Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/09109_Field_TCGG T874.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 946b | 16 lines

right” and that Swift ridiculed in “the mechanickal operation of
the Spirit.” It derives from a merely vision image of an
uninterrupted chain of Being or a visual plenum of the good as
“the best of all possible worlds.” Granted the merely visual
assumptions of lineal continuity or of sequential dependence,
the principle of non-interference in the natural order becomes
the paradoxical conclusion of applied knowledge.

     Through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the
transformation of mechanization of crafts by the application of
visual method  had proceeded slowly. But it was a procedure of
maximal interference with existing non-visual modes. By the
eighteenth century the process of applied knowledge had
reached such a momentum that it became accepted as a
natural process which must not be impeded save at the peril of
greater evil: “all partial evil universal good.” Polanyi notes (p.