Becoming machines

400 years of combat between man and machine

Denis Collin

Parution le 25/04/2025

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Résumé

Rejecting the transformation of human life into a megamachine

For four centuries, the modern world has been dominated by machinery. It was born with capitalist production. It quickly became symbiotic with capitalist development, which found its driving force in mechanics. Calculation, predictability, the power of abstraction - the categories of modern science were well suited to this new mode of production, which was about to invade the planet.
However, all trends that lead to the elimination of life in favor of the mechanical lead to a general commodification of human life and a loss of our being-in-the-world. Turning nature into mere raw material, replacing vital processes with mechanical procedures - all this leads to treating human beings as things, turning them into predictable beings.
We therefore need to think in terms of resistance to this movement. The involution of the great Enlightenment movement towards the formation of a techno-scientific steel cage poses the task of rediscovering a sense of nature and life, of rethinking rootedness beyond what Simone Weil had sketched out, of remaking nature as a sphere of resonance.

Denis Collin was born in 1952. He holds an agrégation in philosophy and a doctorate from the University (after a career that began as a letter carrier, then a telecommunications executive and a computer scientist). Has taught philosophy in general secondary schools and preparatory classes. Founder and moderator of the Université populaire d'Evreux (until 2019). Involved in activities to popularize philosophy in various associations.