ToKers:

During his first intense solo-consulting project (c. 1959), the famous  
"Project 69" (so-called because that was the sequence number for its  
sponsor, the National Association of Educational Broadcasters, roughly  
today's PBS, and nick-named "Vat 69" by McLuhan), Marshall worked  
through the foundations of what would be his signature ideas about the  
senses.

However, as we have discovered in our own research, he was wrong.

In 1961, before "Gutenberg Galaxy" or "Understanding Media" were  
published (and when he was possibly considering relocated to  
Philadelphia to run the Annenberg Center there), the still largely  
unknown McLuhan published his "Inside the Five Sense Sensorium" in the  
still-new journal "Canadian Architect" (attached.)

Here are the concluding sentences of the concluding paragraph --

"If our massive new electronic media [i.e. TELEVISION] are direct  
extensions [presaging the subtitle of UM] of sight and sound and touch  
and kinesthesia [more on that below], is there not urgent need to  
consider a possibility of a consensus [ditto] or ratio and balance  
among these for our collective sanity?  Even a slight disturbance of  
the balance among our private senses can drive us to wits' end.  We  
live in a time when whole peoples have gone out of their wits when  
impelled by new massive forms [impossible to understand without  
Aristotle's understanding of the "City"] such as radio.  Psychologists  
explain what when the field of attention has a center without a margin  
we are hypnotized.  Such is the condition of tribal man, past or  
present [he viewed ELECTRICITY as "re-tribalizing"].  The problem of  
design is to understand the media forces in such wise that we need  
never sink into the zombie tribal state where we can meet that Africa  
which Conrad immortalized in his 'Heart of Darkness.'"

In his "Project 69" report to NAEB, Marshall finished his analysis of  
this "consensus" with a proposal that these media "effects" (as  
opposed to their "impact") should be understood in terms of "sensory  
closure" (abbreviated "SC"), which was still in place at the end of  
the 60s when he met his "final" collaborator, Barrington "Barry"  
Nevitt (1908-95, who I met shortly before his death.)  This "closure"  
was also at the root of his fascination with synesthesia, or the  
sensory faculty which allows some people to "see sounds," "taste  
colors" &c.  The location of that closure/consensus/ratio/balance is  
what was once known as "Sensus Communis" (aka the "common sense.")

Thus Eric McLuhan's important (and final) book, "The Sensus Communis,  
Synesthesia, and the Soul: An Odyssey" (2015, which I helped him  
with.)  In "Sensus Communis," Eric explores the 4-volume Henri du  
Lubac "Medieval Exegesis: The Four Senses of Scripture" (with Vol 4  
still not translated from the French which Eric read it while studying  
for his PhD at the University of Dallas in the 1970s.)  This "shift"  
in the use of *sense* is important, since these "four senses" become  
the basis of the Tetrad (and the Facebook group that I run), which is  
the heuristic that Marshall used to replace his earlier "Vat 69" SI/SC  
"sensory" formulation while re-writing UM into what would become "Laws  
of Media" (1988.)

Marshall's earlier use of the "senses" with Sensus Communis appears to  
be (at least partly) an artifact of his own PhD studies -- granted by  
Cambridge in 1943 but written at St. Louis University, in part under  
the influence of Bernard Muller-Thym.  "Bernie," who later became a  
pioneering management consultant and likely introduced Marshall to  
Peter Drucker, had published his own "The Common Sense, Perfection of  
the Order of Pure Sensibility" in "The Thomist" in 1940.  And Bernie's  
own PhD was from the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies (PIMS)  
at the University of Toronto, a stone's throw from where Marshall  
would eventually set up his own "Centre for Culture and Technology."

What Bernie had apparently failed to notice, seemingly continued in  
McLuhan's own work, was the the Sensus Communis isn't the "end" of the  
story.  While that faculty is, as Bernie suggested, the "perfection"  
(which means "completion") of the "senses," that clearly isn't the  
source of human *perception*.  Indeed, McLuhan's own insistence on the  
priority of "percepts" over "concepts" was undermined by his failure  
to carry this process all the way through -- making much of what he  
later said "unintelligible" for those who tried to sort all this out.

As Bernie, Marshall &al should have known -- since it is not at all  
disguised in Aquinas (who they both seemingly read carefully) -- is  
that our *external* senses (i.e. the ones Marshall first talks about)  
need to be "processed" through what are widely known as the *internal*  
senses.  These consist of the Sensus Communis *and* Imagination,  
Memory and Cogitative Reason -- as discussed by Thomas in Summa  
Theologica, Book I, Question 78, Article 4: "Whether the Internal  
Senses are Properly Distinquished."

These "internal senses" were at the heart of Medieval psychology  
(indeed for roughly 2000 years) -- which, alas, had been largely  
forgotten in McLuhan's times (including by the "Thomists.")  When he  
says "Psychologists explain . . . " in his 1961 article, and, indeed,  
when he uses the term "wits," he is unfortunately way out  
over-his-skis.  There were *zero* psychologists at that time who  
understood what was actually involved in perception (including the  
Gestaltists who Marshall relied on) and, alas, few who understand it  
today.

It wasn't until 1975 that Ruth Harvey (at the Warburg Institute in  
London, where Dame Francis Yates had published her "The Art of Memory"  
in 1966, of which McLuhan had gotten a review copy, and "The  
Rosicrucian Enlightenment" in 1972) published her "Inward Wits:  
Psychological Theory in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance." And it  
wasn't until 1990 that Simon Kemp published his "Medieval Psychology."  
  Crucially, for our own research, it wasn't until 2007 and 2016 until  
we met him) that Mark Barker completed his own PhD "Cogitative Power:  
Objects and Terminology" at the University of St. Thomas (unpublished  
but promised for online release.)

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.amazon.com_Inward-2DWits-2DPsychological-2DRenaissance-2DInstitute_dp_085481051X&d=DwIBaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=v8HH3DUFuAmWIJ2Y55dfeV57MJcowEGrQXi8t3uttGg&s=0kFTuzLiUV6OwLY_kw-Na7j1XxI1imR6Qv6CfAtYN3I&e=

On the basis of this new research, it is now possible to "extend"  
Marshall's own efforts, for the first time.  His focus on the  
"external senses," followed by his son's focus on the exegetical  
"senses of scripture" can finally be described in terms of the  
"internal senses" -- where the "perceptual" action that "precedes"  
emotions/concepts actually all takes place.

And, just in time, since this is at the crux of today's shift from  
TELEVISION to DIGITAL -- which is now forcing us to "revalue all  
values" . . . !!

Mark

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