home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
Understanding McLuhan
/
Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso
/
mac
/
McLuhan.dxr
/
McLuhan.dxr
/
09107_Field_TCGG T872.txt
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1996-03-19
|
958b
|
16 lines
At this point, The Great Transformation by Karl Polanyi,
on “the political and economic origins of our time,” assumes
complete relevance in the mosaic of The Gutenberg Galaxy .
Polanyi is concerned with the stages by which the Newtonian
mechanics invaded and transformed society in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, only to encounter a reverse dynamic
from within. His analysis of how prior to the eighteenth century
“the economic system was absorbed in the social system” is
exactly parallel to the situation of literature and the arts up till
that time. This was true till the time of Dryden, Pope, and Swift,
who lived to detect the great transformation. Polanyi enables
us (p. 68) to face the familiar Gutenberg principle of practical
advance and utility by separation of forms and functions:
As a rule, the economic system was absorbed in the
social system, and whatever principle of behavior