Both the original French and the English translation by Lewis Galantière are lovely.<p>Chapter 3 is my favorite humanist defense of technology, and one of my favorite pieces of prose about engineering and design:<p><i>And now, having spoken of the men born of the pilot’s craft, I shall
say something about the tool with which they work—the airplane. Have
you looked at a modern airplane? Have you followed from year to year
the evolution of its lines? Have you ever thought, not only about the
airplane but about whatever man builds, that all of man’s industrial
efforts, all his computations and calculations, all the nights spent
over working draughts and blueprints, invariably culminate in the
production of a thing whose sole and guiding principle is the ultimate
principle of simplicity?<p>It is as if there were a natural law which ordained that to achieve
this end, to refine the curve of a piece of furniture, or a ship’s
keel, or the fuselage of an airplane, until gradually it partakes of
the elementary purity of the curve of a human breast or shoulder,
there must be the experimentation of several generations of craftsmen.
In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is
no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to
take away, when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness.<p>It results from this that perfection of invention touches hands with
absence of invention, as if that line which the human eye will follow
with effortless delight were a line that had not been invented but
simply discovered, had in the beginning been hidden by nature and in
the end been found by the engineer. There is an ancient myth about the
image asleep in the block of marble until it is carefully disengaged
by the sculptor. The sculptur must himself feel that he is not so much
inventing or shaping the curve of breast or shoulder as delivering the
image from its prison.<p>In this spirit do engineers, physicists concerned with thermodynamics,
and the swarm of preoccupied draughtsmen tackle their work. In
appearance, but only in appearance, they seem to be polishing surfaces
and refining away angles, easing this joint or stabilizing that wing,
rendering these parts invisible, so that in the end there is no longer
a wing hooked to a framework but a form flawless in its perfection,
completely disengaged from its matrix, a sort of spontaneous whole,
its parts mysteriously fused together and resembling in their unity a
poem.</i><p>[...]<p>The rest of the chapter <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;pastie.org&#x2F;pastes&#x2F;10477072&#x2F;text" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;pastie.org&#x2F;pastes&#x2F;10477072&#x2F;text</a>