Theory VI

Applied Metaphysics and Logic: Part II

The Machine.

The Takeover:--

The machine appeared
In the distance, singing to itself
Of money. Its song was the web
They were caught in, men and women
Together. The villages were as flies
to be sucked empty. God secreted
A tear. Enough, enough
He commanded, but the machine
Looked at him and went on singing.

[R.S.Thomas / 1972].

In the Beginning was the Word. It had magic, mystery, sacredness; and in the hour of darkness it was the guardian of the Word who was consulted: priest, poet, prophet.
That was once upon a time, the time of a God whose language and symbols are no longer second nature to us. It was another space, another country. Now we dwell within a land made over by the Machine, a land where the centre is without shadows. This centre is the floodlit 24-hour City of Enlightenment: a City without secrets; without doors, walls, or reticences; a City where all irregular happenings are called problems, and these are soluble via Expert Information and the Internet. Many in our generation are glad to forget, glad to put down the burden laid upon them by the Ancient Greeks and Hebrews, that burden of acceptance of the obligations of mind and spirit. And these many, who have chosen the Fleshpots of Egypt, are likewise glad to have found their Quisling, who acts as spokesman, giving them the phrases with which to articulate and justify their truncated humanity. For these evasive simplifiers there has been framed, from within the ideology of Affluent Barbarism, their very own self-despising definition of Man, expounded by the Apostle of the Gene, Richard Dawkins, from his Professorial Chair in one of the most prestigious of the Ivory Towers :-

We are survival machines -- robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes.

The takeover by the Machine, the peak of the assault, occurred at the time of the factories: the hiss of steam; the regular thud, thud of giant presses; the slap of endless belts driving the dumb cogs and tireless camshafts; and everywhere coal dust, grease and grime. Some of these earlier mechanical tools are still with us, more streamlined now, and clean; others have been displaced by turbines, spinning at enormous speed, softly humming in the background. Material power is present in concentrations greater than ever, but the focus lies elsewhere: having arrived, the Machine is no longer brash and obtrusive; it proclaims itself in different guise. Ours is the Era of the Electron, and in the front line the Explorers in their Laboratories. They don't go anywhere -- their travel is in the mind -- and what they discover we can't see, but painstakingly and cleverly they learn how to constrain these elemental invisibles moving at such inhuman speeds, and invent ways of putting them to work within the cunningest gadgets. Across every continent -- a half circle East of Greenwich, a half circle West -- always the ubiquitous illuminated screens, mediating the Message of the Microchip: Science is Salvation; Technology is Truth.

The hill farms have been abandoned, written off, sight unseen, by urban money men; drystone walls dilapidate, grass grows over ancient paths, and high hedges merge with woods, blurring outlines of the tiny hard-won fields. Occasionally a week-end rambler comes upon an isolated ruined cottage, pushes through a splintered door into the little kitchen, and stands for a time contemplating a cup without a handle, a broken shepherd's crook, the silent pathos of his own peasant past.

Down on the lowlands agribusiness rules, with cost-effectiveness the only criterion. The driver manoeuvres the huge, gleaming combine harvester, equipped with searchlight, two-way radio. Time is money: he works throughout the night, protected from what's left of Nature in his air-conditioned cabin. He is no rustic: headphones ensure he's always hip, in tune with city ways.

The message is that magic is fraud; there are no mysteries, and nothing is sacred. Mystery was merely pretence, a technique of manipulative obfuscation devised by Priests to gull the simple. And the Sacred, as Anthropologists of Authority have shown, was no more than a Stone Age delusion.
For the weak minded, the old fashioned and mis-educated, those who claim to have what they quaintly call 'Spiritual Needs', there are modern resources: the Good News Bible, say, less damaging than that archaic King James version. And doors are firmly shut against reactionaries and élitists who splutter about the past, about ritual and tradition; shut against those who claim to be repelled by what they call the bureaucratic prose of modern texts.

Away with them; Homer and Isaiah are long since gone to dust. Instead there is the repetitious rise and fall, the regular rhythm, unrelated to content, of the words of the Newsreader, hired to sell his soul by pretending concern over prefabricated tendentious dramas of events -- in reality always fragmentary in evidence; usually obscure; and sometimes simply invented -- proclaimed as having happened half a world away.
Along with this the self-important pomposities of Organisation men, Experts and Wielders of Power: managers, financiers, scientists, engineers, politicians. To complete the assault on every dimension of the aesthetic sense there is the mindless drivel of Celebs, Heroes of the People: footballers, pop singers, film stars.

*****

Chronicle:--

How did it come about? What were the origins; what were the stages of this vast continuing transformation?

The human race evolved over millions of years, with each sense, capability, instinct and behaviour shaped within the natural environment. Body is made to wake at cockcrow and light of day, not to sound of alarm clock and glow of electric filament. Feet are made to walk on earth and grass, not on asphalt and concrete; legs are made to run and run in the wild excitement of the chase, not to stand and shuffle in a check-out queue; eyes are made to note the subtle shades of leaf and bark, to con the clouds for weather or scan a ridge for alien approach, not to attend throughout the day to the transient symbols and commands of a VDU.

Tools.

It began with hand tools. They are old, very old, coeval with man. Mind, language, tools develop concurrently, each tool the materialized potential of a specific kind of action. They evolve, become more effective, iron replacing stone in axe head, spear point, knife blade; and where once was a single species there will be diversification according to use and craft: not just a hammer but now a claw hammer, club hammer, sledgehammer, bricklayer's hammer, engineer's hammer.

A hand tool is not self-moving, not a substitute for a man. Without him it is inert, mere possibility; in use it becomes an extension, a magnifier, a facilitator in its own characteristic way. A tool, like a hand, is versatile -- a knife will sharpen a pencil or carve a crucifix -- and takes on the skill of the user, from clumsy beginner to master craftsman.

Not only skill, but also intention and feeling. A knife is for severing, separating into two parts -- but can serve also as a dagger. In the days of commitment and passion, when people used to fall in love, and when amongst the girls of every village there was sure to be a Carmen, the fine-tempered workshop knife could be secreted by some poor fool maddened by jealousy, and used that night for stabbing a tormenting, faithless mistress.

With hand tools the rhythms are those of the natural world: time is measured by reference to creatures and plants, with magnitudes in accordance: the small unit the second; the large unit the year. One or two seconds measures a breath, a footstep, a heartbeat, the turn of a dance step, the recurring beat of a tune. A year measures the time between the delicate green unfolding of the oak leaf and the stark pattern of branches against the grey winter sky. In between the second and the year is the day, which relates to the human cycle of waking and sleeping. These are medium size chunks of time. In the old world nothing happened either very fast or very slowly, and the appropriate qualities were the virtues of the craftsman: patience, far-sightedness, attentiveness, humility. These medium size time units -- human and natural, and the same ones serving for both private and public use -- were good enough for the early crude machines, but not now.

Many parts of the world of the Machine are no longer closely tied in with the human domain, and large areas of this world are not accessible to our unmodified senses. Outside the home, in our public spaces, we have gone beyond the metrics invented by the Sumerians and Babylonians several thousands of years ago. Now we use the metrics of modern European Science. It is true that for purposes of theory and exact manipulation the elegant perfections and esoteric symbols of European mathematics do suffice to measure the stretches of time -- ranging from the very small to the very large -- characteristic of modern physics. But we have no everyday homely words, no words with human associations, to describe these stretches of time, to describe the brevity of an atomic oscillation or the slow decay of a galaxy; by their very nature these periods of time are literally unimaginable. As yet there has been found no way to truly incorporate these discoveries. For the time being we are hesitant, unsure; we have come to feel like foreigners in this Universe we are called upon to inhabit.

Utility.

Hand tools and Machines are two Species of the Genus Tool. They are useful entities: usefulness is their reason for being. We can define the Genus roughly, as follows:--
Definition:-- a tool is a material embodiment of utility, a practical means to an end.
A carpenter's handsaw is a piece of sheet steel, roughly oblong, with a handle at one end. It has sharpened triangular saw-teeth regularly spaced along one edge. It is designed for making longitudinal cuts in planks of wood.
Being designed for the human hand, all handsaws are much the same size, and are pushed and pulled at much the same speed: one or two strokes per second.
The corresponding machine, the electric-powered saw, has, as its two main parts, a circular saw blade -- which may be up to several feet in diameter -- and an electric motor, to transmit the force. The power is considerable: the blade may spin as fast as 100 revolutions per second.

A hand held pen is used for writing: i.e. for making short marks on paper up to about one half of an inch long. These marks are both straight and curved, and are often joined up to make words. To write a short word takes about one second.
A mechanical printing press, churning out whole sheets, might well print many thousands of words per second.

Modernity.

There have been two great cultural changes, two major transformations of the human race. The first change inaugurated the Agricultural Era. It was pioneered many thousands of years ago, especially in a few of the big river valleys of our planet. The second change inaugurated the Industrial Era. It was pioneered in England in the late 18th Century.

Machines are the distinctive artefacts of modernity, the Industrial Era. They are not old; they are latecomers. Not old, but certainly prolific; there are millions of them now. The ubiquity of machines -- this would be the manifest contrast between our age and the past. Outdoors not the clop of horses' hooves but instead the noise of motor car, aeroplane, railway; indoors not the quietly simmering kettle on the stove but the sound of refrigerator, coffee grinder, vacuum cleaner, central heating motor.

Machines are obtrusive and demanding; it is their needs which have governed the recent reshaping of our planet. Below ground are the cables and tubes which carry nutriment for the different mechanical species; above ground rail tracks and motorways, cutting through ancient forest and field, facilitate their passage. And everywhere the increasingly abstract linear landscape, the empty simplicity of the right angle, that infallible sign of the Machine: grids, squares, rectangular arrays; boxes, blocks, modules.

The large changes began a couple of hundred years back and have accelerated in our time. There was always some resistance. In the nineteenth century Luddites amongst the handcraft workers, fearful for their jobs. Amongst the intellectuals and artists the slogan of 'Back to Nature': beards and sandals, Arts and Crafts, 'Three acres and a cow', and prophecies of doom. But nowhere was this resistance intelligent or coordinated; the attractions of the Machine were too great -- especially its promise of a guaranteed food supply. Its roots were too deep, its appeal too diverse and seductive for the many.

In the twentieth century the Machine consolidated its hold. All large human groups of our planet are now Machine Societies; could not live without the Machine, and celebrate it in its various manifestations. For several decades the dominant manifestation was the Motor Car, an instrument of speed and visual change, controlled movement as an end in itself. In many Hollywood films the Car Chase was the pivotal episode. This was the era of Mechanisation of Space and Perception: Dynamic Space by means of the Motor Car, and Static Space with the architects' skyscrapers and tower blocks. Cars are still with us, but for many they are now no more than objects of convenience; with familiarity the glamour has faded, and the tedium of traffic jams has negated the sense of freedom.

The Motor Car has been succeeded by Television, Computer, Music Player; the Mechanisation of Perception and Outer Space has been followed by the Mechanisation of Mind and the Inner World.

Differentiae.

There is the Genus: Tool.
There are the two Species: Hand Tool; Machine.

There is the Genus: Culture.
There are the two Species: Agricultural Society; Industrial Society.

I shall be maintaining that there is, not quite an exact correspondence, but a close parallelism between the two sets of Differentiae. So that an analysis of the differences between a Hand Tool and a Machine will illuminate profoundly some of the differences between Agricultural Society and Industrial Society; will make clear, and sometimes obvious, what would otherwise appear puzzling; will tell us something about where we came from, where we are at, and what options are available to us for the way ahead.

A tool is useful for something -- it is a means. There is purpose, intention, an end. In practice there are normally several linked intentions, each one serving as a means for the next. Scissors are a means. I intend to cut a string, and do so. But my cutting of the string is not an end in itself. (That would be caprice -- a kind of play, a long way from utility). I cut the string so that I can undo a parcel. This is my penultimate purpose, my ultimate one being to get at what is in the parcel.

With a hand tool there is a looseness, a freedom -- I can hold the scissors in several ways, and cut the string in different places, without deviating from my intention. And along with freedom goes unpredictability; looking at the scissors says little about how they will be used at any time.

Utility -- means to an end -- is as old as the hills; it antedates human tools. The elephant manifests it when he uses his trunk for squirting water; the cat when he licks a paw to groom himself. However, elephant and cat manifest much more than this: utility has nothing to do with the stately magnificence of the elephant, nor is it relevant to the grace of the cat in all his movements. A tool, on the other hand, is not like this: it is an analytic, abstract object: utility defines it completely. A tool is a self-contained minimalist embodiment of utility -- no more, but also no less.

Next consider a lock with its key: together they constitute a device, with an inbuilt purpose -- that of changing the state of a container from open to closed. This kind of device is useful, but it is not quite a hand tool, neither as a whole nor in any of its parts. In some ways it's more like a piece of furniture. Nor is it a machine, although it has some of the same narrowness and precision of function.

Think of the key turning in the lock. There is still no machine, but it is now clear why not: the default state is inertia instead of internal self-activation, and there are just two fixed states of this inertia, instead of continual cyclic repetition.

The lock and key evolved from much simpler entities. A piece of string -- a pattern of woven strands -- is a connector, a versatile and valuable object, which can be used for holding shut a door or a lid. There is no key. And the burglar, the social primitive, he also dispenses with a key: instead he too uses a kind of 'string', one which holds its shape, this time made out of wire, to pick the lock to gain entry. Comparison of the procedure of the burglar, the social primitive, with that of the householder, the civilized man, using a key, shows the main difference -- a shift of action from inner to outer, from a location of activity inside a person to outside, to an external object, a thing -- and shows also both gain and loss. The gain: in the procedure itself, in ease and speed and simplicity; it needs no skill to quickly turn a key. The loss: to the person, in capacity for mental concentration, visual imagination and manual dexterity; in the ability to hold a picture of the mechanism steadily in mind while transforming picture and mechanism in parallel. Extrapolate from this; distribute this kind of loss throughout a society, and it is not surprising to find nowadays many who cannot multiply 6 and 9 without the help of a calculator; to find others, brought up from infancy on near continuous television, incapable of more than momentary attention, unable to concentrate, or to remember more than simplicities from one day to the next; and therefore unteachable, the muscles of the mind undeveloped, permanently stunted for want of exercise and encouragement during the critical early years.

Enough of discursive illustration. I'll now list the sets of characteristics, the Differentiae: DT1, DT2; DC1, DC2. The listings cover the main points; they are not meant to be exhaustive, and some of the items overlap.

*****

Analysis I: Tools:--

Collectively tools constitute a sub-system, of operational artefacts, within the larger system, the Culture as a whole. Hand Tools are ubiquitous within the overall Cultural System known as Agricultural Society; Machines are ubiquitous within the overall Cultural System known as Industrial Society.

DT1: Hand Tool.

Module of Action.
A particular action -- each time much the same, and starting out from more or less the same point -- is carried out over and over again. This Module of Action comprises a small sequence of sub-units of activity. It is characteristic of the tool, and the overall activity is a repetition of cycles of this Module.
[Slicing a loaf of bread. The cycle: Take stance; push the breadsaw forward and down; pull it backward and down. Then once more, and so on, several times, to completion.
Chopping down a tree. The cycle: Stand appropriately, strike, recoil. Resume the stance, strike again, etc.
The same, when using a scythe to cut a field of long grass or standing corn.]
Dedication.
A Hand Tool is a dedicated purposive instrument, with a unique design, appropriate to its function. Typically it is versatile within a small range, functional for several closely related purposes.
[A hammer consists of a small, heavy metal head, with a striking surface, and with a handle attached. Using one's arm one swings the hammer, transferring momentum to the head. The hammer concentrates a moving force and accurately directs it on to a small area, there to be stopped abruptly. In the jargon of Mechanics this moving force is called an impulsive force.
A hammer can be used to hit the head of a nail, to break a stone, to flatten out a crumpled sheet of metal, to soften a piece of steak.]
Source of Action.
The Source of Action is an individual person. This Source is internal to the person: it is his Mind which governs, which makes the decisions; his are the Bodily forces which are used. Within the body there are complicated autonomic biochemical reactions which use as fuel the food we eat and the oxygen we breathe in order to replenish the reservoir of power.
It is the individual person who controls: who initiates, guides, and terminates the activity.
It is the individual person who outputs the power.
[Slicing a loaf of bread. I go over to the preparation table, I take hold of the breadknife, I cut one slice, I cut another slice, I put down the knife.
I have been using the muscles of my hands and arms to initiate and control a sequence of forces and motions. These are intentional, volitional motions; I am continuously aware of them, and guide them, but I am not aware of the biochemical fuel-conversion reactions going on inside my body.]
Dependence upon the person.
A Hand Tool is entirely dependent upon the person and, when in use, it exists within personal time: it participates in the life of a person. In use it can wear out, can be damaged, can suffer an accident, can be destroyed; i.e. it is mortal, in the usual way.
When not in use it is outside of personal time -- temporarily dead, but not decaying: a kind of low-level, deferred immortality.
[A pocket knife, much used and frequently sharpened, will last only a few years. But left idle, regularly recoated in grease, and wrapped and stored, it will last indefinitely.]
Extension of the person.
A Hand Tool acts as an extension of the person, increasing the range and magnitude, and sharpening the focus of a person's powers. In action it is loosely connected to a person's body; it is usually, but not always, held in the hand.
[It can facilitate: a bathroom backscratcher enables one to reach areas hard to get at.
It can magnify one's strength: a pair of bolt-cutters functions as a double knife-edged lever, as a pair of powerful scissors, enabling one to shear through a bolt, or the links of a chain.
It can magnify one of the perceptual faculties: a pair of spectacles enables one to see better; a telescope enables one to see further; a hearing aid enables one to hear better.
It can make more accurate and precise: using a hammer and centre punch one can more exactly indent a hard surface.]
Relation to Environment: Connectedness.
A person has a body, adapted to the natural environment, and at all times closely connected and subject to it.
Air pressure: normal is about 15 lb per sq. in.
Temperature: comfort, around 60 degrees F.
Interchange of substances: regular breathing in and out; intermittent eating, drinking, excreting, etc.
For a Hand Tool in use the Source of Action -- especially the power source -- is the person; the tool is entirely Dependent upon the person; in use it constitutes an Extension of the person. For all these reasons it follows that the Hand Tool also, when in use, is likewise closely connected to the environment.
Size.
The size of a Hand Tool is in accord with the dimensions of the human body.
[A screwdriver fits comfortably into the hand; likewise for a handgun. A needle can be manipulated by the fingers, and the eye of a needle must not be too small. An axe handle is comparable in length to one's arm; the same holds for a cricket bat and the bow of a violin.]
Power.
The power transmitted by a Hand Tool is also in accord with the power of the human body.
[Even the most vigorous person cannot saw a plank of wood very fast.]
Skill.
An artisan can develop a high level of skill, i.e. can become very effective at achieving the desired end.
[A good carpenter will be expert with hammer, saw, chisel, plane.
The virtuosi of violin, piano, etc, manifest degrees of skill which are astonishing.
Some scientists had comparable abilities. Isaac Newton was gifted beyond belief: he was not only a peerless mathematician and theoretician, he was also equally capable as artificer and experimenter, up to the level of Michael Faraday, who is generally acknowledged as having been supreme in the laboratory.
Personal Note:-- As a young man I wandered around the Australian Bush for several years, working as a manual labourer: timber-falling, cane-cutting, etc. This was just before the Machine took over. Some of the men I encountered had levels of skill which were extraordinary; this was especially true of the axemen and sheep shearers.
Later on, in Melbourne, I had occasion more than once to observe Macfarlane Burnet, the microbiologist, at work in his laboratory, and to mark the elegance and economy of action. As an older colleague said to me: 'Mac's benchwork is beautiful; it almost justifies his egotism.']
Preordained Limits.
Conflating the above three aspects. For any given tool there is an upper limit -- typically not very high -- to every aspect of its use: its manageable size and weight, the power a human being can output in using it, the level of skill one can develop. These upper limits, of tool use, are closely connected with the upper bounds of individual human sprength, speed of movement, and dexterity.
[That there are upper bounds is obvious: no man is as strong as a gorilla; the fastest man (23 mph) cannot run at more than a third of the speed of the average cheetah (70 mph); the Northern Italians of the mid-18th Century reached levels of virtuosity with the violin much the same as we can achieve nowadays.]
Pathway unspecified; Style.
A Hand Tool is a means to an end. But only the end is specified; not the details of procedure, not the pathway, not the way stations. This openness, this lack of explicit constraint and rigid guidance, permits improvisation and the development of a near infinite variety of personal styles of execution.
[Everyone is familiar with this notion. We recognize and identify a performer by his style, even though we could not formally articulate the individual characteristics. Illustration is not really necessary; however, a patent example is graphology: the study of handwriting, covering both prescribed forms and idiosyncratic variations.]

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DT2: Machine.

As far as possible I'll list this second set of Differentiae in the same order as the first. Many of the capabilities of the Machine are familiar, having been reached by modifying earlier Hand Tool activities. But some capabilities are new, are not derived from earlier acitvities.
[A vacuum cleaner provides a simple example of novelty. 'Vacuum cleaner' is a catchy sales name, but it's not really accurate; it's a gross exaggeration. More correctly, the device should be called a pressure differential cleaner. The purpose is not new: to remove miscellaneous bits of material resting upon a dry floor surface; to make the floor 'clean', as we say. Formerly we used brooms. Not the purpose, then, but the method -- creating a pressure differential -- is new. We, our bodies alone, are not well suited to the task of removing dirt by creating and sustaining a large difference of air pressure; but a high speed electric motor can do that job very well.]

Module of Action.
As before there is typically a repetition of a fixed cycle. Many of the Modules of Action of the Machine are close imitations of the Hand Tool cycle.
[An electric drill does much the same job as the carpenter's brace and bit; the chain saw is an ingenious modification of the handsaw, etc.]
Source of Action.
It may well happen that a person controls closely the activity of a Machine -- consider one of the large cranes used on a modern building site -- but the person does not provide the power; the souce of power is external. This is a difference of vast significance -- the second stage of the Industrial Revolution depended entirely upon this fact -- since the amount of power generated by a machine is not held down to the level of output of a person.
The fuel, or 'food', of the Machine is not the flesh of animals, nor the seeds or leaves of plants recently harvested, but is typically an inert substance dug out of the ground -- coal, oil, etc. Coal and oil derive originally also from plants. (Like some humans, the Machine is characteristically vegetarian.) But these plants, which ultimately became fossils, died long ago. Their bodies fell into the earth and were preserved and compacted, to be dug up by us hundreds of thousands of years later.
[Machine Power:-- Cranes often lift weights fifty times as great as those a strong man could comfortably carry. The power output of a motor vehicle is typically several hundred times as great as that of a man. And, of course, these figures are minuscule compared to those that apply to a turbine. Turbines -- ubiquitous in modern transport and industry: used in jetliners, and as central generators of power -- spin at extreme speeds, and quite a small one can generate an output of 100,000 horse power.]
Dedication.
A Machine, like a Hand Tool, is also a dedicated purposive instrument, but there is usually a diminution in versatility.
[There is no Machine which is as versatile as the hand-held hammer or knife; and many of the Machines in factories are minutely specific in function.]
Not centrally Dependent upon the person.
A Machine is only peripherally dependent upon the person; it is not centrally dependent.
The activity of a Machine is initiated and terminated by a person.
[An electric switch; the ignition key of a vehicle.]
A Machine is often guided by a person.
[The steering wheel of a motor car.]
However, initiation, termination and guidance are peripheral functions. The main action of a Machine comes from a Prime Mover, and the Prime Mover of a Machine is not the set of muscles of the human arm, but a mechanical unit.
[The Prime Mover of a motor car is an internal combustion engine; the Prime Mover of a central heating unit is an electric motor, as are most of the Prime Movers in modern factories.]
The Machine's relation to Time is similar to that of the Hand Tool, although it is a little closer to immortality. One can prolong the Machine's existence indefinitely by periodically replacing parts, the 'organs'.
Not usually an Extension of the person.
Typically a machine is out there, remote, quite separate.
[A jetliner is not a pair of attachable wings; a turbine is not a stronger pair of hands. Neither of them can be seen as an extension of a person.]
Relation to Environment: Isolation.
A person is closely connected to the environment; he is continually reminded of this, and of his consequent vulnerability to failures of linkage. He cannot delude himself: deprived of oxygen, even for as little as a few minutes, he collapses and dies. And a Hand Tool, being an extension of the person, shares this connectedness, and indirect vulnerability.
The Machine is very different. Once set in motion by a person it can be, at least for a while, effectively separate: much closer to what the physicists call an Isolated, Closed System.

Within Industrial Societies, up to about 1980, the main efforts of developers went into increasing the Power outputs of Prime Movers: improving the existing Prime Movers (better internal combustion engines); inventing new kinds of Prime Mover (jet engines); improving efficiency in the use of fuels, etc.
After 1980 the concentration shifted from power to control, to the practice of Cybernetics, which is the name for the science of communications and automatic control systems: Computers and Microprocessors; Information Technology. (Greek: kybernetes; steersman). Devices were invented for each of the distinctive Control functions, thereby enabling them also to become independent of the person. The person is by now quite separate, right out on the edge. Along with this remoteness in operation, modern technical devices also tend to be opaque. They are less accessible to repair; not for the DIY person; only experts permitted to touch.

[The devices themselves are familiar to everyone: jetplanes; the elegant and expensive deadly devices of the military -- nuclear-powered submarines; heat-seeking missiles, etc. -- and, of course, the ubiquitous VDU, by now as common as the motor car.]
Size and Power: Natural Limits removed.
The Machine is not constrained by the limitations of the human body. Jetplanes and Oil Tankers are huge objects, and are propelled by comparably powerful engines.
Of course, the Machine is not entirely unconstrained. There is the finite size of our planet Earth to consider, and the possibility of damaging it by reckless proliferation of the Machine, and carelessness in its use. Besides this, the speed of light, according to the physicists, is an absolute upper limit of motion.
Skill and Perfection.
Skill is a human attribute. As between one person and another there are differences of skill in the use of a Hand Tool, and there are sometimes rankings, but no true overall measure, since the styles of performance are not fixed. This means that the concept of perfection does not apply to human performances.
[The moment a carpenter picks up his plane we recognize that he is skilful, but we don't measure to what degree.
We sometimes compare performances, we rank them, in respect of one aspect of skill: effectiveness. A boxer, using his whole body as a tool of aggression, shows his effectiveness by defeating his opponent. Occasionally we can even get a rough quantitative measure of this effectiveness: a mower with a scythe cuts down a certain acreage of meadow grass in a day.]

The procedure of a machine is exactly specified. A machine is a representative of a type: there is no individual 'style'. This rigidity of specification enables us, sometimes, to assign a measure to the performance. In 1824 the Frenchman Sadi Carnot, in an essay entitled Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat, gave a meaningful definition of ideal performance, of perfection, for a heat engine. Eventually a formula was devised, enabling us to calculate the efficiency, i.e. the degree to which any actual machine approached this ideal. For example, a modern motor car engine is about 20% efficient in its burning of fuel. Most of the lost energy is dissipated as heat.
Pathway precisely specified.
In respect of Power the Machine is effectively unlimited, whereas the Hand Tool has strict upper limits. In respect of Pathway again there is a contrast, but this time it is the Machine which is limited, and deliberately so. A Hand Tool is loosely constrained in its Pathway, but the possibilities of variation, of style, are near infinite. The Machine could not be more different. In its activity a machine goes through its precisely specified cycle of operation, and the more minutely it holds to this specification the more highly its performance is rated. We impose Necessity upon it, via a cycle of minute particulars; we try to reduce Freedom to zero.

*****

Analysis II: Cultures:--

A Culture is a densely interconnected system, with causal influences and dependencies going back and forth in all directions. The Tool System -- the Sub-System concerned with Material Operations-- needs must be in harmony with the overall Cultural System.
[Example:-- Muscular strength, and manual dexterity, are widely distributed in an Agricultural (Hand Tool) Culture. Up until quite recently bags of cement weighed one hundred weight (112 lbs -- quite heavy). Many men could lift them easily, and could also use a shovel fairly well. Upbringing has changed. Nowadays one can count upon neither muscular strength nor manual dexterity: bags of cement now weigh only about half a hundred weight, and most men are clumsy with a shovel; it is painful to watch. They are happy only when the electric-powered cement mixer takes over.]

This next Section will consider the relation between the Tool System and some of the other Sub-Systems -- Political, Artistic, etc. -- of the overall Culture. The subject is vast; I'll give only some selected, minimal analyses, with a few illustrations.

DC1: Agricultural Society.

Module of Happening.
A Human Being is a small high-order system with a distinctive domain of Free Will, and the realization of Free Will in Actions. Nature is a vast and complex system characterized by Happenings.
This external world of Nature provides the reference module, the central paradigm, of dynamic order for Agricultural Society. The Module of Happening is the unalterable fixed cycle, with a return to the origin. Agricultural Society is based ultimately on the annual cycle of four seasons: Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter. Within this large cycle there is the repetition of the diurnal cycle, with its four nodal points: Dawn, Midday, Dusk, Midnight. And the lives of creatures, including Man, are seen accordingly; they are assimilated to this pattern: Birth, Maturity, Old Age, Death.
[The Module of Action of the Hand Tool is formally identical (isomorphic) with this Module of Happening in the external world of Nature: there is the same return to base, and the same confinement within inexorably preordained limits.]
Religious Ritual.
Christian Ritual is also organized according to the annual cycle. The Book of Common Prayer of the Anglican Church sets down a list of Lessons (readings from the Bible) for each of the 365 days of the year; then one starts over again. There are also several important annual Festivals (e.g. Easter).
The Circle in Mathematics and Astronomy.
Ancient Greek Mathematics was the mathematics of an Agricultural Society. Accordingly it was based upon the Circle which -- as the shape of the perfect cycle -- was conceived as the perfect curve; and geometric construction relied mainly upon the compass, used for drawing arcs and circles. A straight line was seen as finite in length, as an interval: i.e. as the radius, the line from centre to circumference, of a particular circle.
In Astronomy the Greeks pictured the Heavens as composed of many concentric spheres -- with Earth at the very centre -- rotating at different velocities. The 9 main spheres, in order outwards, were the pathways of: Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Fixed Stars, Prime Mover.
It was a pretty picture, much more tidy than the one we use nowadays. It was more concerned to display the elegancy of the ideal than to grapple with the awkwardness of empirical reality.
Amongst the Greeks there were Mathematicians and Astronomers -- notably Eudoxus (d. 347 BC), Aristarchus (d. 230 BC) and Archimedes (d. 212 BC) -- who did much better than this, but they did not represent the main line of orthodoxy and instruction.
Tradition, and Wisdom.
An Agricultural Society is a Traditional, Conservative Society. Customs, Rituals, Practices (including the uses of Tools) are handed on unchanged, and innovation is actively discouraged. Think of a set of several coins of the same denomination -- twopenny pieces, say -- extending out in a line, and overlapping, each at the same point. The leftmost circle represents the life cycle of the ancestor, and the circles of child, grandchild, etc., extend out to the right.
Wisdom consists in seeing life whole, without illusions; which also means seeing it as cyclic and unchanging. Attempts at intellectual discovery and practical innovation are seen as vain, pointless.

The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.
Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us ...

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
A time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
A time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose;
A time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew;
A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate;
A time of war, and a time of peace...

[Ecclesiastes: 1, 9-10 // 3, 1-8 ... Date: (?) 2nd Century BC.]
Pathway: Common Law, and General Rules.
With a Hand Tool the End is specified, but not the Pathway. Not every virtuoso plays Bach's Goldberg Variations in the manner of Glenn Gould, and the batting style of Garfield Sobers was not the same as that of Donald Bradman.
Something similar used to hold in the matter of Judicial Decision, in the days when English Common Law was a meaningful term, applying to most disputes. The guideline was the brief General Rule, plus Precedent -- i.e. the series of relevant previous decisions. Within these constraints there was considerable room for personal interpretation by the Judge.
Individualism, Eccentricity, Political Freedom.
It is a single person who uses a Hand Tool, and the more skilled the activity the more possibilities for idiosyncratic variation.

In England several tendencies and developments went together:--

Individualism and the Family.
The English pioneered Social Individualism. Quite early on -- certainly in the Middle Ages -- and unlike other countries, the family in England was characteristically not an extended one. It was not a Clan; it was small in size, and the power of the family head was modest. Separate families were continually being created, and individualistic variation was possible. Many hundreds of years ago the family was not very different from the nuclear one we have today.

Political Freedom.
Over a period of six centuries the English, way beyond any other national or cultural group, developed most of the subtle and sophisticated concepts and practices of Political Freedom, centred on Individualism and Private Property. The story is well known. I won't repeat it here.

Eccentricity.
For several centuries the English were known as a nation of eccentrics. Eccentricity is merely extreme Personal Individuality.

Artisans.
The English always had plenty of skilled artisans. Over time their numbers steadily increased: firstly, because of relative prosperity -- mainly due to political stability -- there was scope for them; secondly, for the same reasons the country attracted skilled immigrant workers -- the Huguenots are the best known example.

The items listed above were interconnected, and mutually supportive.

------

DC2: Industrial Society.

No Module of Happening.
Industrial Society is intrinsically unrelated to the cycles of the Natural World. Hence there is no central reference module, no central paradigm of dynamic order. The stopping and starting of a mass production line of a factory has no connection with the daily rotation of the Earth on its axis, nor with its annual elliptical orbit around the Sun.
Of course there still remain many vestiges of the old Agricultural Order. The seasons are still important in Food Production and since, as yet, people still play a large part in Industrial Production, the diurnal cycle imposes constraints.
However, these vestiges are diminishing. Although most Food Production is still seasonal, Food Consumption is not. If you looked at the food on the shelves of a modern Supermarket, food imported from all over the world, it would be difficult to deduce the local season from this display.
Many Computers are left switched on permanently, and online banking is 24/7. Decade by decade it becomes steadily more difficult to distinguish the time of day, or the day of the week, by listening to the sounds about you, and by observing traffic flows.
Religious Ritual.
Christian Ritual is still important, for a minority, but the Public Domain is increasingly secular. A holiday is no longer a Holy Day, with a Religious Procession. The word has changed its meaning: now a holiday is merely a period where you have a break from work.
Easter is the first main holiday after Christmas. One may perhaps use this time to go by jetliner to the Canary Isles for a week, for the sunshine; but few people nowadays think of Easter as what it once was for the majority, as the Central Festival, the pivot, of the Christian year: the time of Christ's Crucifixion and Resurrection.
The Straight Line in Mathematics and Astronomy.
When did the Modern World begin; when did it announce itself, and at a time when people were able to understand, and ready to listen?
There's not much doubt that it began in Western Europe, and somewhere between 1400 AD and 1800 AD. Beyond this rather vague answer there are several which are more precise. All of them are justifiable; which of them is chosen depends upon one's preoccupations and purposes. I'll set down three of these justifiable answers.

First Answer
The Modern World began in 1517, in Wittenberg, when Martin Luther pinned up his 95 Theses. Ostensibly demanding a Reformation within Western Christendom; but, as he must have known, actually demanding a Revolution, which would ultimately affect the whole of the Domains of Religion, Politics, Art.

Second Answer
It began in 1637, when Descartes published his Discourse on the Method of rightly directing one's Reason and of seeking Truth in the Sciences. The central thesis of the Discourse is the doctrine of 'Clear and Distinct Ideas' :--
Never to accept anything as true if I had not evident knowledge of its being so ... and to embrace in my judgement only what presented itself to my mind so clearly and distinctly that I had no occasion to doubt it.
The quotation seems sober and innocuous, but the more you examine it, and follow it through imaginatively, the more hair-raising it will appear. This is not Common Sense, or Wisdom; this is Rigorism and Self-Surgery of the most extreme kind, the doctrine of an Intellectual who has lost all sense of proportion. 'Evident' means: 'Plain or obvious, visually or intellectually'. (Dictionary). Very, very little of what Descartes, and everyone else, accepts as true -- and lives his life by -- is evident, is plain or obvious. Most of what one accepts as true is second-hand: it has been derived from others; from custom, authority, hearsay, reading.

Most of what we live by is taken on Faith; condensed, for practical purposes, into a set of guiding principles which I have called Operational Presuppositions. This is not irrational; it is the only way to live.

We are social creatures, and especially in our mental life. Moreover, most important ideas can never be made very clear or distinct, even though the struggle to make them so is one of the essential aspects of good thinking. No one -- neither Descartes nor anyone else -- can live their life according to his doctrine, but the attempt to do so can lay waste whole areas of existence. In the last two centuries many influential people have made this attempt, and have imposed their vision -- in essence an extension of the Cartesian vision -- upon others. (Notably the Planners: Lenin, Stalin, Mao, the Fabian Society, etc).
There is a small element of truth in what Descartes says. His Method is useful for certain very special situations. But his failure to indicate this, to set the Method into context, has vitiated most of what value it has.
[Note: The restriction of the Method to 'the Sciences' -- meaning the Natural Sciences, plus Mathematics -- was disingenuous since, in practice, anything outside 'the Sciences' was seen by Descartes as mere play, or illusion; not a domain of truth, and therefore not to be taken seriously.]
Translated into a modern idiom Descartes' injunction would read:-- Accept nothing as true which cannot be represented within a Computer. The model of a true statement is the Computer Program.

Third Answer
The Modern World began in 1687, the year of publication of Isaac Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. Commonly known as Newton's Principia.
Newton's First Law of Motion, the Law of Inertia, goes as follows:-- Every body perseveres in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly in a straight line, except insofar as it is compelled to change this state by a force impressed.
In slightly simpler English: Unless it is being pushed, pulled, guided or impeded, an object will either be at rest, or will be moving forward steadily in a straight line.

Newton's Principia was the most influential scientific treatise ever written. It laid down, in considerable detail, the Method of Western Science, that Method which has been closely followed in the West ever since, and since then has gradually extended its reach across the Globe.
In the Principia the infinite Straight Line rules. It is the geometric paradigm, the pervasive informing ideal, and it was the harbinger of Industrial Society. In Newton's Universe, and in Industrial Society, there is no Natural Centre; no point has special privilege. The implications are vast. Also unsettling; the Universe is no longer a comfortable place.

The corresponding paradigm of Agricultural Society was the Circle. That Universe was Geocentric: Mother Earth was its Natural Centre. Emotionally the concept of Mother Earth still means a lot to us. It is a very dull spirit indeed who is not moved, near to tears, by those wonderful blue and white photographs of our planet taken by the early astronauts. Emotionally yes, but Scientifically perhaps not. According to some astronomers there's nothing special about our planet; that is what they say. There are other astronomers who suggest that the ability to give rise to life is in itself a very special quality.
Innovation, plus Cleverness.
Industrial Society is inherently innovative: intensely anti-conservative and anti-Tradition. The Machine is oriented towards the future, not the past; oriented towards perfection: one hundred per cent efficiency. As Henry Ford, that gifted Inventor, Entrepreneur and spokesman of the Machine, once put it:--
History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history we make today.
[Interview: 1916.]
These are the words of a profoundly self-confident man. A penetrating and revealing remark. Insightful, but also spectacularly silly; the remark of a talented monomaniac: a man without wisdom, a man whose emotional and spiritual growth has been arrested at the level of a teenager. Unfortunately this kind of arrest has been a settled characteristic of a majority of the influential people in the West for more than two hundred years -- since the French Revolution of 1789.

The Novel is the predominant literary art form of modern times. The name (the New) is exactly right, and the development of the genre went hand in hand with the development of Industrial Society.
Pathway: Statute Law, and Regulations.
I'll recapitulate the main contrasts, between Hand Tool and Machine.

Hand Tool: A small, fairly simple object adapted to the size and nature of the human body. No inbuilt power source.
Machine: Of unlimited size and complexity, with an inbuilt Prime Mover, which is also unlimited in capacity.

Hand Tool: The Idea of the End product resides in the Mind of the Craftsman. It cannot always be deduced by looking at the Tool.
Machine: The Idea, of the End product, is minutely prefigured and constrained in all ways in the design of the Machine. The Idea has been fixed; it has been realized, made external and manifest.

The correspondences are quite close: between Hand Tool and Common Law (General Rules) on the one hand; between Machine and Statute Law (Regulations) on the other.

The Machine is not entirely new. Our earliest historical evidences and records go back to the great hydraulic civilizations, especially Egypt and China. We have the material evidences, the gigantic artefacts: the Pyramids of Egypt; the Great Wall of China. Also the immaterial evidences: the attitudes of mind, as detailed in the Analects of Confucius, with their relentless stress on Piety and Obedience; plus the memorials of the upper bureaucrats of the Pharaohs, recording their achievements.

These early Machines were rough and ready. Strictly speaking they were Paramachines; the cogs and camshafts were human beings -- thousands of them; and the control of the moving parts -- the workers -- was pretty loose. Modern Paramachines are similar to the Ancient ones, although some of them have been much more inhuman -- most obviously in the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China.
The Ancient World didn't have anything to compare with modern inanimate Machines, since they had neither the Engineering nor the Science to use fossil fuels in the way that we do.
Collectivism and Conformity.
The Machine points men towards conformity and collectivism. Henry Ford masterminded the development of the first successful mass production assembly line, making Model T Motor Cars. It came into operation around 1910, in Detroit, Michigan.
The Factory in Detroit, the Production Unit, was an intricate integration of Paramachine and Material Machine. Once the assembly line was set up everything was tightly, and minutely, controlled. However, every successful social structure is built around a tension of opposites. The Factory was only one side of the story. Production is pointless unless there is also use, consumption. Unlike the centralized Production Unit the consumers, the purchasers, were not concentrated. There were millions of them, spread across the whole of the USA, and each of them an individual, who used his motor car according to his idiosyncratic desires.
Underpinning all this was the intricate Capitalist System, based on Private Property. Henry Ford would have gotten nowhere without this.

The balanced tension of opposites does not always prevail. Modern Societies are huge, and contain many blocs of specialists, most of whom are astonishingly ignorant of anything outside their own narrow purview. Many of them are natural recruits to the kind of simplistic delusions so luminously portrayed by Descartes. Like all of his joyless kind Descartes was an admirer of the Ancient Spartans, who were extreme Collectivists, anti-Individualists; severe, tidy-minded people; capable of great heroism, but quite uncreative.

The most influential British celebrator of the Paramachine was Sidney Webb, a lifelong admirer of the Soviet Union. He died as late as 1947, still an unrepentant Stalinist, so there is no doubt of his unshakeable commitment to the ideals and practices of that unsavoury society. Below his social philosophy:--
The perfect and fitting development of each individual is not necessarily the utmost and highest cultivation of his own personality, but the filling, in the best possible way, of his humble function in the great social machine.
[His long, one-dimensional life makes clear that, in the above quote, the word 'necessarily' is disingenuous. If that word were omitted the description would be exact.]

He and his wife Beatrice were the stalwarts, over many decades, of the Fabian Society. Sidney was always a lost cause -- he was never more than partially human. Beatrice was a pretty girl in her young days, and even likeable, as far as one can gather, but her later life was a prolonged decay and desiccation of the spirit as, bit by bit, she moved slowly towards the ideal depicted in the quote from Sidney above. Like all the Fabians the Webbs were supremely arrogant: they were great believers in humility, as an attribute of other persons. Aided by their willing acolytes, between them they contributed hugely to the degradation of the spirit in England: to the destruction of virtue in persons, and of beauty in the environment. In particular they contributed, more than anyone else, to the destruction of self-respect amongst the English Working Classes. All, of course, under the guise of doing good.

Collectivists -- Democratic Socialists, Marxists, Nazis, Fascists, Western Left Liberals -- are all much the same. These types are siblings; they recognize and understand each other, however viciously they fight amongst themselves. They also recognize, unerringly, the true enemies, the Others: those who see Power as being intrinsically dangerous, and therefore necessitating continuous argus-eyed observation. Most notable amongst these Others are Individualists, Libertarians, Constitutionalists and -- the ultimate antagonists of Collectivism -- Traditional Christians. Collectivism is a corrosive poison, destructive of all High Culture. It blurs the distinctions between action, feeling and thinking; it is a reversion to primitive modes of being, and makes impossible both moral and intellectual clarity. Collectivism presupposes the real existence of Group Thinking. This is a lethal fallacy. People can act together, they can feel together, but they cannot think together. (Which is why genuine thinkers have often been misfits, isolates: liable to persecution, exile, lynching. It's one of the hazards of the vocation.) Simple Group Action and simple Group Feeling are both possible -- call to mind Military Drill, a String Quartet, a Pop Group, Woodstock, making Jam in the kitchen, Arsenal versus Manchester United, a Nuremberg Rally -- but Group Thinking is not possible. Thinking is the most intensely individual of all human activities. You can mouth slogans, repeat formulas, imitate cleverly, but two people cannot think as one.
[There's subtlety and complexity here. Learning from a good teacher involves Love as well as Thought. But the two reinforce each other, without entanglement or impediment. See the Section headed 'Knowledge' in the Essay: History (14); Theory II. ]
With all the surface facility and quick-wittedness, and the arsenal of social facts at their fingertips, a lifetime of practising the Collectivist substitute for Thinking had turned the Webbs into typical self-righteous Socialist muddle-heads and, as time went on, more and more morally vacuous, only half alive. They actually did believe, at least sometimes, and in their zombie fashion, that they were doing good.

As exemplified below (Appendix) the procedure is, via Parliament and the Law, and with funds provided by taxation of productive persons, to use Regulation, with its unnatural precision and unmanageable range of constraining detail, and its draconian powers of enforcement, to stifle and destroy these very same productive persons. Ultimately the procedure rests upon relentless befuddlement of the intellect of nearly everyone over a long period of time, enabling the Socialists to present themselves as the righteous ones, to capture the so-called 'Moral High Ground'. Considering that, as mass murderers, Socialists have been the all-time greats, this is a truly astounding performance. In the whole of recorded history there has never been a moral and intellectual fraud to equal it. In Britain this fraud, with all of its dire practical consequences, has been pervasive and dominant for the last sixty years. Lincoln said that: You can't fool all of the people all of the time. Maybe so, but there's the possibility that you might be able to fool enough of the people enough of the time to degrade and damage irrevocably a Culture.

In Britain we live now, all of us, within a social inheritance, much of which was bequeathed to us by Sidney and Beatrice and those of like mind. I'll reproduce below an example. I apologize for the inordinate length. Not necessary to read every word, but it gives you an idea of the claustrophobia of minute detail -- and remember that the very livelihood of workers may depend upon attention to this minute detail -- and the sinister aspects: the effectively unlimited and irresponsible power given to the officials. In the last sixty years, and especially in the last decade, there's been an avalanche of Regulations like that set down in the appendix below.

*****

Appendix

Statutory Instrument 2004

The Scallop Fishing Order 2004

SEA FISHERIES, ENGLAND

CONSERVATION OF SEA FISH

The Scallop Fishing Order 2004

Made------------------------8th January 2004
Laid before Parliament------9th January 2004
Coming into force-----------1st February 2004

The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, in exercise of the powers conferred by section 1 of the Sea Fish (Conservation) Act 1967[1], and now vested in her, and she and the Secretary of State concerned with the sea fishing industry in Northern Ireland, in exercise of the powers conferred by sections 3, 15(3) and 20(1) of that Act, and now vested in them[2], make the following Order:

... ...

General restriction on scallop dredges
3. - (1) No British fishing boat shall carry or tow a scallop dredge within relevant British fishery limits unless that dredge meets all of the following criteria -

(a) its frame does not exceed 85 centimetres in width in any part;

(b) it includes a functioning, operational and moveable spring loaded tooth bar and a belly bar;

(c) it does not contain any attachments to the rear, top or inside of the dredge;

(d) it does not contain a diving plate or any other similar device; and

(e) the total weight of the dredge including all fittings does not exceed 150 kilogrammes.

(2) The prohibition in paragraph (1) does not apply to a fishing boat which does not retain any scallops on board and is -

(a) in an area which is a production area for the purpose of the Food Safety (Fishery Products and Live Shellfish) (Hygiene) Regulations 1998[6]; or

(b) on a voyage in which it only fishes for and retains on board seed mussel for relaying into such a production area.

(3) In this article, belly rings, as described in article 4, and the fastenings which attach them to each other and to the frame do not count as attachments, and 'tooth bar' and 'belly bar' have the same meanings as in that article.

Specification of scallop dredges

4. - (1) No British fishing boat shall carry or tow a scallop dredge within relevant British fishery limits unless the dredge conforms to all of the following specifications -

(a) where the dredge measures 80 centimetres or more in breadth, it shall not have -

(i) more than 8 rows of belly rings hanging from the belly bar;

(ii) more than 9 teeth on the tooth bar, where either -

(aa) the fishing boat in question is not in the relevant area; or

(bb) all of the teeth measure 12 millimetres or less;

(iii) more than 8 teeth on the tooth bar, where -

(aa) the fishing boat in question is in the relevant area; and

(bb) any of the teeth measure more than 12 millimetres;

(b) where the dredge measures less than 80 centimetres in breadth, it shall not have -

(i) more than 6 rows of belly rings hanging from the belly bar; or

(ii) more than 6 teeth on the tooth bar;

(c) it shall not contain more than 1 row of belly rings hanging from either side of the dredge perpendicular to the rings which hang from the belly bar;

(d) each tooth on the tooth bar shall not measure more than -

(i) 22 millimetres where the dredge measures 80 centimetres or more in breadth; or

(ii) 12 millimetres where the dredge measures less than 80 centimetres in breadth.

(2) In this article -

(a) a row of belly rings is a line of single interconnecting rings, where the ring at one end of the line hangs either from the belly bar or from the main structure of the dredge perpendicular to the belly bar;

(b) a belly bar is the bar attached to the frame of the dredge which runs parallel to the tooth bar and from which most of the belly rings ultimately hang;

(c) a tooth bar is the bar to which are attached teeth, the ends of which point downwards and are dragged along the sea bed when the dredge is towed;

(d) the size of a tooth shall be its maximum width measured in the direction of the line of the tooth bar;

(e) "the relevant area" means the part of ICES division VII a which is north of the line 52° 30' N, and all of ICES division VII d.

Restriction on number of scallop dredges 5. No British fishing boat shall, at any one time, tow more than 8 scallop dredges on each side of the boat when within relevant British fishery limits in the sea adjacent to the United Kingdom out to a line drawn 6 nautical miles from baselines.

Carriage of undersized scallops

6. For the purposes of section 1(3) of the Act, the minimum size for scallops that may be carried by a British fishing boat in ICES division VII d is 110 millimetres.

Measurement of scallops

7. For the purposes of article 6, the size of a scallop shall measured in accordance with paragraph 6 of Annex XIII to Council Regulation (EC) No 850/98 for the conservation of fishery resources through technical measures for the protection of juvenile marine organisms[7] as last amended by Council Regulation (EC) No 973/2001[8].

[Comment: Below we get to enforcement, to the heart of the matter.]

Powers of British sea-fishery officers

8. - (1) For the purposes of enforcing this Order or any equivalent order, a British sea fishery officer may exercise the powers conferred by this article in relation to -

(a) any relevant British fishing boat wherever it may be; and

(b) any other British fishing boat which is within relevant British fishery limits.

(2) He may go on board the boat, with or without persons assigned to assist him in his duties, and for that purpose may require the boat to stop and do anything else which will facilitate the boarding of the boat.

(3) He may require the attendance of the master and other persons on board the boat and may make any examination and inquiry which appears to him to be necessary for the purpose of enforcing this Order or any equivalent order as read with the Act and, in particular -

(a) may examine any fish on the boat and the equipment of the boat, including the fishing gear, and require persons on board the boat to do anything which appears to him to be necessary for facilitating the examination; and

(b) may require any person on board the boat to produce any document relating to the boat, to its fishing operations or other operations ancillary thereto or to the persons on board which is in his custody or possession and may take copies of any such document;

(c) for the purpose of ascertaining whether the master, owner or charterer of the boat has committed an offence under the Act as read with this Order, may search the boat for any such document and may require any person on board the boat to do anything which appears to him to be necessary for facilitating the search;

(d) where the boat is one in relation to which he has reason to suspect that such an offence has been committed, may seize and detain any such document produced to him or found on board for the purpose of enabling the document to be used as evidence in proceedings for the offence;

but nothing in sub-paragraph (d) shall permit any document required by law to be carried on board the boat to be seized and detained except while the boat is detained in a port.

(4) Where it appears to a British sea-fishery officer that a contravention of any provision of this Order has at any time taken place, he may -

(a) require the master of the boat in relation to which the contravention took place to take, or himself take, the boat and its crew to the port which appears to him to be the nearest convenient port; and

(b) detain or require the master to detain the boat in the port;

and where such an officer detains or requires the detention of a boat he shall serve on the master a notice in writing stating that the boat will be or is required to be detained until the notice is withdrawn by the service on the master of a further notice in writing signed by a British sea-fishery officer.

...

Ben Bradshaw
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

7th January 2004

Paul Murphy
Secretary of State for Northern Ireland

8th January 2004

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