Notes for Bruce Mazlish “The Fourth Discontinuity”

Key concepts: discontinuity, fourth discontinuity.

Related theorists: Jerome Bruner, Sigmund Freud, N. Katherine Hayles, Catherine Malabou, Sherry Turkle.

Mazlish proposes fourth discontinuity as the differentiation between humans and machines, a threat that culminated in 1980s romantic reaction to the computational mind, which we are now well past, hurtling toward the robotic moment.

(216) These two cartoons are a way of suggesting the threat which the increasingly perceived continuity between man and the machine poses to us today. It is with this topic that I wish to deal now, approaching it in terms of what I shall call the “fourth discontinuity.”

Freud as third revolutionary ego smashing metaphysician following Copernicus and Darwin represents continuity between human mind extended into its animal embodiment.

(218) In this version of the three historic ego smashings, man is placed on a continuous spectrum in relation to the universe, to the rest of the animal kingdom, and to himself. He is no longer discontinuous with the world around him.

We need to accept fourth continuity joining human and machine, the cyborg moment; compare to Malabou noting coextension of liberal capitalism and neuronal flexibility.

(218) Yet, to use [Jerome] Bruner's phraseology, though not his idea, a fourth and major discontinuity, or dichotomy, still exists in our time. It is the discontinuity between man and machine. In fact, my thesis is that this fourth discontinuity must now be eliminated—indeed, we have started on the task—and that in the process man's ego will have to undergo another rude shock, similar to those administered by Copernicus (or Galileo), Darwin, and Freud. To put it bluntly, we are now coming to realize that man and the machines he creates are continuous and that the same conceptual schemes, for example, that help explain the workings of his brain also explain the workings of a “thinking machine.” Man's pride, and his refusal to acknowledge this continuity, is the substratum upon which the distrust of technology and an industrialized society has been reared. Ultimately, I believe, this last rests on man's refusal to understand and accept his own nature—as a being continuous with the tools and machines he constructs.

Mazlish, Bruce. “The Fourth Discontinuity.” Technology and Culture: An Anthology. Eds. Melvin Kranzberg and William H. Davenport. New York: New American Library, 1972. 216-232. Print.