For my 600th OEN article, I am writing to call your attention to my three articles and six reviews in the new issue of the online journal New Explorations. In my nine selections, I highlight the work of the American Jesuit Renaissance specialist and cultural historian and pioneering media ecology theorist Walter J. Ong (1912-2003; Ph.D. in English, Harvard University, 1955).

::::::::

Duluth, Minnesota (OpEdNews) November 7, 2023: For my 600th OEN article, I am writing to call your attention to my three articles and six reviews volume 3, number 2 of the online journal New Explorations: Studies in Culture and Communication, edited by Robert K. Logan (born in 1939), professor emeritus in physics at the University of Toronto and the distinguished author of the book The Alphabet Effect: A Media Ecology Understanding of the Making of Western Civilization, 2nd ed. (Hampton Press, 2004; 1st ed., 1986):

Click Here

The online journal New Explorations is named in honor of the short-lived print journal in the 1950s Explorations, edited by Marshall McLuhan in English and Ted Carpenter in anthropology at the University of Toronto.

The new issue of New Explorations includes three articles and six reviews (of books by [1] Robert P. Jones, [2] Joseph Henrich, [3] Jeff Jarvis, [4] Sheila J. Nayar, [5] Jonathan Eig, and [6] Richard V. Reeves) that I wrote in which I discuss the work of the American Jesuit Renaissance specialist and cultural historian and pioneering media ecology theorist Walter J. Ong (1912-2003; Ph.D. in English, Harvard University, 1955) of Saint Louis University. I hope that one or more of my articles and reviews might interest you.

Now, young Walter Ong entered the Jesuit order in September 1935, the year in which he turned twenty-three at the end of November 1935 - and the end of November 2023 will mark his 111th anniversary of his birth. As part of his lengthy Jesuit formation, young Walter Ong did graduate studies in philosophy and in English at Saint Louis University. At that time, the courses in philosophy for young Jesuits at Saint Louis University were conducted in Latin. As an undergraduate at Rockhurst College (now Rockhurst University), the Jesuit institution of higher education in his hometown of Kansas City, Missouri, Ong majored in Latin.

At the time when young Ong was doing graduate studies in philosophy and in English at Saint Louis University in the late 1930s and early 1940s, the young Canadian recent convert to Catholicism Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980; Ph.D. in English, Cambridge University, 1943) was teaching English at Saint Louis University (1937-1944), while he worked on his Cambridge University doctoral dissertation on the history of the verbal arts of grammar, rhetoric, and logic (known collectively as the trivium) in Western culture from antiquity down to the English Renaissance writer Thomas Nashe (1567-1601) - a contemporary of Shakespeare's.

McLuhan's 1943 Cambridge University doctoral dissertation was published posthumously, unrevised but with an editorial apparatus, as the 2006 book The Classical Trivium: The Place of Thomas Nashe in the Learning of His Time, edited by W. Terrence Gordon (Gingko Press).

In any event, as World War II (1939-1945) raged on, young Walter Ong completed his lengthy Jesuit formation and was ordained a Jesuit priest. Then, after World War II had concluded in 1945, Father Ong proceeded to doctoral studies in English at Harvard University. There, under the direction of Harvard's Americanist Perry Miller (1905-1963), Father Ong undertook a massive study of the French Renaissance logician and educational reformer and Protestant martyr Peter Ramus (1515-1572) - whose work in logic had emerged as significant in Perry Miller's massively researched 1939 book The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (Harvard University Press; for specific page references to Ramus, see the "Index" [p. 528]) - which young Marshall McLuhan had called to the attention of young Walter Ong.

Ong's 1958 book Ramus and Talon Inventory (Harvard University Press) carries the dedication "For / Herbert Marshall McLuhan / who started all this" - acknowledging that young Marshall McLuhan had started young Walter Ong's interest in Ramus and the history of logic and rhetoric.

Ong's 1958 book Ramus and Talon Inventory is a briefly annotated listing of the more than 750 volumes (most in Latin) by Ramus, his allies, and his critics that Ong tracked down in more than 100 libraries in the British Isles and Continental Europe - with the financial assistance of two Guggenheim Fellowships.

Ong was based in a Jesuit residence in Paris from November 17, 1950, to November 16, 1953. During this time, he experienced the breakthrough insight about the aural-to-visual shift in cognitive processing in our Western cultural history that he devoted the rest of his life to elucidating. No doubt living and working abroad enabled Ong to experience his breakthrough insight and thereby stand apart from and evaluate our Western cultural history.

Ah, but how many other Westerners are willing to draw fruit from Ong's breakthrough insight? No doubt the distance that Ong received from living abroad contributed to his openness to receiving and processing his breakthrough insight. In any event, Ong required a measure of distance from his own Western cultural conditioning to stand apart from and evaluate the aural-to-visual shift in cognitive processing in our Western cultural history. To draw fruit from Ong's breakthrough insight, would-be prospective beneficiaries of Ong's breakthrough insight also need to be willing and able to distance themselves from their own Western cultural conditioning and thereby stand apart from and evaluate the aural-to-visual shift in cognitive processing in our Western cultural history.

Now, it is a safe bet that Trump and his MAGA supports are not prepared to draw fruit from Ong's breakthrough insight. In short, they do not have the measure of distance from our Western cultural conditioning that is required in order to stand apart from and evaluate the aural-to-visual shift in our Western cultural history.

Now, as it turned out, Ong's Harvard University doctoral dissertation benefitted immeasurably from the scholarly studies of the history of logic in Western culture that had been published after McLuhan had completed his 1943 Cambridge University doctoral dissertation. For example, Ong discusses the quantification of thought in late medieval logic in his Chapter IV: "The Distant Background: Scholasticism and the Quantification of Thought" in his massively researched 1958 book Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse [in Ancient and Medieval Western Logic and Rhetoric] to the Art of Reason [in Ramist Logic and Rhetoric - and Subsequently in the Age of Reason] (Harvard University Press, pp. 53-91; for specific page references to the aural-to-visual shift in cognitive processing in our Western cultural history, see the "Index" [p. 396]), In that chapter, Ong draws extensively on scholarly studies of the history of logic that had been published after McLuhan had completed his 1943 Cambridge University doctoral dissertation.

Ong alerted his former teacher and life-long friend Marshall McLuhan about the significance of the quantification of thought in late medieval logic in his (Ong's) article "Space and Intellect in Renaissance Symbolism" in the short-lived print journal Explorations: Studies in Culture and Communications, volume 4 (February 1955): pp. 95-100. Subsequently Ong published the first complete version of his essay as "System, Space, and Intellect in Renaissance Symbolism" in the print journal Bibliotheque d'Humanisme (Geneva), volume 18 (May 1956): pp. 222-239; Ong reprinted it in his 1962 book The Barbarian Within: And Other Fugitive Essays and Studies (Macmillan, pp. 68-87; for specific page references to the aural-to-visual shift in cognitive processing in our Western cultural history, see the entries on Oral-aural and on Visualism in the "Index" [pp. 290 and 292, respectively]); it is also reprinted in volume three of Ong's Faith and Contexts, edited by Thomas J. Farrell and Paul A. Soukup (Scholars Press, 1995, pp. 9-27).

So, according to Ong, what is the significance of the quantification of thought in late medieval logic? Ong answers this question as follows in the 1956 version of Ong's essay "System, Space, and Intellect in Renaissance Symbolism":

"In this historical perspective, medieval scholastic logic appears as a kind of pre-mathematics, a subtle and unwitting preparation for the large-scale operations in quantitative modes of thinking which will characterize the modern world. In assessing the meaning of [medieval] scholasticism, one must keep in mind an important and astounding fact: in the whole history of the human mind, mathematics and mathematical physics come into their own, in a way which has changed the face of the earth and promises or threatens to change it even more, at only one place and time, that is, in Western Europe immediately after the [medieval] scholastic experience [in short, in print culture]. Elsewhere, no matter how advanced the culture on other scores, and even along mathematical lines, as in the case of the Babylonian, nothing like a real mathematical transformation of thinking takes place - not among the ancient Egyptians or Assyrians or Greeks or Romans, not among the peoples of India nor the Chinese nor the Japanese, not among the Aztecs or Mayas, not in Islam despite the promising beginnings there, any more than among the Tartars or the Avars or the Turks. These people can all now share the common scientific knowledge, but the scientific tradition itself which they share is not a merging of various parallel discoveries made by their various civilizations. It represents a new state of mind. However great contributions other civilizations may hereafter make to the tradition, our scientific world traces its origins back always to seventeenth and sixteenth century Europe [in short, to Copernicus and Galileo], to the place where for some three centuries and more the [medieval] arts course taught in universities and para-university schools had pounded into the heads of youth a study program consisting almost exclusively of a highly quantified logic and a companion physics, both taught on a scale and with an enthusiasm never approximated or even dreamt of in ancient academies" (boldface emphasis here added by me; Ong, 1962, p. 72).

What Ong here refers to as a new state of mind in Western culture undoubtedly contributed to the subsequent rise of modern science, on the one hand, and, on the other, modern capitalism - and, later, the rise of what Pope Francis refers to as the technocratic paradigm of modern Western culture. Pope Francis critiques the technocratic paradigm of Western culture in his 2015 eco-encyclical and in his new 2023 eco-apostolic-exhortation.

Now, for his part, McLuhan acknowledged Ong's various studies of Ramism in his controversial 1962 book The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (University of Toronto Press; for specific page references to Ong's publications about Ramism, see the "Bibliographic Index" in McLuhan's book [pp. 286-287]).

Ong's generous review of McLuhan's controversial 1962 book is reprinted in An Ong Reader: Challenges for Further Inquiry, edited by Thomas J. Farrell and Paul A. Soukup (Hampton Press, 2002, pp. 307-308). Incidentally, if you are entirely new to Ong's work, the most accessible overall introduction to his thought is his most widely read, and most widely translated, book Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (Methuen, 1982). However, the 600-page anthology of his writings in An Ong Reader is the most accessible collection of his own writings.

In any event, after McLuhan died in 1980, by then he was the most widely known academic in the twentieth century - and the most controversial - the somewhat less controversial Ong published the tribute "McLuhan as Teacher: The Future is a Thing of the Past" in the print journal Journal of Communication, volume 31, number 3 (Summer 1981): pp. 129-135. It is reprinted in volume one of Ong's Faith and Contexts, edited by Thomas J. Farrell and Paul A. Soukup (Scholars Press, 1992a, pp. 11-18).

So what exactly had McLuhan, and Ong to a somewhat lesser degree, said that made them controversial? Well, each was a pioneering media ecology theorist who had published a pioneering book about the print culture that had emerged in Western culture after the Gutenberg printing press emerged in Europe in the mid-1450s. Yes, to be sure, the paths of each man's thought had followed somewhat parallel trajectories. But what, exactly, made the somewhat parallel trajectories of their respective work controversial?

I have described both men as pioneering media ecology theorists. Even though there are significant differences in the media ecology accounts each of them set forth - differences that should not be ignored - their common media ecology way of proceeding may be what made each of them controversial.

I have discussed Ong's media ecology way of proceeding to the best of my ability in my somewhat lengthy OEN article "Walter J. Ong's Philosophical Thought" (dated September 20, 2020):

Click Here

I have surveyed Ong's life and eleven of his books and selected articles in my book Walter Ong's Contributions to Cultural Studies: The Phenomenology of the Word and I-Thou Communication, 2nd ed. (Hampton Press, 2015; 1st ed., 2000) - the first edition of which received the Marshall McLuhan Award for Outstanding Book in Media Ecology, bestowed by the Media Ecology Association in June 2001.

In conclusion, as you might expect, there is some understandable overlap in my discussions of Ong's work in my three articles and six reviews in the new issue of the online journal New Explorations.

However, I individualize my discussions of his work in each of them - and I try to say something about his work in each one that I have not said about his work anywhere else. When I succeed in doing this, I find it deeply gratifying. As long as I can say something new about Ong's work, I Imagine that I will keep writing about his work.

If you have the time and inclination to read one or more of my three articles and six reviews in the new issue of the online journal New Explorations, I hope that you enjoy reading it -- or them.

Authors Website: http://www.d.umn.edu/~tfarrell

Authors Bio:

Thomas James Farrell is professor emeritus of writing studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD). He started teaching at UMD in Fall 1987, and he retired from UMD at the end of May 2009. He was born in 1944. He holds three degrees from Saint Louis University (SLU): B.A. in English, 1966; M.A.(T) in English 1968; Ph.D.in higher education, 1974. On May 16, 1969, the editors of the SLU student newspaper named him Man of the Year, an honor customarily conferred on an administrator or a faculty member, not on a graduate student -- nor on a woman up to that time. He is the proud author of the book WALTER ONG'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO CULTURAL STUDIES: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE WORD AND I-THOU COMMUNICATION (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2000; 2nd ed. 2009, forthcoming). The first edition won the 2001 Marshall McLuhan Award for Outstanding Book in the Field of Media Ecology conferred by the Media Ecology Association. For further information about his education and his publications, see his UMD homepage: Click here to visit Dr. Farrell's homepage.

On September 10 and 22, 2009, he discussed Walter Ong's work on the blog radio talk show "Ethics Talk" that is hosted by Hope May in philosophy at Central Michigan University. Each hour-long show has been archived and is available for people who missed the live broadcast to listen to. Here are the website addresses for the two archived shows:

Click here to listen the Technologizing of the Word Interview

Click here to listen the Ramus, Method & The Decay of Dialogue Interview