ABSTRACT
While the idea that man is a machine has long been and is still often criticised, Roy Harris pointed out that this change indicates a complete misunderstanding of machines. As a 'mechanical art' mechanics is not a theory of natural bodies but a theory of artifacts designed to achieve what nature in fact is unable to achieve. Theorizing a machine as an autonomous entity masks the machine's maker, making it appear to be autonomous and eternal, its functioning explicable solely in terms of 'the laws of mechanics', its design principles. At the end of The Language Machine, Harris stated clearly the political and moral consequences of mechanical models of language: the workings of the machine are envisaged as totally independent of any criteria or values entertained by the machine's human operators. The theoretical mechanization of life and the technical utilization of the animal are inseparable.
