goes on.

The impression we gain as we observe technical processes of any sort is not at all one of abundance. The sight of abundance and plenty give us joy:

they are the signs of a fruitfulness which we revere as a life-giving force.

Rooting, sprouting, budding, blooming, ripening, and fruition – the exuberance of the motions and forms of life – strengthen and refresh us. The human body and the human mind possess this power of bestowing strength.

Both man and woman have it. But the machine organization gives nothing – it organizes need. The prospect of vineyard, orchard, or a blossoming landscape cheers us, not because these things yield profits, but because of the sensation of fertility, abundance, and gratuitous riches. The industrial scene, however, has lost its fruitfulness; it has become the scene of mechanical production. It conveys, above all, a sense of hungriness, particularly in the industrial cities which, in the metaphorical language of technological progress, are the homes of a flourishing industry. The machine gives a hungry impression. And this sensation of a growing, gnawing hunger, a hunger that becomes unbearable, emanates from everything in our entire technical arsenal.

When we enter a factory, be it a cotton mill, a foundry, a saw mill, or a powerhouse, everywhere we get the same impression. The consuming, devouring, gluttonous motion racing through time restlessly and insatiably, reveals the never stilled and never to be stilled hunger of the machine. So obvious is this hunger that even the impression of concentrated power which we receive in the centers of heavy industry cannot overcome it. In fact, it is strongest in these centers, because precisely here we find the greatest greed for power. And the rational mind which stands behind the machine and keeps watch over its automatic, mechanical motion – it too is hungry, and hunger follows it everywhere. It cannot shake off hunger; it cannot free itself from it; it cannot be stilled, however hard it may try. And how, indeed, could that be possible! This mind itself is consuming, gluttonous, and it has no access to riches; it cannot conjure up abundance. No effort of ingenuity, not all the inventive power that is brought to bear here can do it. For rationalization only sharpens hunger and actually increases consumption. This growing consumption is a sign not of abundance but of poverty; it is bound up with worry, want, and toil.

It is precisely the methodical, disciplined effort leading to the perfection of the technical processes which destroys the basis for the hopes that certain groups place in this perfection. Progress in its present rapid advance creates an optical illusion, deceiving the observer into seeing things which are not there. Technology can be expected to solve all problems which can be mastered by technical means, but we must expect nothing from it which lies beyond technical possibilities. Since even the smallest mechanical process consumes more energy than it produces, how could the sum of all these processes create abundance?2 There can be no talk of riches produced by technology. What really happens is rather a steady, forever growing consumption. It is a ruthless destruction, the like of which the earth has never before seen. A more and more ruthless destruction of resources is the characteristic of our technology. Only by this destruction can it exist and spread. All theories which overlook this fact are lopsided because they disregard the basic conditions which in the modern world govern production and economics.

In every healthy economy the substance with which it works is preserved and used sparingly, so that consumption and destruction do not overstep the limit beyond which the substance itself would be endangered or destroyed.

Since technology presupposes destruction, since its development depends upon destruction, it cannot be fitted into any healthy economic system; one cannot look at it from an economic point of view. The radical consumption of oil, coal, and ore cannot be called economy, however rational the methods of drilling and mining. Underlying strict rationality of technical working methods, we find a way of thinking which cares nothing for the preservation and saving of the substance.

What is euphemistically called production is really consumption. The gigantic technical apparatus, that masterpiece of human ingenuity, could not reach perfection if technological thought were to be contained within an economic scheme, if the destructive power of technical progress were to be arrested. But this progress becomes all the more impetuous, the larger the resources at its disposal, and the more energetically it devours them. This is shown by the concentration of men and machines in the great mining centers where the mechanization of work and the organization of man are most advanced. The rationality of technology, so impressively displayed here, becomes intelligible only when one has understood the conditions on which it depends. Its concomitant is waste and contempt for all rationality in the exploitation of the resources on whose existence technology depends, as the lungs depend on air.

Where wastage begins, there begins desolation, and scenes of such desolation can be found even in the early days of our technology, in the era of the steam engine. These scenes are startling by the extraordinary ugliness and the Cyclopean power which are characteristic of them. The machine invades the landscape with destruction and transformation; it grows factories and whole manufacturing cities overnight, cities grotesquely hideous, where human misery is glaringly revealed; cities which, like Manchester, represent an entire stage of technology and which have become synonymous with hopeless dreariness. Technology darkens the air with smoke, poisons the water, destroys the plants and animals. It brings about a state in which nature has to be "preserved" from rationalized thinking, in which large tracts of land have to be set apart, fenced off, and placed under a taboo, like museum pieces. What all museum-like institutions make evident is that preservation is needed. The extension of protected areas, therefore, is an indication that destructive processes are at work.

Mining centers, in particular, are the focal points of organized pillage, where the riches in the earth are exploited and consumed. Human pauperization begins with the proletarization of the masses, who are indoctrinated to factory work and kept on a low level of existence. The exploitation of the factory worker (about which socialism is indignant only so long as it is in the opposition) is an inevitable symptom of the universal exploitation to which technology subjects the whole earth from end to end.

Man no less than ore deposits belongs to the resources subject to consumption by technology. The ways in which the worker tries to evade this exploitation – associations, labor unions, political parties – are the very methods which tie him forever closer to the progress of technology, mechanical work, and technical organization.

The obverse side of technology is a pillage which becomes constantly better organized; this must not be overlooked when one speaks of technical progress. True, we have made a technical advance if by means of artificial fertilizers we succeed in squeezing uninterrupted crops out of our overburdened plough and pasture land. But this advance itself is at the same time the consequence of a calamitous deficiency, for if we did not have the fertilizer we should no longer be able to feed ourselves at all. Technical progress has deprived us of the free choice of nutriment which our ancestors possessed. A machine which trebles the output of a previous model constitutes a technical advance, for it is the result of a more rational design.

But for this very reason it also possesses a more intense consuming and devouring power. Its hunger is sharper, and it consumes correspondingly more. In this way, the whole realm of the machine is full of a restless, devouring power that cannot be satisfied.

(...)

 If two thousand years hence there should still be archaeologists – which is rather unlikely – who were to undertake excavations, say, in Manchester, Essen, or Pittsburgh, they would find but little. They would discover nothing as enduring as Egyptian burial chambers and classical temples. For the stuff with which the factory system works is not aere perennius (“more lasting than bronze” – Horace). These archaeologists might even be surprised at the paltriness of their discoveries. The earth-spanning power of technology is of an ephemeral kind – a fact easily overlooked by those engrossed in it.

Everywhere it is threatened by decay, given over to decay, and decay follows upon its heels all the more insistently and closely, the faster it marches on towards new triumphs.

The machine does not create new riches. It consumes existing riches through pillage, that is, in a manner which lacks all rationality even though it quickly employs rational methods of work. As technology progresses, it devours the resources on which it depends. It contributes to a constant drain, and thereby again and again comes to a point where it is forced to improve its inventory and to rationalize anew its methods of work. Those who deny this, claiming that it is the wealth of new inventions which made the existing apparatus obsolete, are confusing cause and effect.

from Friedrich Georg Jünger's The Failure of Technology