![]() The evolution of the machine in modern times fits the Darwinian model perfectly. ![]() It fits the development of industry far better than the purported development of natural organisms. The fact is that the author skillfully hints that the development of evolutionary biology has nothing to do with biology. Coach travel was to become a vestigial organ in production and distribution once the railway was developed, as well as the steam engine, based on coal, that preceded it. Overland coach transport was considered inefficient because it depended on the upkeep of animals, namely horses, that were expensive to feed and care for. While nearly every other element in the productive process was quickly moving “forward,” transportation was not. The weakest link in capitalist production in the early19th century was overland travel. So the old slogan “man against nature” really amounts to economic elites against nature. Railroads were demanded by elites, and hence, built by elites. ![]() Man should be qualified, for it is a label that hide more than it reveals. Railroads conquered perception, something far more intimate than man’s relationship to matter. The nature of this shift is the thesis of this book. Hence, the conquest of time and space is a qualitative distinction from science’s conquest of matter, a conquest still taking place. This is what makes the railway unique, it is what gives rail travel a philosophical and epistemological value not lost on such writers as Leo Tolstoy. The conquest of matter is a long standing aim of the natural sciences, but the conquest of time and space is the domination of the inner man, the very nature of perception. It was one thing to want to conquer the world of matter, quite another to conquer the conditions under which matter appears. More specifically, it was a conquest of something more than nature, but the forms under which nature appears, that os time and space. Railroads were a symbol: they were a symbol of the industrial revolution, but, most important of all, it was a symbol of man’s conquest of nature. Efficiency is easy to quantify, the way of life destroyed by such monoliths is not measurable and hence, given modernity’s obsession with measurement, easier to ignore. Established opinion stresses the efficiency and progress that such travel engendered, but the more or less non-quantifiable things that were lost or damaged is something else entirely. Belonging to a distinguished European tradition of critical sociology best exemplified by the work of Georg Simmel and Walter Benjamin, The Railway Journey is anchored in rich empirical data, and full of striking insights about railway travel, the industrial revolution, and technological change.The railway revolutionized England, America and all Europe. As a history, not of technology, but of the surprising ways in which technology and culture interact, this book covers a wide range of topics, including the changing perception of landscapes, the death of conversation while traveling, the problematic nature of the railway compartment, the space of glass architecture, the pathology of the railway journey, industrial fatigue and the history of shock, and the railroad and the city. In a highly original and engaging fashion, Schivelbusch discusses the ways in which our perceptions of distance, time, autonomy, speed and risk were altered by railway travel. In The Railway Journey, Schivelbusch examines the origins of this industrialized consciousness by exploring the reaction in the nineteenth century to the first dramatic avatar of technological change, the railroad. But this was not always the case as Wolfgang Schivelbusch points out in this fascinating study, our adaptation to technological change-the development of our modern, industrialized consciousness-was very much a learned behavior. The impact of constant technological change upon our perception of the world is so pervasive as to have become a commonplace of modern society. Railway Accident, 'Railway Spine' and Traumatic Neurosis. The Pathology of the Railroad Journey Excursus: Industrial Fatigue The American Railroad Transporation Before the Railroad The Construction of the Railroad The New Type of Carriage River Steamboat and Canal Packet as Models for the American Railroad Car Sea Voyage on Rails Postscript The Compartment The End of Converstaion while Traveling Isolation Drama in the Compartment The Compartment as a Problem Railroad Space and Railroad Time Excursus: The Space of Glass Architecture Acknowledgements Foreword Alan Trachtenberg Preface to the 2014 Edition.Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 198-200) and index. ![]()
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