“The Human Race Is to Become all Technocracy”: C.S. Lewis's Satanic Science

Abstract

This article argues that C.S. Lewis offers a grammar for thinking the spiritual stakes of technics. Reading The Abolition of Man alongside That Hideous Strength, the authors propose that Lewis reframes technicity's peril not merely as “demonic” autonomy but, at its limit, as a Satanic revolt against the Tao, an inversion that clarifies why power severed from objective value becomes magic in the pejorative sense. Attending to the novel's polarity of magia/goeteia, Merlin's ambiguous vocation, and the technocracy of N.I.C.E., the article develops a framework for discerning how social technique bends moral orientation. A coda tests this grammar against contemporary artificial intelligence (AI), where the seductive neutrality of predictive systems offloads judgment and diffuses responsibility. The article also registers limits within Lewis's account—its fatalism, its tendency to elide technology and its technique—and situates his claims alongside mid-century critiques (Martin Heidegger, Jacques Ellul, Leo Strauss) and recent papal reflections (Pope Leo XIV).