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

"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"--

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.

This is the first volume of essays devoted to Aristotelian formal causation and its relevance for contemporary metaphysics and philosophy of science. The essays trace the historical development of formal causation and demonstrate its relevance for contemporary issues, such as causation, explanation, laws of nature, functions, essence, modality, and metaphysical grounding. The introduction to the volume covers the history of theories of formal causation and points out why we need a theory of formal causation in contemporary philosophy. Part I is concerned with scholastic approaches to formal causation, while Part II presents four contemporary approaches to formal causation. The three chapters in Part III explore various notions of dependence and their relevance to formal causation. Part IV, finally, discusses formal causation in biology and cognitive sciences. Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Formal Causation will be of interest to advanced graduate students and researchers working on contemporary Aristotelian approaches to metaphysics and philosophy of science. This volume includes contributions by José Tomás Alvarado, Christopher J. Austin, Giacomo Giannini, Jani Hakkarainen, Ludger Jansen, Markku Keinänen, Gyula Klima, James G. Lennox, Stephen Mumford, David S. Oderberg, Michele Paolini Paoletti, Sandeep Prasada, Petter Sandstad, Wolfgang Sattler, Benjamin Schnieder, Matthew Tugby, and Jonas Werner.

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.

Media Ecology: An Approach to Understanding the Human Condition provides a long-awaited and much anticipated introduction to media ecology, a field of inquiry defined as the study of media as environments. Lance Strate presents a clear and concise explanation of an intellectual tradition concerned with much more than understanding media, but rather with understanding the conditions that shape us as human beings, drive human history, and determine the prospects for our survival as a species. Much more than a summary, this book represents a new synthesis that moves the field forward in a manner that is both unique and unprecedented, and simultaneously grounded in an unparalleled grasp of media ecology's intellectual foundations and its relation to other disciplines. Taking as its subject matter "life, the universe, and everything," Strate describes the field as interdisciplinary and communication-centered, provides a detailed explication of McLuhan's famous aphorism, "the medium is the message," and explains that the human condition can only be understood in the context of our biophysical, technological, and symbolic environments. Strate provides an in-depth examination of media ecology's four key terms: medium, which is defined in much broader terms than in other fields; bias, which refers to tendencies inherent in materials and methods; effects, which are best understood via the Aristotelian notion of formal causality and contemporary systems theory; and environment, which includes the distinctions between the oral, chirographic, typographic, and electronic media environments. A chapter on tools serves as a guide to further media ecological research and scholarship. This book is well suited for graduate and undergraduate courses on communication theory and philosophy.

Information overload, the shallows, weapons of mass distraction, the googlization of minds: countless commentators condemn the flood of images and information that dooms us to a pathological attention deficit. In this new book, cultural theorist Yves Citton goes against the tide of these standard laments to offer a new perspective on the problem of attention in the digital age. Phrases like paying attention and investing ones attention attest to our mistaken belief that attention can be conceptualized in narrow economic terms. We are constantly drawn towards attempts to quantify and commodify attention, even down to counting the number of 'likes' a picture receives on Facebook or a video on YouTube. By contrast, Citton argues that we should conceptualize attention as a kind of ecology and examine how the many different environments to which we are exposed – from advertising to literature, search engines to performance art – condition our attention in different ways. In a world where the demands on our attention are ever-increasing, this timely and original book will be of great interest to students and scholars in media and communications and in literary and cultural studies, and to anyone concerned about the long-term consequences of the profusion of images as well as digital content in the age of the internet.