Does this passage from page 27 of McLuhan’s Understanding Media foreshadow Richard Dawkins’ principle of the selfish gene?
“The principle of mechanization excludes the very possibility of growth or the understanding of change. For mechanization is achieved by fragmentation of any process and by putting the fragmented parts in a series. Yet, as David Hume showed in the eighteenth century, there is no principle of causality in a mere sequence. That one thing follows another accounts for nothing. Nothing follows from following, except change. So the greatest of all reversals occurred with electricity, that ended sequence by making things instant. With instant speed the causes of things began to emerge to awareness again, as they had not done with things in sequence and in concatenation accordingly. Instead of asking which came first, the chicken or the egg, it suddenly seemed that a chicken was an egg’s idea for getting more eggs.”
I googled +Mcluhan +Dawkins +”selfish gene” + “egg’s idea” and lo and behold the only thing that came up was Jim Morrison’s fabulous paper delivered at NYSCA Oct 1999: Marshall McLuhan: No Prophet without Honor (http://hannemyr.com/links/mcluhan/jcm.html#_edn54) where he wrote:
“In a similar vein, Richard Dawkins’s «selfish gene» can be seen as a kind of reversal of the conventional figure-ground relationship, and a notion which McLuhan anticipated in Understanding Media: «Instead of asking which came first, the chicken or the egg, it suddenly seemed that a chicken was an egg’s idea for getting more eggs.>> So, far from being outside the mainstream of modern thinking, McLuhan is clearly within the flow of contemporary currents of thought. His theories have particularly found confirmation in brain hemisphere research, and he has used the unsolicited contacts with prominent researchers in that field as a springboard for further development of his ideas in Laws of Media.”
The question that is swirling around in my mind is whether or not Dawkins was influenced by McLuhan?
Please comment – Bob Logan
Blog de Octavio Islas 