Grammar, Logic & Rhetoric

McLuhan: No, interest. All right, well it has a lot to do with my own dissertation which was on the history of the trivium. I am also revamping my history of the trivium for publication, and the trivium is grammar-logic-rhetoric— talking about basics. And grammar, by the way, is one of the ground things that gets pulled out by—the logicians always pull out the grammar ground and throw it away. Grammatica , by the way, means reading the book of nature. Reading the whole text of nature as a book. That was called Grammatica .

Forsdale: Boy, has that ever changed! Grammarians pay no attention whatsoever to the whole text of nature. Now it’s totally an abstract business, isn’t it?