On Dwarves and Scientists: Probing for Technological Ethics in the Creative Imagination of J.R.R. Tolkien
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In this paper, I look more closely at J.R.R. Tolkien's writing to probe for a broader philosophy of technology. I suggest that (after a survey of his letters and literature), according to Tolkien none of the activities of technology, inquiry, making or use can be morally neutral. As a result, in Tolkien's account careful scrutiny must be made to ensure that these three types of technological activity occur within an ethically ordered economy, directed by appreciation for the intrinsic good of making and not for the extrinsic profit or power that can be "derived" (as in Moria), lest one dig too deeply and unleash a Balrog. Along with this negative account, Tolkien provides a positive affirmation of creaturely sub-creation and inquiry into the depths of mystery as an intrinsic part of human creatureliness. I conclude that this critique of technology lies at the heart of Tolkien's project.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.016 | 0.025 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.005 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.012 | 0.050 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.013 | 0.017 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".