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EVA-NICOLETA BURDUŞEL
Lucian Blaga University, Sibiu
Abstract
The machine has entailed a wide range of reactions: from
fascination and enthusiasm to anxiety and fear. Aldous Huxley –
the intellectual and the artist – could not leave such a
tremendous stimulus unnoticed and coined the term “Fordism” to
describe the sacrifice of the animal, thinking and spiritual man
to the Machine. “Rigorously practised for a few generations,
this dreadful religion of the machine will end by destroying the
human race,” he predicted. Although deeply influenced by
science, his increasing interest in spiritual values (without
upholding a particular religious or philosophical doctrine)
represented, on the one hand, a necessary step in understanding
both the appalling reality and the mystery of life, and, on the
other, his strong belief that man should develop all his
potentialities. My paper aims to advocate Huxley’s idea that
“science, art and philosophy are three ways of making sense of
the world in which we live.”
Keywords: Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, futurology,
futurism, modernism, science, art, philosophy, utopia/ dystopia
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