Posts Tagged ‘weimar republic’
Hodgepodge: How to electricute yourself, where the machine of big science go when the science stops and a woodcraft fMRI puzzle
From Bre Pettis via Make Magazine come these wonderful diagrams illustrating the dangers of electrocution in typically glorious Weimar fashion. From the book Elektroschutz in 132 Bildern By Stefan Jellinek. I like to think of these as filling a need to acculturate people to the dangers of electricity, and based on these images, I would guess electricity was pretty dangerous technology at the time.
This is one of the most normal diagrams in the collection.
One of the stranger ones.
A brief article and slideshow from New Scientist (Where do science supermachines go when they die?) on what happens to all of physics pretty toys when the atom smashers shut down.
An obsolete copper radiofrequency cavity from the Large Electron Positron collider now lies in the garden at CERN.
Finally, Neil Fraser, a Google engineer, applied 9 MRI scans to 60 1-inch wood blocks to create this simply amazing puzzle that can be re-arranged to display different cross-sections of the brain. Via Infostetics.
Neuroscience + Woodwork = Awesomeness
The Body Machines of Fritz Kahn
Note: I have a new post on Fritz Kahn here: The Cycles of Virtue and Substance: Fritz Kahn and the Chemical Cycles of Man and Machine
Fritz Kahn is an enigmatic figure. Born in 1888 in Germany, Kahn trained as a gynecologist but was forced to close his medical practice in 1933 because of the rise of National Socialism and the passing of anti-Semitic legislation. Kahn participated in the publication of more than twelve books on biological and medical topics during his lifetime, many of which would be translated into English, Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Chinese, Indonesian and Finish. Apparently smuggled out of Europe in 1940, Kahn likely returned to Europe by 1949 where he would die in 1969. This short biography is almost all that is publicly available about Kahn’s life.
Man as Industrial Palace - Der Mensch als Industriepalast
Kahn produced illustrations that drew a direct functional analogy between human physiology and the operation of contemporary technologies, especially industrial machines and commonly encountered household machines. I use the term ‘produced’ quite literally. Kahn — like most writers of anatomy texts — oversaw the work of many different illustrators. In his earlier publications individual artists could be identified by their signatures. Following his emigration to the United States, however, Kahn trademarked ‘his’ style and placed a ‘FK’ stamp over the artists signature (1).
Kahn’s illustrations can be used to investigate contemporary reactions to modernity: the tension between reductionism and holism, the popularity of evolutionary and comparative thinking, the application of science to health, work and reproduction, as well as the professionalization of science. These themes were visually embedded in the illustrations that Kahn and his illustrators produced by Kahn.
The Weimar Republic (the turbulent German democracy that existed between the end of World War One and the rise of National Socialism; 1919-1933) was an opportune time for science popularization and was host to an unprecedented growth of printing technologies and media generally. The publishing house “Kosmos” (named for Alexander von Humboldt’s 1885 publication of the same name) who Kahn published under, represented the middle-class bourgeois market for popular science. Published by the “Society for Nature Lovers,” Kosmos released regular monthly periodicals as well as book supplements throughout the year. Kosmos reached a peak of over 100,000 members during the Weiman Republic and still exists today publishing science books and science kits for young people (2).
KosMos
The Man-Machine Analogy and Functional Realism
This post focuses on Kahn’s last European publication – “Man in Structure in Function” — which was subsequently translated for Alfred Knopf and published in the United States in 1943 where it went through two printings in its first year. Simultaneously published by Ryerson University Press in Canada, “Man in Structure and Function” is still widely available in university libraries accross north America (3).
The first image of the book – refered to in the first sentence – introduces two of the primary themes which Kahn utilizes throughout: the functional analogy between man and machine and a hierarchy in which technology is depicted as superior to man. In the image a silhouetted male figure is set inside a cutout drawing of a train locomotive; both man and locomotive have specific internal parts drawn, which are compared functionally. In
the man there is the heart, lungs, digestive system, respiratory system and arm muscles, which are contrasted visually with the locomotive’s furnace, ash, air intake and exhaust pipes, and drive system (Man and Machine).
Man and Machine Exhibit Farreaching Similarities
Visually these elements are connected by being located at the same level and by diagrammatic lines which connect the subsystems of the locomotive with the organs of the man. Thus the arm muscles of the man are linked with the drive train of the locomotive, the digestive system with the furnace. Indeed, even the smoke rising from the locomotive mingles indistinguishably with the man’s exhaled breath. The accompanying text explains the functional analogy explictely:
“Man and machine exhibit farreaching similarities (Fig. 208). Both derive their energy from the combustion of carbon (C), which they obtain from plants. Man, the weaker machine, utilizes fresh plants for fuel, while the locomotive, a stronger machine, uses fossilized plants in the form of coal.” (4)
This strategy of making functional comparisons between organs and machines could be described as functional realism. Cornelius Borck notes that Kahn’s illustrations also display topographical realism in their careful placement of machine analogues in their ‘accurate’ anatomical locations (5).
A Reflex Path Functions like an Automatic Door-Opener
The Auditory Ossicles in our car function like the Driving Mechanism of an Automobile
See and Say 'Auto'
The analogy between functional anatomy and technology was not exactly new. Contemporary art styles also dealt with modernity and made use of machine-man amalgams: Dada, Constructivism, Machine Art and New Objectivity all dealt extensively with man machine amalgamations. Sergiusz Michalski notes that Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) the dominant art movement of the 1920s and 1930s, correlated “humankind with the function procedures and requirements of machines” concluding that “their pictures express the hope that it will be possible to govern and control this world” (6). In part it was the iconic status of the man-machine analogues that made Kahn’s illustrations possible.
Bauhaus
Raoul Hausmann - Tatlin at Home
Metropolis
What seems to be unique is how explicitly and literally Kahn uses the man-machine analogy as a pedogological strategy. Over and over Kahn represents human functional anatomy as machine-analogues. A pump is a stand in for the heart, pipes stand for veins, conveyor belts for the digestive system, and telephone exchanges for neural functions. In the illustration “An Adult says ‘auto’” (See and Say ‘Auto’) which combines the ‘processes’ for seeing, recognizing, and saying ‘auto’. Kahn himself remarks on this strategy:
“If these three processes are united in a single picture and the component elements of these processes are represented by means of a wellknown technical means we obtain a picture like [figure 2]” (7).
Kahn uses these functional analogies as a bridge to naturalism by frequently returning to images of structural realism which he uses rhetorically to bridge the functionalstructural divide. For example, the following text accompanies an structural illustration (Microscopic Structure of the Cerebellum) of a crosssection of the cerebral cortex:
“They are life, knowledge, feeling, and enjoyment; they are the I, the personality. We is the sum total of the cortical cells of our brain; our I is the giant concert which this greatest of all radio stations, this station of microscopic tubes, antennas, coils, condensers, and transformers, broadcasts as thought and feeling to the microcosmos of the cell body, and as word and deed to the wide world” (8).
In this excerpt Kahn maintains the technological analogies but transposes them onto a structural image of the cerebral cortex.
Microscopic Structure of the Cerebellum
Olfactory and Visual Cortex
Efficiency and Eugenics
One of the prominant themes of early 20th century science is the changing relationship between science and daily life. Increasingly scientific methods and rhetoric became important parts of social and political movements. One example of this is the “science of work” which was introduced into training programs and vocational testing as part of the ‘rationalization’ of industry. Included in the science of work was the fields of psychotechnics, work psychology and efficiency (9).
Kahn introduces the topic of the science of work as a core concept in neuroanatomy — placing it rhetorically as a basic science — right after the speed of neural transmission and before the section on the neuron itself. Under the subsection “The Personal Equation” Kahn places a pair of illustrations entitled “The Speed of Reaction.” In these images a pair of silhouetted crane operators are depicted moving a ’scoop’ to a ‘goal’. The first image (The Speed of Reaction I) is accompanied by the following description:
“In the nervous system of a talented person the reaction eye-brain-arm… takes 3/10 second. If such a person works as a driver of a crane he directs the scoop to its goal along the shortest possible possible path.”
The path of the ’scoop’ is traced visually through the air to show the reader how efficient the ‘talented man’ it. Further reinforcing this is an ‘objective’ clocktype measuring device that ‘records’ the speed of the man’s reaction visually.
The Speed of Reaction I
In the second image [The Speed of Reaction II] another figure with a significantly less flattering profile operates the crane; here the path traced by the ’scoop’ takes loops around itself taking a longer path than the case of the first crane operator (it should be noted, although I am not going to discuss it here, that the ’science of work’ and ‘efficiency’ were often euphemisms for eugenics and race science). Kahn explains that in this case the:
“nerve impulse takes more than 3/10 second to leave the brain. If such a person works as a cranedriver, he direct the scoop along a zigzag path so that he loses time and performs less work. If this continues for a considerable period… it is obvious that it amounts to a considerable loss of time and energy.”
Here we can see a visual representation of how individual differences in the speed of the nerve impulse is said to result in lost productivity. Note that in the first image the man in the background stands on a significantly lower pile. Kahn concludes that:
“This man, who should never have become a cranedriver, is one of the hundreds of thousands who have chosen an occupation at random without an test of their abilities, and now performs their duties as best they can. Employment psychology, recognizing this fact, rejects applicants whose abilities do not measure up to the standards required for a certain position. In doing so, however, it takes into consideration not alone intelligence but also special abilities.” (10)
The Speed of Reaction II
Psychotechnic aptitude testing was part of the science of work and efficiency, applied fields which used scientific methods to improve productivity that were especially popular in Germany, where they became a “virtual craze” during the postwar years. These included psychotechnics, industrial psychology and physiology as well as aptitude testing and vocational guidance. Industrial Psychology is one field born from this period that is still very active today, as anyone who works with a Human Resources Department can attest (11).
Like science popularization, such fields were not unique to any particular ideology. Rabinbach writes that: “on all points of the political spectrum ‘Taylorism and Technocracy’ were the watchwords of the threepronged idealism: the elimination of economic and social crisis; the expansion of productivity through science; and the enchantment of technology” concluding that “productivism, in short, was politically
promiscuous” (12).
One question, however, surrounds Kahn’s inclusion of such obvious images and references to work science: by the time Kahn was writing “Man in Structure and Function” the work sciences has been in decline for almost a decade. During the 1930s work science fell from favor and new romantic and authoritarian approaches preaching ‘joy in work’ and ’social harmony’ replaced them as the National Socialist Party gained power and influence (13). Yet Kahn still chooses to include these images. One possibility is that Kahn was simply reusing materials from earlier publications. A more interesting hypothesis, however, is that Kahn purposely included the (potentially) anti-romantic and authoritarian ‘politically promiscuous’ sciences in opposition to the new authoritarian model.
Femininity and the Limits of the Industrial Analogy
Throughout “Man in Structure and Function” Kahn maintains a hierarchy between nature (represented by man) and technology (represented by industrial machines) in which technology is depicted as superior to nature. The very first sentence and illustration of the book compares man to a locomotive in terms of oxygen consumption and the carbon cycle (Man and Machine). In another illustration entitled “The speed of though” the speed of a nerve impulse is compared to the speed of an telegraph signal and an air plane. We are told that: “In earlier times the rapidity with which an impulse was conducted along a nerve fibre was considered the quintessence of speed… This idea has been superseded, however, by the accomplishments of modern technology” (14).
The Speed of Thought
This hierarchy is reversed, however, in two specific topics: the female reproductive system – specifically birth – and in the concluding chapter on “Sexuality and Human Life”. Compare the language with which Kahn introduces birth with his above comments on the speed of neural impulses:
“Imagine that someone has been able to grow and apple in a wine bottle and now wants to remove the fist sized apple through the narrow bottleneck without damaging it. This appears technically impossible and it actually is impossible. Biology, however, is not technology. The uterus is able to accomplish the apparently impossible
Here Kahn reverses the hierarchy he has established; man (and biology) are now superior to technology. Not only that, but Kahn seems to draw a sharp line here between biology and technology. Previously the two were related, almost different models of the same processes. Now, however, “Biology… is not technology” and is capable of things “technically impossible”.
Female Sex Apparatus
The final two images of the book also contribute to breaking down this hierarchy. In the final chapter “Sexuality and Human Life” Kahn explicitly breaks down his nature-technology hierarchy and re-enfranchises man (and nature) as superior to technology. The first image, entitled “The False Ideal” depicts an elderly woman encased inside a elevatorlike box in a room crowded with people. The text explains that this is “great-greatgrandmother… awakened for ten minutes on the celebration of her two hundredth birthday” (16). Set across from this image is a close-cropped photo entitled “The True Ideal” in which an elderly couple embrace.
The False Ideal
It is not difficult to imagine hypothetical reasons why Kahn would choose to abandon the previous hierarchy and machine analogy at this juncture. It is possible that reproduction, especially its more ‘mysterious’ (I.e. female) aspects were not culturally suitable to representation as machine analogues. It is also possible that the German glorification of the body may have contributed to seeing reproduction and a uniquely ‘perfect’ aspect
of biology. Furthermore, Kahn may be rhetorically switching hierarchies in order to return his readers to a safe imaginative perspective at the close of the book.
The True Ideal
The Wrath of Kahn and Contemporary Body Machines
In this short post it has only been possible to glance at some of the many themes and tensions embodied in Kahn’s illustrations. There are many other questions that have been left unanswered: What was Kahn’s view on race debates of the time? What were Kahn’s political and social beliefs and how did these affect the images he produced? What were his ontological and epistemological beliefs about the divide between man and machine?
The wrath of Kahn (how could I resist) is that despite the antiquated and naive appearance of his illustrations and their obvious epistemological limits it is not entirely clear that contemporary representations of functional anatomy — especially neuroanatomy — are significantly different. Computers (a technology that we are familiar with) have replaced machine analogies and hardworking homunculi in both popular and academic neuroanatomy. Meanwhile, functional neuroanatomy often simply uses coloured lines to depict functional properties, a method I call “magic-marker realism” for the way these colourful lines are meant to somehow depict complex underlying physiological events. The antiquated nature of Kahn’s illustrations makes these questions about contemporary representations troubling, because it suggests that our own images of functional anatomy are as historically and culturally situated and dependent as the locomotive and the switchboard operator analogies of the 1920s and 1930s.
Functional MRId
Note: This post is partly based on a presentation for a Science and Technology Studies class at York University in Toronto, Canada.
Footnotes:
1. This rather Foucaudian topic is discussed further in: Cornelius Borck. “Communicating the Modern Body: Fritz Kahn’s Popular Images of Human
Physiology as an Industrialized World.” Canadian Journal of Communication [Online], 32(3). Available: http://www.cjc-online.ca/viewarticle.php?id=1887.
2. Borck: 495, 500-501. Details about the modern Kosmos can be found at their website. In opposition to the middle-class ‘bourgeois’ Kosmos, Urania developed as a uniquely socialist popular science publication that also had a large subscriber base and defined themselves in opposition to Kosmos. More information about this topic can be found in: Nick Hopwood, “Producing a Socialist Popular Science in the Weimar Republic.” istory Workshop Journal 1996 1996(41):117-153
3. Borck: 502. The material presented in this work is from the English translation of “Man in Structure and Function” which introduces obvious methodological and interpretive issues which, unfortunately, I can do little about in this format.
4. Kahn, Fritz and George Rosen. Man in Structure & Function. New York: Knopf, 1943: 345.
5. Borck: 496.
6. Michalski, Sergiusz. New Objectivity : Painting, Graphic Art and Photography in Weimar Germany 1919-1933. Köln: Taschen, 2003: 167.
7. Kahn: 540.
8. Kahn: 515.
9. Rabinbach, Anson. The Human Motor : Energy, Fatigue, and the Origins of Modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992: 271.
10. Kahn: 475-476.
11. Rabinbach: 278.
12. Rabinbach: 272.
13. Rabinbach: 280-282.
14. Kahn: 721.
15. Kahn: 740.
16. Kahn: 742.
Related Posts:
Bibliography
- Cornelius Borck. “Communicating the Modern Body: Fritz Kahn’s Popular Images of Human Physiology as an Industrialized World.” Canadian Journal of Communication [Online], 32(3). Available: http://www.cjc-online.ca/viewarticle.php?id=1887.
- Hopwood, N. “Popular Knowledge: Producing a Socialist Popular Science in the Weimar Republic.” History Workshop Journal 1996, no. 41 (March 1, 1996): 117-153.
- Kahn, Fritz and George Rosen. Man in Structure & Function. New York: Knopf, 1943.
- Michalski, Sergiusz. New Objectivity : Painting, Graphic Art and Photography in Weimar Germany 1919-1933. Köln: Taschen, 2003.
- Rabinbach, Anson. The Human Motor : Energy, Fatigue, and the Origins of Modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.
Blogs and Web pages
- Fritz Kahn’s body machines (http://www.bl.uk/learning/artimages/bodies/kahn/kahnmachines.html)
- Dreaming the Industrial Body: Fritz Kahn’s Modernist Physiology (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/dreamanatomy/da_visible_industrial.html)
- Street Anatomy:Man as Industrial Palace: the impact of Fritz Kahn (http://streetanatomy.com/blog/2007/07/27/man-as-industrial-palace-the-impact-of-fritz-kahn/)
