Taking Up McLuhan's Cause

Robert K. Logan is Professor Emeritus of physics and in School of the Environment, University of Toronto. He is a fellow of St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto. He is also the chief scientist at the Strategic Innovation Lab, Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD).Corey Anton is professor of communication studies at Grand Valley State University and a fellow of the International Communicology Institute. He is author of Selfhood and Authenticity (SUNY Press, 2001), Sources of Significance: Worldly Rejuvenation and Neo-Stoic Heroism (Purdue University Press, 2010), Communication Uncovered: General Semantics and Media Ecology (IGS Press, 2010) and, most recently, How Non-Being Haunts Being: Possibilities, Morality and Death Acceptance (Fairleigh Dickenson University Press, 2020). Past editor of the journal Explorations in Media Ecology, past president of the Media Ecology Association, Anton currently serves as vice-president of the Institute of General Semantics.Contact: Grand Valley State University, 210 LSH, 1 Campus Drive, School of Communications, Allendale, MI 49401-9403, USA.Lance Strate is professor of communication and media studies, and a past president of the Media Ecology Association. He is the author of seven books, including Amazing Ourselves to Death: Neil Postman’s Brave New World Revisited (Peter Lang, 2014), Media Ecology: An Approach to Understanding the Human Condition (Peter Lang, 2017) and the poetry collection, Thunder at Darwin Station (NeoPoiesis, 2014).

• ForewordEric McLuhanA Trialogic Introduction Robert K. Logan, Corey Anton, and Lance StrateChapter One: The Form of Things to Come: A Review of Media and Formal CauseCorey AntonChapter Two: McLuhan, Formal Cause and the Future of Technological Mediation & PostscriptCorey AntonChapter Three: Medium as ‘Metaform’: An Inquiry into the Life of Forms Paolo GranataChapter Four: From Aristotle via Aquinas: Understanding Formal Cause in Marshall McLuhan’s PhilosophyLaura Trujillo LiñánChapter Five: The Effects That Give Cause, and the Pattern That Directs Lance StrateChapter Six: McLuhan and Causality: Technological Determinism, Formal Cause and EmergenceRobert K. LoganChapter Seven: Formal Cause: McLuhan’s ‘Objective Turn’? Yoni Van Den EedeChapter Eight: Forms of Causality Chad HansenChapter Nine: Anti-Environmental Art and Its Role in Making Formal Cause VisibleSteve ReaglesChapter Ten: Of Memes, Modes, Minor Audiences and Formal Cause Eric S. JenkinsChapter Eleven: After Effects, Before Causes: Technique, Artistic Intent and Formal CausalityKirk ZamieroskiChapter Twelve: Re-Cognizing Formal Cause Peter ZhangChapter Thirteen: Disrobing the Probe, Unpacking the Sprachage: Formal Cause or the Cause of Form Reframing McLuhan and the KabbalahAdeena Karasick

'Very good essays on a crucial intellectual topic. I’m hopeful that this anthology will help kick off another McLuhan movement rooted in McLuhan’s place in the great tradition of philosophies of causation. '