ToKers:

My colleagues and I are working on a late (and little noticed) essay  
written by Marshall titled "The Social Impact of the Computer" (1979,  
just before his stroke and subsequent death).

Here's a taste of what he had to say (with my remarks in square brackets) --

"There are, in fact, no connections in the material universe.   
Einstein, Heisenberg, and Linus Pauling have baffled representatives  
of the old mechanical and visual culture [i.e. the PRINT environment  
of Newton &al] of the nineteenth century [or what McLuhan called the  
"Gutenberg Galaxy," in many ways his "nemesis"] by reminding  
scientists in general that the only physical bond in Nature is the  
resonating interval or 'interface.' Our language [yes, it is a "game"  
and a superficial one at that], as much as our mental set [*formally*  
caused by our psycho-technological environments], forbids us to regard  
the world this way: it contradicts our "common sense" [an important  
term for McLuhan, since it comes from "Sensus Communis," the gateway  
to *perception*].

"It is hard for the conventional and uncritical mind to grasp the fact  
that **'the meaning of meaning is a relationship' a figure-ground  
[taken from Gestalt] process of perpetual change** [underlined in the  
original].  The input of data must enter a **ground** or field or  
surround of relations [which McLuhan associated with the effects of  
the ELECTRIC "media environment" that replaced PRINT] transformed by  
the intruder, even as the input is also transformed.  Knowledge, old  
or new [rehearsing McLuhan's theme of "Ancients vs. Moderns"], is  
always a **figure** that is undergoing perpetual change by 'interface'  
with new environments.  Thus it is never easy to divorce knowledge and  
experience [by which McLuhan meant "percepts," which he often  
contrasts with "concepts"].  In the same way that knowledge and  
experience are constantly modifying each other, the relation between  
'hardware' and 'software' is not fixed but is in a perpetual state of  
metamorphosis."

It is also worth noting that when he was at Cambridge University, one  
of his teachers -- he was an English Literature student -- was I. A.  
Richards, who had earlier written a book titled "The Meaning of  
Meaning: A Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought and of the  
Science of Symbolism," along with C.K. Ogden (1923).  As it turns out,  
the current "official" McLuhan editor is Terrence Gordon, who  
otherwise is an Ogden scholar, so this influence (which I consider an  
unfortunate "distortion") continues in Gordon's comments on McLuhan's  
work.

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__en.wikipedia.org_wiki_The-5FMeaning-5Fof-5FMeaning&d=DwIBaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=MNSC_u0CqqO86PSZ0kJAlvYRc6f7KQGhicvEg4uesLE&s=kPbRQpmu-wCQAoMiLfsGAAdLAfY2WuDeN12GuGczdJo&e=

MoM was an earlier attempt at "integration of Human Knowledge" and, in  
its day, had wide-spread impact.  Among other things, as the Wikipedia  
entry highlights, it deployed a version of the "Triangle of  
Reference," as initially detailed by Charles Pierce (as I've explored  
through the semiotics work of John Deely.)  Among the various  
offshoots of MoM was "Basic English" (a competitor with Esperanto) --  
an attempt by the British Empire to control their "colonials"  
(included in China, where Richards personally tried to promote the  
approach) through language, as emphasized by Winston Churchill in his  
post-war address at Harvard.

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__en.wikipedia.org_wiki_Basic-5FEnglish&d=DwIBaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=MNSC_u0CqqO86PSZ0kJAlvYRc6f7KQGhicvEg4uesLE&s=CmKRYaGT92HnOywwgV5A6rtaWIufYAFvxidDaxbmLr4&e=

As Marshall and his sidekick, the anthropologist Edmund "Ted"  
Carpenter, noted in their "The New Languages" essay (1956, attached),  
"English is a mass-medium . . . ," implying that what we can and  
cannot "conceive" (i.e. "knowledge," as opposed to "perceive," which  
is to say experience) is sharply constrained by the *environment*  
defined by English -- as we are now wrestling with in our research on  
Aristotle, via the Greek and Latin versions, which are often severely  
mistranslated into English.

The notion that the "meaning of meaning is relationship" is *not* the  
Odgen/Richards approach, which along with their parallels in  
Korzybski's "General Semantics," was much more aiming at "controlling  
behavior" than with understanding it (always the challenge in these  
matters) . . . !!

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__en.wikipedia.org_wiki_General-5Fsemantics&d=DwIBaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=MNSC_u0CqqO86PSZ0kJAlvYRc6f7KQGhicvEg4uesLE&s=heBXkcjrikV5O6-mkxzYPOgvqhEcc89hnNn10KIHOEE&e=

McLuhan emphasis on *relationships* -- the phrase in this essay likely  
first appeared in McLuhan's 1972 "Take Today: The Executive as  
Dropout" -- is characteristic of his work.  On this basis, Gregg's  
"joints" are the nexus of those relationships or what Marshall  
commonly called "gaps," which I look forward to exploring more deeply  
with this group.

Mark

Quoting Mark Stahlman <[log in to unmask]>:

> Gregg:
>
> Welcome back and I like "the message is the medium" . . . !!
>
> When McLuhan decided to use that term, among the many things he had  
> in mind was the "medium" used in laboratories for growing colonies  
> of organisms -- or what we used to call "agar" when I was wearing a  
> lab-coat.
>
> The challenge that everyone who has attempted to *integrate* Human  
> Knowledge has had, of course, is dealing with the one-and-the-many.   
> We know that both must simultaneously be "true" but how are they to  
> be reconciled?
>
> What is it that "unifies" and what is it that "separates" (and is it  
> the same thing)?  How do we deal with the "universal" and the  
> "particular" all under the same umbrella?
>
> The notion that it is *communications* which unifies and separates  
> -- from cell-to-cell to culture-to-culture -- seems to be where  
> we're heading and I like that path.
>
> "Communication" is a word based on "in common," which it shares with  
> "community" &c.  Within this etymology, there is both the  
> recognition of the "one" and the "many."  It also carries the  
> meaning that there are many "mechanisms" for communications and what  
> cells perform is not identical to the communications that cultures  
> are founded upon (thus my interest in Semiotics &c).
>
> All of which begs the important question of how are we going to  
> *communicate* in our "new paradigm" and what will this new approach  
> mean for our "community"?
>
> Mark
>
> P.S. Under previous communications conditions, we tried to build  
> "one world."  That is over now, because those conditions have  
> changed.  In particular, I have been deeply engaged with China for  
> the past 20 years.  China will never be a part of the Western  
> attempts to make our lives "global" (and we will never be a part of  
> what they are doing.)  Two radically different *communications*  
> approaches -- the Alphabet and Ideo/pictographics -- developed in  
> these two places 2500+ years ago (in the Axial Age) and, as a  
> result, two very different "cultures" were produced.  And, yes there  
> are others . . . <g>
>
> Quoting "Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx" <[log in to unmask]>:
>
>> Hi All,
>>
>> It is good to be back at my home computer after 12 days of  
>> "gluttony and sloth." I have been thrilled by all the insightful  
>> contributions to the list.
>>
>>  Corinne, thanks much both for your artwork and for the recent post  
>> about plants. Plant behavior became a point of fascination for me  
>> in figuring out psychology's language game. I also think the  
>> article highlights many of the things that John has been trying to  
>> say about how physiology and cell-cell communication is  
>> foundational to understanding our essences. At the same time, the  
>> nervous system is a "game changer" when it comes to the "fast"  
>> behavior of animals. Whereas plant behavior is complex, responsive  
>> to stimuli, and highly functional, I don't think we should call it  
>> "mental," and I think that we should be careful in using terms like  
>> 'see' and 'hear,' as in the title of the article. For us human  
>> primates, the term "see" is intimately tied to our subjective  
>> experience of vision. There is no evidence that plants have a  
>> subjective experience (AKA perceptual consciousness) of vision.  
>> They are clearly physiologically aware of light stimuli and respond  
>> accordingly. The relationship between functional behavior and the  
>> subjective experience of being, is, as Steve's review of William  
>> James will likely point out, crucial in trying to solve the  
>> language game of psychology. As slide 11 in the BIT key idea ppt  
>> highlights, consciousness does not equal  
>> behavior<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.gregghenriques.com_bit.html&d=DwIBaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=uHKAWFaAP1VQfQO7Zs6RMMP9dM1fVSGtIkNi3Oi3Mg0&s=7zOkydjiK47pYS4hoKM-38Lw7Z4O0O153QWaV-8u0ec&e=>, although we can use the ToK System to understand how perceptual consciousness is a subset of  
>> behavior.
>>
>> Thanks much to Nancy for her articulation of the development of  
>> human cognitive abilities and her evolutionary/Piagetian analyses.  
>> Nancy, I think both of your assumptions about evolutionary lineage  
>> and about lining up phylogeny with ontogeny in the way that you to  
>> understand the evolution of human thought highly valuable. I am  
>> glad to hear your connection to Merlin Donald. We have not spoken  
>> about that previously. Early in his book, Merlin Donald makes a  
>> central point: During the relatively short time of human emergence,  
>> the structure of the primate mind was radically altered; or rather  
>> was gradually surrounded by new representational systems and  
>> absorbed into a larger cognitive apparatus. (p. 4)  In the language  
>> of the ToK, what we became surrounded by were both the  
>> technological and linguistic environments that resulted in a  
>> dramatic shift in the flow of energy-information. The linguistic  
>> networks that formed were justification systems; narratives that  
>> provided the structure for our social lives and labeled Culture as  
>> the fourth dimension of behavioral complexity.
>>
>>  Mark, I have been very much enjoying reading up on the Center for  
>> Digital Life and Marshal McLuhan's work on media. I have found his  
>> analysis of mediums fascinating. In what might be an odd  
>> association, it reminded me a bit of Richard Dawkins' The Extended  
>> Phenotype<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__en.wikipedia.org_wiki_The-5FExtended-5FPhenotype&d=DwIBaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=uHKAWFaAP1VQfQO7Zs6RMMP9dM1fVSGtIkNi3Oi3Mg0&s=dfNfUeDnjiTyyZYuh8xa4IXqvSBvXL3D4oWAmVhr5LI&e=> (and John's notions of Niche Construction). Certainly, as we radically alter our environment, we radically alter ourselves. On the ride home from the beach yesterday, I found myself inverting is his motto (the medium is the message) to "the message is the medium." The inverted motto lines up directly with the key insight of the ToK. That is, the mediums of cell-cell communication/genetic info (Life), neuro-mental-subjectivity (Mind), and linguistic-person-society-intersubjectivity (Culture) are the "conglomerates" that allow us to unweave the rainbow of behavior and see the dimensions that make us what and who we  
>> are.
>>
>> Ultimately, it seems to me that these are the kinds of  
>> interdisciplinary conversations that should be going on as we  
>> search for ways to integrate knowledge. As Joe commented, none of  
>> us has all the answers. But together we might be able to fashion a  
>> reasonable picture of the whole. I am reminded of the philosopher  
>> Oliver Reiser's opening call in his book The Integration of Human  
>> Knowledge (which I found had remarkable parallels to the ToK  
>> version of reality), which seems perhaps even more appropriate  
>> today as it was when he wrote 60 years ago:
>>
>> In this time of divisive tendencies within and between the nations, races,
>> religions, sciences and humanities, synthesis must become the great  
>> magnet which
>> orients us all...[Yet] scientists have not done what is possible  
>> toward integrating
>> bodies of knowledge created by science into a unified  
>> interpretation of man, his
>> place in nature, and his potentialities for creating the good  
>> society. Instead, they
>> are entombing us in dark and meaningless catacombs of learning  
>> (Reiser, 1958,
>> p. 2-3, italics in original).
>>
>> Am happy to be back in the flow.
>>
>> Best,
>> Gregg
>> ___________________________________________
>> Gregg Henriques, Ph.D.
>> Professor
>> Department of Graduate Psychology
>> 216 Johnston Hall
>> MSC 7401
>> James Madison University
>> Harrisonburg, VA 22807
>> (540) 568-7857 (phone)
>> (540) 568-4747 (fax)
>>
>> Be that which enhances dignity and well-being with integrity.
>> Check out my Theory of Knowledge blog at Psychology Today at:
>> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.psychologytoday.com_blog_theory-2Dknowledge&d=DwIBaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=uHKAWFaAP1VQfQO7Zs6RMMP9dM1fVSGtIkNi3Oi3Mg0&s=iyFRFA9RrDTde63r0NoDqF9Q4vP1aPGsb8-0WN1FbRs&e=
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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