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Media and Formal Cause Paperback – January 26, 2011

by Marshall McLuhan (Author), Eric McLuhan (Author)

4.6 15 ratings

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No one understood causality, whether Aristotelian or electric, like Marshall McLuhan. Now, in Media and Formal Cause, no one reveals understanding of formal cause in the digital environment better than McLuhan's protégé son, Eric. In the foreword, Lance Strate writes that M. McLuhan's Understanding Media was one of the most important books of the 20th century. For anyone who wishes to understand how things truly work, Media and Formal Cause is one of the most important books of the 21st. Arguably formal cause has been the least understood but the most intellectually important of all of Aristotle's four agents or processes of causation. This small volume proffers a large understanding of this formative, previously mysterious level of invisible creation. Three essays by Marshall (one with co-author Barry Nevitt) and a powerful new essay by Eric give new meaning to ye olde cliché, "like father, like son". While reading writing that is engaging, encyclopedic, and electric, we discover that formal cause is not what you think... but it is vital to how you think.
-Thomas Cooper, Professor of Visual and Media Arts, Emerson College; author of Fast Media/Media Fast

In Media and Formal Cause Eric McLuhan updates an important part of his father's work that is often overlooked, the quixotic role of causality in making sense of how new media change the way we construct our environment and our communication. How does novelty cause antiquity? When do effects precede causes? Read on, and you shall find out.
-David Rothenberg, Professor of Philosophy and Music, New Jersey Institute of Technology; author of Why Birds Sing and Thousand Mile Song

Like his mentor, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Marshall McLuhan was often accused of indulging in mere paradox. But Media and Formal Cause demonstrates the profound understanding that underlies the work of both Chesterton and McLuhan, the understanding that we live in a paradoxical world. Both McLuhan and Chesterton attempted to jar readers loose from what Cardinal Newman called "paper logic" into a recognition of the total situation in which we find ourselves. This very readable and accessible volume should greatly assist new readers of McLuhan and remind long time students of just how challenging and exhilarating his explorations were.
-Philip Marchand, author, Marshall McLuhan: The Medium and the Messenger

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.
-Paul Levinson, Professor of Communication and Media Studies, Fordham University; author of Digital McLuhan, and of New New Media

Print length

188 pages
Language

English
Publisher

NeoPoiesis Press, LLC
Publication date

January 26, 2011
Dimensions

5.5 x 0.4 x 8.5 inches
ISBN-10

0983274703
ISBN-13

978-0983274704
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ NeoPoiesis Press, LLC (January 26, 2011)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 188 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0983274703
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0983274704
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 7.9 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.4 x 8.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,496,317 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #843 in Philosophy Aesthetics
- #2,609 in Philosophy Metaphysics
- #5,101 in Communication & Media Studies

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4.6 15 ratings

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Joshua Leeger

Essential reading

Reviewed in the United States on February 2, 2016

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A critical book for human beings. Read McLuhan's "The Classical Trivium" first.

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Howard Wetzel

McLuhan rides the academic range again. . .

Reviewed in the United States on February 19, 2011

The small size of this book belies its importance. The three introductory essays serve as background and overture for the scholarly essay on formal cause by Eric McLuhan. This book is about the background for McLuhan's development. And what a background! What shoulders the McLuhans stand on! Aristotle, Aquinas, Eliot, Maritain, Popper, Bunge to name only a few, all great ghosts to stand with, to be sure. Explicating Aristole's discussion of four causes, McLuhan teases out what Aristotle meant by his four causes, especially the most misunderstood, formal cause. He describes how formal cause relates to both the multi-dimensional pre-literate Greek LOGOS and the modern, narrow LOGOS of rational dialectic and science, the Classical and academic roots of McLuhan's much misunderstood contrast between percept and concept. This is not a book, however, for the Gosh-Gee-Whiz McLuhan fan; this is a book for the scholars and critics who are curious about the McLuhans, or may have dismissed them as insignificant and out-of-date thinkers. I hope the scholars and critics will be engaged to read it, and support or refute it; Media and Formal Cause is too important to be ignored.

16 people found this helpful

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John Verdon

The foundation of social and living science

Reviewed in the United States on April 21, 2012

This maybe Eric & Marshall's most profound book, in this age of science, the Mcluhan's make clear that the foundations of most science has been based on two forms of causation - efficient and material, what has been called the `physics worldview [...]. The domain of social sciences has tended to focus on `final cause' - the development of human purposes. But this book substantiates and precedes what Stuart Kauffman has recently elaborated in his ground breaking paper "No Entailing Law, But Enablement in the Evolution of the Biosphere" [...]. McLuhan makes Formal cause simple (as it can be made without becoming simplistic) - the effects precede the cause - the co-evolving nature of figure made possible by a ground - only `seeable' after visibility of the figure. For anyone interested in foresight, this book is a fundamental pre-requisite. We have been lulled into thinking that there is only a type of linear causality underlying the reality of our world. What McLuhan elaborate (and Kauffman hints at - especially in his NPR blog) is that the nature of an evolving `whole' can precede the emergence of a visible figure, that the whole can only become clear once we have defined and seen a figure - even if the figure precedes the visibility of its causal ground. Most highly recommended.

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Dirk vom Lehn

An excellent book that is comprised of articles Marshall McLuhan wrote ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 22, 2016

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An excellent book that is comprised of articles Marshall McLuhan wrote about and related to formal cause. It also has an excellent introduction and a chapter by Eric McLuhan

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