Taking Up McLuhan's Cause

Description

This book brings together a number of prominent scholars to explore a relatively under-studied area of Marshall McLuhan’s thought: his idea of formal cause and the role that formal cause plays in the emergence of new technologies and in structuring societal relations. Aiming to open a new way of understanding McLuhan’s thought in this area, and to provide methodological grounding for future media ecology research, the book runs the gamut, from contributions that directly support McLuhan’s arguments to those that see in them the germs of future developments in emergent dynamics and complexity theory.

Foreword

Eric McLuhan

A Trialogic Introduction 

Robert K. Logan, Corey Anton, and Lance Strate

Chapter One: The Form of Things to Come: A Review of Media and Formal Cause

Corey Anton

Chapter Two: McLuhan, Formal Cause and the Future of Technological Mediation & Postscript

Corey Anton

Chapter Three: Medium as ‘Metaform’: An Inquiry into the Life of Forms 

Paolo Granata

Chapter Four: From Aristotle via Aquinas: Understanding Formal Cause in Marshall McLuhan’s Philosophy

Laura Trujillo Liñán

Chapter Five: The Effects That Give Cause, and the Pattern That Directs 

Lance Strate

Chapter Six: McLuhan and Causality: Technological Determinism, Formal Cause and Emergence

Robert K. Logan

Chapter Seven: Formal Cause: McLuhan’s ‘Objective Turn’? 

Yoni Van Den Eede

Chapter Eight: Forms of Causality 

Chad Hansen

Chapter Nine: Anti-Environmental Art and Its Role in Making Formal Cause Visible

Steve Reagles

Chapter Ten: Of Memes, Modes, Minor Audiences and Formal Cause 

Eric S. Jenkins

Chapter Eleven: After Effects, Before Causes: Technique, Artistic Intent and Formal Causality

Kirk Zamieroski

Chapter Twelve: Re-Cognizing Formal Cause 

Peter Zhang

Chapter Thirteen: Disrobing the Probe, Unpacking the Sprachage: Formal Cause or the Cause of Form Reframing McLuhan and the Kabbalah

Adeena Karasick

Sujets

• Media Studies
• Social Science
• Sociologie, société et politique
• General officer
• General
• Cultural Studies

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 04 avril 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783206964
• Langue: English

Extrait

First published in the UK in 2017 by
Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2017 by
Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street,
Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright © 2017 Intellect Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Copy-editor: MPS Technologies
Cover designer: Holly Rose
Production manager: Matthew Floyd
Typesetting: Contentra Technologies
Print ISBN: 978-1-78320-694-0
ePDF ISBN: 978-1-78320-695-7
ePub ISBN: 978-1-78320-696-4
Printed and bound by Bell and Bain Ltd, UK
This is a peer-reviewed publication.
Table of Contents
Foreword
Eric McLuhan
A Trialogic Introduction
Robert K. Logan, Corey Anton and Lance Strate
Chapter One: The Form of Things to Come: A Review of Media and Formal Cause
Corey Anton
Chapter Two: McLuhan, Formal Cause and the Future of Technological Mediation & Postscript
Corey Anton
Chapter Three: Medium as ‘Metaform’: An Inquiry into the Life of Forms
Paolo Granata
Chapter Four: From Aristotle via Aquinas: Understanding Formal Cause in Marshall McLuhan’s Philosophy
Laura Trujillo Liñán
Chapter Five: The Effects That Give Cause, and the Pattern That Directs
Lance Strate
Chapter Six: McLuhan and Causality: Technological Determinism, Formal Cause and Emergence
Robert K. Logan
Chapter Seven: Formal Cause: McLuhan’s ‘Objective Turn’?
Yoni Van Den Eede
Chapter Eight: Forms of Causality
Chad Hansen
Chapter Nine: Anti-Environmental Art and Its Role in Making Formal Cause Visible
Steve Reagles
Chapter Ten: Of Memes, Modes, Minor Audiences and Formal Cause
Eric S. Jenkins
Chapter Eleven: After Effects, Before Causes: Technique, Artistic Intent and Formal Causality
Kirk Zamieroski
Chapter Twelve: Re-Cognizing Formal Cause
Peter Zhang
Chapter Thirteen: Disrobing the Probe, Unpacking the Sprachage: Formal Cause or the Cause of Form Reframing McLuhan and the Kabbalah
Adeena Karasick
About the Authors
Index
Foreword
Eric McLuhan
Without an understanding of formal causality, there can be no theory of communication. What passes as information theory today is not communication at all, but merely transportation.
Mass media in all their forms are necessarily environmental and therefore have all the character of formal causality. In that sense all myth is the report of the operation of formal causality. Since environments change constantly, the formal causes of all the arts and sciences change too.
(Marshall McLuhan) 1
For centuries, science has recognized only one form of causality as proper and acceptable: the form that is linear and sequential and quantifiable. The traditional name for this mode of causation is efficient cause, causa efficiens ; it is one of the four modes of cause that Aristotle proposed. The other three are material cause, formal cause and final cause. The material cause is, simply, the matter of which something is constituted, ‘matter’ at every level from the sub-atomic on up. Formal and final causes are, however, not so simple; although, for a period, the final cause was considered too trivial and obvious to bother with, and so Francis Bacon proposed that it be dropped from serious discussion. In his day, it was thought, the final cause of a house was the house; of a telescope was the telescope; in short, the final cause of anything made was the thing made. Straight redundancy. But as our imaginations change from one period to another, so too does our understanding and interpretation of what Aristotle proposed. Formal cause, long regarded as a simple matter of form and content, turns out to have undisclosed dimensions, to be labyrinthine instead of straightforward. Now and then it is a good idea to re-view the original texts and update the translation. Bear in mind that every translation is a paraphrase.
There are some subtle differences between what Aristotle said when he presented his system of four causes and what is conventionally understood by philosophers today. Aristotle’s notion proves to be well adapted to use in understanding phenomena in the most modern physics and cosmology, and equally in approaching the study of media and cultural ecologies. When the ancient philosophers averred that the kosmos was ‘informed by’ logos , they were making a technical statement about formal cause. The cosmic universe was a verbal universe in which decorum played an essential and excruciatingly delicate part (this situation providing, in turn, a base for our meanings of ‘cosmetics’). Decorum is deeply Rhetorical. So the logos in question, governed by decorum, is not static but vibrantly active; therefore, it had to have been uttered at some time outside of time.
In Physics , Book II, Chapter 3, Aristotle uses his habitual formula— eidos (for form) and logos (for definition)—as he explains that
[…] the thing in question cannot be there unless the material has actually received the form or characteristics of the type, conformity to which brings it within the definition of the thing we say it is, whether specifically or generically. 2
Over the past several centuries we strayed from what Aristotle meant by formal cause. During that time, philosophy has translated the logos of formal cause by the metaphor of ‘blueprint’. After a few moments’ reflection you realize that the ‘blueprint’ image puts all the stress on arrangement, dispositio . On the surface, ‘blueprint’ and the translation ‘rational plan’ for logos do have a little in common. 3 Marcus Long spells out the ‘house’ illustration of the four causes:
[T]here is a material cause for everything, in the Aristotelian sense that there is something which is potentially something else. In order to build a house we must have bricks or stones or wood. These are the house not actually but potentially, and therefore represent the material cause.
Bricks or wood or stones have no capacity to shape themselves into houses; for this we need a carpenter or a bricklayer or a stonemason. It is through the efforts of such men that the material cause can assume a certain form. Such men, then, are the efficient cause or that which produces the effect, in this case a house.
A bricklayer, to confine our illustration to him, does not pick up the bricks and throw them together at random, hoping for the best. He always has a plan or blueprint to guide him in the construction. This blueprint represents the form that is to be realized, it is the organizing principle. In the Aristotelian doctrine it is the form that actualizes the potentiality, making the thing the sort of thing it is. This is the formal cause.
We do not collect material and hire a bricklayer to build a certain type of house without some purpose in mind. We may want the house for our own dwelling, or to rent as an investment, or simply to be a garage or storehouse. It is clear that these purposes will play a large part in determining the type of material used and the sort of workmen hired. Nothing is done without a purpose. The word ‘purpose’ comes from a Greek word telos meaning literally the end or goal . Insofar as we stress the purposive causes we are said to be speaking teleologically. In the pattern of the analysis of causality in Aristotle this is called the final cause.
There are, then, according to Aristotle, four causes involved in the explanation of the development of any object, the material, the efficient, the formal and the final. These four causes are related to Aristotle’s discussion of matter and form. The material cause as potentiality is the same as matter, whereas the other causes are an expansion of the meaning of form or actuality. Of these three causes, the final cause was the most important for Aristotle, who thought of the purpose, or goal, of development as the real reason for the thing. 4
Aristotle, in Metaphysics , puts the entire matter somewhat more succinctly:
It is possible for all the kinds of cause to apply to the same object; e.g. in the case of a house the source of the motion is the art and the architect; the final cause is the function; the matter is earth and stones, and the form is the definition. 5
A glance at the Greek text shows Aristotle’s customary pairing of eidos (for form) and logos (for definition). The form—and formal cause—of a thing is its logos . This kind of logos is substantially removed from the passivity conveyed by our conventional metaphor, ‘blueprint’. Marcus Long does point out, though, that ‘In the Aristotelian doctrine it is the form that actualizes the potentiality, making the thing the sort of thing it is’. At bottom, formal cause is coercive, not passive. It makes the thing; as it were, it coerces the thing into being , and it makes it be thus .
Etienne Gilson brought this matter clearly to view when commenting on St. Thomas’s ‘reform of metaphysics’: Thomas introduced
a clear-cut distinction between the two orders of formal causality and efficient causality. Formal causality is that which makes things to be what they are, and, in a way, it also makes them to be, since, in order to be, each and every being has to be a what . But formal causality dominates the whole realm of substance, and its proper effect is substantiality, whereas efficient causality is something quite different… It is, then, literally true to say that existence is a consequence which follows from the form of essence, but not as an effect follows from the efficient cause […] 6 In short, forms are ‘formal’ causes of existence, to the whole extent to which they contribute to the establishment of substances which are capable of existing. 7
Gilson emphasizes: ‘No point could be more clearly stated than is this one in the metaphysics of Thomas Aqu