Obviously, the discovery of ferments, hormones, and vitamins is not only a scientific but also a technical advance. [...] This whole pharmaceutical a… - Friedrich Georg Jünger

When we study the apparatus and the human organization that have been created by our technology in step with its evolution, it becomes clear that they too depend on the mechanical concept of time, the only concept which can guarantee technical progress. How clockwork-like is not the whole order of modern civilization, how relentlessly does not technical progress strive to subject everything to this clocklike precision: man's sleep, his work, his rest, and his pleasures!

It is not difficult to understand the shortcomings of such methods—but it is exceedingly difficult to evade them. We can reasonably assume, for example, that an apple contains a number of substances tha so far have eluded the chemist and the biologist. It is likewise quite certain that even if all these substances could be synthetically reproduced in a pill they could not replace the apple. For the apple embodies a principle that is higher than the sum of its parts. It is not a lifeless preparation, like substances that have been, or could be, extracted from it, but an expression of life that grows and smells and ripens and has fragrance. No doubt the wise thing to do is to eat the apple itself rather than swallow the vitamins which may be extracted from it. And I shall also show wisdom by eating the apple not for the sake of all the vitamins it contains, but because it is an apple. The difference is fundamental, for in the first instance I am acting like a sick person, in the second like a healthy one. In matters of food we act wisely if we avoid the technician wherever we can.

Mechanical work processes have grown immensely, both in number and in scope, and it is obvious that their automatism, controlled and watched as it is by man, in turn has its effect on man. The power that man gains by his automatic tools gains power over him. He is compelled to give them his thought and his attention. Inasmuch as he works with automatic tools, his work becomes mechanical and repetitious with machinelike uniformity. Automatism clutches the operator and never relinquishes its grip on him. To the consequences of this we shall return again and again.