Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/08576_Field_TCGG T341.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 917b | 16 lines

Sentences  and aphorisms, as both compressed and
authoritative, is that this preference is rapidly altered in the
sixteenth century. Walter Ong has devoted a great deal of
attention to this change as it appears in the work and vogue of
Petrus Ramus. Saving Father Ong’s important work for
attention a little later, it is only necessary to cite here his
article on “Ramist Method and the Commercial Mind.” (30) Ong
stresses the change in human sensibility resulting from the rise
of typography, showing “how the use of printing moved the
word away from its original association with sound and treated
it more as a ‘thing’ in space.”

     The implication of this visual approach for the oral
aphorism, and for the compendia of sentences, adages, and
maxims which had been the medieval staple of learning, was
recession. As Ong puts it (p. 160), “. . . Ramus tends to regard