McLuhan, Whitehead & Freud

McLuhan was a great pioneer of what in academia these days is called, simply, theory. He seemed to care little for the departmental distinctions between literary criticism, sociology, history, philosophy, the humanities, and the sciences. He just rode roughshot along and across the borders of the traditional disciplines. He was overtly dismissive of them, so much so that in “The Mechanical Bride” he mocked Mortimer Adler’s “Great Ideas” endeavor, comparing the cards in the card catalog to tombstones. Today McLuhan’s interdisciplinary approach is a normal mode of academic writing, though there’s little evidence that today’s academic writers possess the wit and facility for metaphor that distinguish McLuhan. posted by Heresiarch @ 9:33 AM 0 comments links to this post Sunday, November 19, 2006

McLuhan's "The Medium is the Message" always struck me as intuitively obvious, and I've always been puzzled by its controversy. The character of an information channel must condition the experience of receiving its content. How could it be otherwise? Only after reading Whitehead'sSymbolism did I see the connection between McLuhan and Freud/Jung. Later other correspondences became apparent:

• Freud/Jung: UNCONSCIOUS - CONSCIOUS
• McLuhan: Medium - Message
• Whitehead: Causal Efficacy - Presentational Immediacy
• Psychology: Sensation - Perception
• Bohm: Implicate/Implicit - Explicate/Explicit
• Marx: Change in Means of Production - Change in Relationships Among Social Classes

In his book, "Archetypal Process: Divine and Self in Whitehead, Jung, and Hillman", David Ray Griffin pulled together a good collection of essays on the compatibility of Whiteheadian process philosophy/theology and Jungian archetypal psychology. posted by Heresiarch @ 12:59 PM Sunday, March 19, 2006

Heresiarch said... In your consideration of models of evolution that include a spiritual/transcedental dimension, you might take a look at the stellar metamorphosis model presented at www.starlarvae.org. I continue to find it extremely stimulating. 9:53 PM