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.

Reviews 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

Surveys the life and career of the social theorist best known for the quotation, "The medium is the message, " who helped shape the culture of the 1960s and predicted the future of television and the rise of the Internet.

This book offers a systematic framework for thinking about the relationship between language and technology and an argument for interweaving thinking about technology with thinking about language. The main claim of philosophy of technology—that technologies are not mere tools and artefacts not mere things, but crucially and significantly shape what we perceive, do, and are—is re-thought in a way that accounts for the role of language in human technological experiences and practices. Engaging with work by Wittgenstein, Heidegger, McLuhan, Searle, Ihde, Latour, Ricoeur, and many others, the author critically responds to, and constructs a synthesis of, three "extreme", idealtype, untenable positions: (1) only humans speak and neither language nor technologies speak, (2) only language speaks and neither humans nor technologies speak, and (3) only technology speaks and neither humans nor language speak. The construction of this synthesis goes hand in hand with a narrative about subjects and objects that become entangled and constitute one another. Using Words and Things thus draws in central discussions from other subdisciplines in philosophy, such as philosophy of language, epistemology, and metaphysics, to offer an original theory of the relationship between language and (philosophy of) technology centered on use, performance, and narrative, and taking a transcendental turn.

"The concept of formal cause was originally by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, in his treatise on metaphysics, later elaborated upon by the medieval philosopher Thomas Aquinas, and more recently claimed by the modern media philosopher Marshall McLuhan. Introduced as one of four types of causality, alongside that of material cause, efficient cause, and final cause, McLuhan adopted formal causality in an effort to explain the effects of media and600 technology. This study reviews, compares, and contrasts Aristotle's and McLuhan's understanding of formal cause in relation to contemporary media theory, non-aristotelian systems, and the field of media ecology"--

Since its first appearance in 1962, the impact of The Gutenberg Galaxy has been felt around the world. It gave us the concept of the global village; that phrase has now been translated, along with the rest of the book, into twelve languages, from Japanese to Serbo-Croat. It helped establish Marshall McLuhan as the original 'media guru.' More than 200,000 copies are in print. The reissue of this landmark book reflects the continuing importance of McLuhan's work for contemporary readers.