ABSTRACT
Early Victorian criticisms of the proliferation of print and print reading were part of a broader critique of what Thomas Carlyle referred to as a growing mechanism, a worldview all matters were seen as most effectively addressed practically in material terms. In his famous Signs of the Times, Carlyle expresses his view that the embrace of the machine has become universal, ushering in an Age of Machinery in every outward and inward sense of that word. Carlyle defends individual meditation as a more authentic and natural mode of understanding against more systematic and institutional modes, which are characterized as aggressive yet futile. This critique extends beyond the realm of science into other fields. Carlyle laments that in the other spheres of art, in defect of Raphaels, and Angelos, and Mozarts, Royal Academies of Painting, Sculpture, Music, again decrying predictably enough the eclipse of individual and intuitive genius by systematic and collective organization as a means of making and disseminating knowledge.
