The Temper of Our Time (1967)
Context: The ratio between supervisory and producing personnel is always highest where the intellectuals are in power. In a Communist country it takes half the population to supervise the other half.
“Perhaps the most precious possession of man is his abiding awareness of the Analogy of Proper Proportionality, the key to all metaphysical insight, and perhaps the very condition of consciousness itself. This analogical awareness is constituted of a perpetual play of ratios among ratios. A is to B, what C is to D, which is to say the ratio between A and B, is proportionable to the ratio between C and D, there being a ratio between these ratios, as well, this lively awareness of the most exquisite delicacy depends upon there being no connection whatsoever between the components. If A were linked to B, or C to D, mere logic would take the place of analogical perception, thus one of the penalties paid for literacy and a high visual culture is a strong tendency to encounter all things through a rigorous storyline, as it were. Paradoxically, connected spaces and situations exclude participation, whereas discontinuity affords room for involvement. Visual space is connected and creates detachment or non-involvement. It also tends to exclude the participation of the other senses.”
Source: 1960s, Through the Vanishing Point (1968), p.240
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Marshall McLuhan 416
Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor … 1911–1980Related quotes
Source: An Essay on The Principle of Population (First Edition 1798, unrevised), Chapter I, paragraph 18, lines 1-2
1960s, The Medium is the Message (1967)
Source: Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times (1972), p. 253.
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“Anxiety increases in direct ratio and proportion as man departs from God.”
Source: Peace of Soul (1949), Ch. 2, p. 19
“Solidarity can grow only in inverse ratio to personality.”
Source: The Division of Labor in Society (1893), p. 129 (in 1933 edition)