Texts:RMcC/My Lingo 2025: Difference between revisions

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<h3>Vital (as distinct from the mechanical)</h3>

"Vital" is an adjective qualifying whatever pertains to the initiation and control of activity by living forms, as distinct from what the external operation of material causes initiates and determines. The familiar contrast between the natural sciences and the human sciences, with the former relying on causal explanation and the latter on cycles of interpretation, is closely related to the distinction advanced here between the mechanical and the vital. In both cases, the contrast illuminates the difference between the causal determination of factual states and the meaningful interpretation of significant happenings. The distinction drawn by the polarity of the mechanical and the vital may be less problematic than that between the natural and the human, however.

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~~1. See Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1964, 1994) passim, esp. pp. 7-21.~~

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 <h3>Vital (as distinct from the mechanical)</h3>
 "Vital" is an adjective qualifying whatever pertains to the initiation and control of activity by living forms, as distinct from what the external operation of material causes initiates and determines. The familiar contrast between the natural sciences and the human sciences, with the former relying on causal explanation and the latter on cycles of interpretation, is closely related to the distinction advanced here between the mechanical and the vital. In both cases, the contrast illuminates the difference between the causal determination of factual states and the meaningful interpretation of significant happenings. The distinction drawn by the polarity of the mechanical and the vital may be less problematic than that between the natural and the human, however.
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-. See Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1964, 1994) passim, esp. pp. 7-21.
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