Taking Up McLuhan's Cause

Bob Logan earned a BS and Ph.D. from MIT in 1961 and 1965. His poetry of physics course at the University of Toronto brought him to the attention of Marshall McLuhan and led to his collaboration with McLuhan that in turn led to their book The Future of the Library (Peter Lang 2016). Logan switched fields and published a number of articles and books in the field of media ecology.Contact: 27 King’s College Circle, Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A1, Canada.Corey Anton (Ph.D., Purdue University, 1998) 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), How Non-being Haunts Being: On Possibilities, Morality, and Death Acceptance (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2020) and A.EYE CANDY: A Museum of Imaginary Robots and Other Digital Delights (IGS Press, 2023). He is the editor of Valuation and Media Ecology: Ethics, Morals, and Laws (Hampton Press, 2010), and the co-editor, along with Lance Strate, of the collection Korzybski And… (IGS Press, 2012), and co-editor, along with Robert K. Logan and Lance Strate, of the collection, Taking Up McLuhan’s Cause (Intellect, 2017). Past editor of the journal Explorations in Media Ecology and past president of the Media Ecology Association, Anton currently serves as vice-president of the Institute of General Semantics, and on the editorial boards of The Atlantic Journal of Communication, ETC, New Explorations and Explorations in Media Ecology.Contact: School of Communications, Grand Valley State University, 210 LSH, 1 Campus Drive, Allendale, MI 49401-9403, USA.Lance Strate is a professor of communication and media studies at Fordham University and the president of the Institute of General Semantics. He is the author of eleven books, including Media Ecology: An Approach to Understanding the Human Condition (Peter Lang, 2017) and, most recently, Not A, Not Be, &c (Institute of General Semantics, 2024).Contact: Department of Communication and Media Studies, Fordham University, 441 E. Fordham Road, Bronx, NY 10458, USA.

'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. '

• 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