Media and Formal Cause

by Marshall McLuhan, Eric McLuhan

Contents:
The relation of environment to anti-environment / Marshall McLuhan --
Causality in the electric world / Marshall McLuhan and Barrington Nevitt with responses by Joseph Owens and Frederick D. Willhelmsen --
Formal causality in Chesterton / Marshall McLuhan --
On formal cause / Eric McLuhan.

Genres: Philosophy, Sociology

188 pages, Paperback

First published January 26, 2011

About the author

Herbert Marshall McLuhan was a Canadian philosopher whose work is among the cornerstones of the study of media theory. He studied at the University of Manitoba and the University of Cambridge. He began his teaching career as a professor of English at several universities in the United States and Canada before moving to the University of Toronto in 1946, where he remained for the rest of his life. He is known as the "father of media studies".
McLuhan coined the expression "the medium is the message" in the first chapter in his Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man and the term global village. He predicted the World Wide Web almost 30 years before it was invented. He was a fixture in media discourse in the late 1960s, though his influence began to wane in the early 1970s. In the years following his death, he continued to be a controversial figure in academic circles. However, with the arrival of the Internet and the World Wide Web, interest was renewed in his work and perspectives.

Reviews

[Paul]

A sage and perceptive quartet of essays which capture and extend a still quintessentially unique way of thinking about media, via patterns and connections that harken to the ancient world and redound to our present and future.

[Dirk]

Marshall McLuhan has often been accused and pushed aside as a technology or media determinist. This books provides a welcome correction of this critique and powerfully shows how McLuhan's analysis of the media has emerged from his intellectual background in literary criticism. Highly recommended read. In fact, I will reread it again soon.