Ong alerted his former teacher and life-long friend Marshall McLuhan about the significance of the quantification of thought in late medieval logic in his (Ong's) article "Space and Intellect in Renaissance Symbolism" in the short-lived print journal Explorations: Studies in Culture and Communications, volume 4 (February 1955): pp. 95-100. Subsequently Ong published the first complete version of his essay as "System, Space, and Intellect in Renaissance Symbolism" in the print journal Bibliotheque d'Humanisme (Geneva), volume 18 (May 1956): pp. 222-239; Ong reprinted it in his 1962 book The Barbarian Within: And Other Fugitive Essays and Studies (Macmillan, pp. 68-87; for specific page references to the aural-to-visual shift in cognitive processing in our Western cultural history, see the entries on Oral-aural and on Visualism in the "Index" [pp. 290 and 292, respectively]); it is also reprinted in volume three of Ong's Faith and Contexts, edited by Thomas J. Farrell and Paul A. Soukup (Scholars Press, 1995, pp. 9-27).
So, according to Ong, what is the significance of the quantification of thought in late medieval logic? Ong answers this question as follows in the 1956 version of Ong's essay "System, Space, and Intellect in Renaissance Symbolism":
"In this historical perspective, medieval scholastic logic appears as a kind of pre-mathematics, a subtle and unwitting preparation for the large-scale operations in quantitative modes of thinking which will characterize the modern world. In assessing the meaning of [medieval] scholasticism, one must keep in mind an important and astounding fact: in the whole history of the human mind, mathematics and mathematical physics come into their own, in a way which has changed the face of the earth and promises or threatens to change it even more, at only one place and time, that is, in Western Europe immediately after the [medieval] scholastic experience [in short, in print culture]. Elsewhere, no matter how advanced the culture on other scores, and even along mathematical lines, as in the case of the Babylonian, nothing like a real mathematical transformation of thinking takes place - not among the ancient Egyptians or Assyrians or Greeks or Romans, not among the peoples of India nor the Chinese nor the Japanese, not among the Aztecs or Mayas, not in Islam despite the promising beginnings there, any more than among the Tartars or the Avars or the Turks. These people can all now share the common scientific knowledge, but the scientific tradition itself which they share is not a merging of various parallel discoveries made by their various civilizations. It represents a new state of mind. However great contributions other civilizations may hereafter make to the tradition, our scientific world traces its origins back always to seventeenth and sixteenth century Europe [in short, to Copernicus and Galileo], to the place where for some three centuries and more the [medieval] arts course taught in universities and para-university schools had pounded into the heads of youth a study program consisting almost exclusively of a highly quantified logic and a companion physics, both taught on a scale and with an enthusiasm never approximated or even dreamt of in ancient academies" (boldface emphasis here added by me; Ong, 1962, p. 72).
What Ong here refers to as a new state of mind in Western culture undoubtedly contributed to the subsequent rise of modern science, on the one hand, and, on the other, modern capitalism - and, later, the rise of what Pope Francis refers to as the technocratic paradigm of modern Western culture. Pope Francis critiques the technocratic paradigm of Western culture in his 2015 eco-encyclical and in his new 2023 eco-apostolic-exhortation.
Now, for his part, McLuhan acknowledged Ong's various studies of Ramism in his controversial 1962 book The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (University of Toronto Press; for specific page references to Ong's publications about Ramism, see the "Bibliographic Index" in McLuhan's book [pp. 286-287]).
Ong's generous review of McLuhan's controversial 1962 book is reprinted in An Ong Reader: Challenges for Further Inquiry, edited by Thomas J. Farrell and Paul A. Soukup (Hampton Press, 2002, pp. 307-308). Incidentally, if you are entirely new to Ong's work, the most accessible overall introduction to his thought is his most widely read, and most widely translated, book Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (Methuen, 1982). However, the 600-page anthology of his writings in An Ong Reader is the most accessible collection of his own writings.
In any event, after McLuhan died in 1980, by then he was the most widely known academic in the twentieth century - and the most controversial - the somewhat less controversial Ong published the tribute "McLuhan as Teacher: The Future is a Thing of the Past" in the print journal Journal of Communication, volume 31, number 3 (Summer 1981): pp. 129-135. It is reprinted in volume one of Ong's Faith and Contexts, edited by Thomas J. Farrell and Paul A. Soukup (Scholars Press, 1992a, pp. 11-18).
So what exactly had McLuhan, and Ong to a somewhat lesser degree, said that made them controversial? Well, each was a pioneering media ecology theorist who had published a pioneering book about the print culture that had emerged in Western culture after the Gutenberg printing press emerged in Europe in the mid-1450s. Yes, to be sure, the paths of each man's thought had followed somewhat parallel trajectories. But what, exactly, made the somewhat parallel trajectories of their respective work controversial?
I have described both men as pioneering media ecology theorists. Even though there are significant differences in the media ecology accounts each of them set forth - differences that should not be ignored - their common media ecology way of proceeding may be what made each of them controversial.
I have discussed Ong's media ecology way of proceeding to the best of my ability in my somewhat lengthy OEN article "Walter J. Ong's Philosophical Thought" (dated September 20, 2020):
I have surveyed Ong's life and eleven of his books and selected articles in my book Walter Ong's Contributions to Cultural Studies: The Phenomenology of the Word and I-Thou Communication, 2nd ed. (Hampton Press, 2015; 1st ed., 2000) - the first edition of which received the Marshall McLuhan Award for Outstanding Book in Media Ecology, bestowed by the Media Ecology Association in June 2001.
In conclusion, as you might expect, there is some understandable overlap in my discussions of Ong's work in my three articles and six reviews in the new issue of the online journal New Explorations.
However, I individualize my discussions of his work in each of them - and I try to say something about his work in each one that I have not said about his work anywhere else. When I succeed in doing this, I find it deeply gratifying. As long as I can say something new about Ong's work, I Imagine that I will keep writing about his work.
If you have the time and inclination to read one or more of my three articles and six reviews in the new issue of the online journal New Explorations, I hope that you enjoy reading it -- or them.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
