In effect, Ong implicitly works with this thesis in his massively researched book Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason (Harvard University Press, 1958) - his major exploration of the influence of the Gutenberg printing press that emerged in the mid-1450s. Taking a hint from Ong's massively researched 1958 book, Marshall McLuhan worked up some examples of his own in his sweeping 1962 book The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (University of Toronto Press).
In my estimate, the problem for philosophers, and perhaps also for theologians, with Ong's so-called relationist technology thesis is the role of instrumental efficient causality that he seems to attribute to certain key verbal technologies in influencing and thereby forming ego-consciousness (most notably phonetic alphabetic literacy in ancient Hebrew culture and in ancient Greek culture, and then, later, the Gutenberg printing press that emerged in Europe in the mid-1450s).
Now, as a thought experiment, we can add the word "not" to Ong's statement of what he explicitly refers to as his thesis - thereby creating the antithesis of his thesis. When we do this thought experiment, we see just how cagey Ong's careful wording of his thesis is. Thus, the antithesis would say, "The thesis is that no major developments in culture and consciousness are related, not even in unexpected ways, to the evolution of the word from primary orality to its present state, not even in ways that are varied and complex, with cause and effect often difficult to distinguish." In short, this short thought experiment shows that Ong's thesis would require his strictly logical opponents to hold a rather extreme position.
Ah, but Ong's explicit statement that "cause and effect [are] often difficult to distinguish" could also be construed to mean that he is, in effect, not encouraging either my claim here about instrumental efficient causality regarding phonetic alphabetic literacy in ancient Hebrew and ancient Greek cultures, and also regarding the Gutenberg printing press that emerged in Europe in the mid-1450s, on the one hand, and, on the other, Marshall McLuhan's claims about formal cause and the effects he claims for formal cause. In short, Ong may be distancing himself from all possible uses of Aristotle's tetrad of four causes, at least with reference to trying to account for significant changes in communications media. He may be judicious and wise to discourage such thought experiments regarding changes involved in communications media. Perhaps it is best not to try to sort out cause and effect regarding changes involved in communications media. (The aural-to-visual shift that Ong in Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason [1958] himself notes "see the "Index" (p. 396) for specific page references] does not involve any explicit claims about Aristotle's tetrad of four causes.)
Ong's mature thought from the 1950s onward is phenomenological and personalist in cast. I honor both in the subtitle of my book about his life and eleven of his books and selected articles, Walter Ong's Contributions to Cultural Studies: The Phenomenology of the Word and I-Thou Communication, 2nd ed. (New York: Hampton Press, 2015; 1st ed., 2000; for specific page references to Marshall McLuhan, see the "Index" [p. 313]).
I have discussed Ong's philosophical thought in my lengthy OEN article "Walter J. Ong's Philosophical Thought" (dated September 20, 2020): Click Here
For a bibliography of Ong's 400 or so distinct publications (not counting translations or reprintings as distinct publications), see Thomas M. Walsh's "Walter J. Ong, S.J.: A bibliography 1929-2006" in the anthology Language, Culture, and Identity: The Legacy of Walter J. Ong, S.J., edited by Sara van den Berg and Thomas M. Walsh (New York: Hampton Press, 2011, pp. 185-245).
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