Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/08365_Field_TCGG T130.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 1KB | 16 lines

this regard, “Unlike the eye, the unaided hand is unable to
discover whether three or more objects are on a line.” (p. 7) It
is very obvious why Plato might have insisted that “no one
destitute of geometry enter” his academy. A similar motive
leads the Viennese musician Carl Orff to forbid children to study
music in his school if they have already learned to read and
write. The visual bias so attained he feels makes it quite
hopeless to develop their audile-tactile powers in music. Ivins
goes on to explain why we have the illusion of space as a kind
of independent container, whereas in fact space is “a quality or
relationship of things and has no existence without them.” (p.
8) Yet in comparison with later centuries, “the Greeks were
tactile minded and . . . whenever they were given the choice
between a tactile or a visual way of thought they instinctively
chose the tactile one.” (pp. 9­10) Such remained the case until
well after Gutenberg in Western experience. Considering the