刘易斯·芒福德

重要著作

刘易斯·芒福德最著名的作品是《城市发展史》（The City in History），这本书展现城市是如何因人类文明而改变，纪录从团体部族到中世纪城镇到现在的商业城市。芒福德为现在的城市发展感到忧虑，因为他认为世界并不是被机械所统治的，而是在跟自然之间取得平和并共存。他的理想愿景是那些能够被描绘成“有机城市”的理想城市，这样的城市中文化的重要性尚未被科技所篡，也没有被它威胁。Mumford对比这些理想城市与那些被战争、暴君与财产包围的城市的差异。然而这本著作并不是在攻击城市本身，而是展现城市进化与成长的过程，包含它是如何出现的、它会走向哪里。

Lewis Mumford (October 19, 1895 – January 26, 1990) was an American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic. Particularly noted for his study of cities and urban architecture, he had a broad career as a writer. He made significant contributions to social philosophy, American literary and cultural history, and the history of technology.

Mumford was influenced by the work of Scottish theorist Sir Patrick Geddes and worked closely with his associate the British sociologist Victor Branford. Mumford was also a contemporary and friend of Frank Lloyd Wright, Clarence Stein, Frederic Osborn, Edmund N. Bacon, and Vannevar Bush.

Life

Early life and education

Mumford was born in Flushing, Queens, New York, and graduated from Stuyvesant High School in 1912. He studied at the City College of New York and The New School for Social Research, but became ill with tuberculosis and never finished his degree. In 1918 he joined the Navy to serve in World War I and was assigned as a radio electrician. He was discharged in 1919 and became associate editor of The Dial, an influential modernist literary journal. He later worked for The New Yorker where he wrote architectural criticism and commentary on urban issues.

First book

Mumford's earliest books in the field of literary criticism have had a lasting influence on contemporary American literary criticism. His first book was The Story of Utopias (1922), an insightful exploration of the many visions of a better world that influenced the development of modern urban planning theory.……

Correspondence

Mumford was a close friend of the psychologist Henry Murray, with whom he corresponded extensively from 1928 until the 1960s on topics including Herman Melville, psychology, American values and culture, and the nature of the self.

Urban planning

In his early writings on life in an urban area, Mumford was optimistic about human abilities, arguing that the human race would use electricity and mass communication to build a better world for all humankind.……

Ideas

In his book The Condition of Man, published in 1944, Mumford characterized his orientation toward the study of humanity as "organic humanism." The term is important because it sets limits on human possibilities, limits that are aligned with the nature of the human body. Mumford never forgot the importance of air quality, of food availability, of the quality of water, or the comfort of spaces, because all these elements had to be respected if people were to thrive. Technology and progress could never become a runaway train in his reasoning, so long as organic humanism was there to act as a brake. Indeed, Mumford considered the human brain from this perspective, characterizing it as hyperactive, a good thing in that it allowed humanity to conquer many of nature's threats, but potentially a bad thing if it were not occupied in ways that stimulated it meaningfully. Mumford's respect for human "nature", that is to say, the natural characteristics of being human, provided him with a platform from which to assess technologies, and techniques in general.……

Influence

Mumford's interest in the history of technology and his explanation of "polytechnics", along with his general philosophical bent, has been an important influence on a number of more recent thinkers concerned that technology serve human beings as broadly and well as possible. Some of these authors—such as Jacques Ellul, Witold Rybczynski, Richard Gregg, Amory Lovins, J. Baldwin, E. F. Schumacher, Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, Murray Bookchin, Thomas Merton, Marshall McLuhan, Colin Ward, and Kevin Carson—have been intellectuals and persons directly involved with technological development and decisions about the use of technology. Mumford also had an influence on the American environmental movement, with thinkers like Barry Commoner and Bookchin being influenced by his ideas on cities, ecology and technology.……