Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/09058_Field_TCGG T823.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 860b | 16 lines

itself simply nonentity having no property except a capacity for
being occupied, they proceeded to fill it several times over with
ethers designed to provide electric, magnetic, and gravitational
forces, and to account for the propagation of light.” (pp. 98­9)

     Perhaps no more striking evidence of the merely visual
and uniform character of the space was given than in the
famous phrase of Pascal: “Le silence éternel des espaces infinis
m’effraie.” Some meditation on why silent space should be so
terrifying yields much insight into the cultural revolution going
on in human sensibilities by the visual stress of the printed
book.

     But the absurdity of speaking of space as a neutral
container will never trouble a culture which has separated its
visual awareness from the other senses. Yet, says Whittaker (p.