Thomas Lunde wrote:
>
> ----------
[snip]
> In my opinion, there has been very little intelligent follow-up by
> academics, whether mainstream or creative on McLuhan's work. And yet, I
> believe it is/was the single most creative piece of analysis done in the
> 20th century. Far outweighing Jung, Freud or any of our other so called
> pyschological thinkers. As to the philosphers, I find most of their
> speculations grand science fiction dressed up in dubious logic and fancy
> vocabulary, often of their own invention.
I would beg to differ. McLuhan was surely a kind of genius, but his
ideas can be traced backward and forward. In my opinion, his main
contribution (and I do agree it is a very important one!) was to
popularize it. Alas, we still need many more such "popularizers",
for McLuhan's message has not yet -- in my opinion -- sunk into our
society.
Thomas Kuhn, Norwood Hanson and (in a different disciplinary area)
Harold Innis are a few names which come to my mind. Then there is
Gregory Bateson. Edmund Husserl's work (and the work of those who
have continued to carry it on) is probably the most deeply
thought out of all.
Freud seems to have been torn between hermeneutics
(understanding human experience "from the inside" in terms of
its lived meaning as irreducible) and brain-physics (reducing
experience to an epiphenomenon of that particular domain of the
contents of experience which we call "neurophysiology" -- the
logical absurdity of this aspiration should be obvious, but it
isn't).
[snip]
> As the following article indicates, perhaps two thousand years of church and
> academic scholars have completely missed the main message in the Iliad and
> yet perhaps, if an Albanian or Serb from a rural village had have been asked
> their opinion, many of them still very oral in their sensorium and culture,
> an answer that indicated the truth of the following story might have been
> found much sooner - but then what does a peasant know?
>
> Well, that's my rant.
>
> Respectfully,
>
> Thomas Lunde
>
> From: Mark Graffis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
> From: Danny Fagandini <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
> *******
>
> Financial Times Weekend Section 20.6.99 page 1
>
> Could the 'Iliad' be more than just a story - a stellar guidebook,
> in fact?
> Christian Tyler tracks the ancient heroes across the heavens
>
> Generations of scholars and students have pored over Homer's Iliad.
> They have admired the vigour of its language and relished the
> descriptions of fighting and smiting. And if this ancient epic has
> sometimes seemed overpopulated, inconclusive and strangely narrow in
> its focus, that could always be put down to the rude ignorance of
> antiquity.
>
> But, according to Florence and Kenneth Wood, we have all been missing
> the point. The Iliad, they say, is not just a story. It is a stellar
> guidebook, a poetic encryption of ancient geography and an
> astronomical record.
[snip]
I think the line of scholarship from Walter Lord thru Walter
Ong (et al.) would say that, whether or not the above is
true, the Iliad was the Library of Congress of the early
Greeks, and if it mapped to the starry constellations, that
would be primarily just one more "check" on its faithful
transmission by the generations of bards who composed it (in
both senses: (1) producing, and (2) constituting the elements
of).
"Yours in discourse"
\brad mccormick
--
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA
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