Suspended Judgement

To I.A. Richards,
July 12, 1968



Dear Dr. Richards:


I want to mention at once my gratification at your kindly reference to me on page 63 of So Much Nearer [A note reads: "This immensely important topic [the principle of complementarity] - publicized recently by Marshall Mcluhan - is discussed at lenght in my "Toward a More Synoptic View" in Speculaitve Instruments"]. Naturally, I owe you an enormous debt since Cambridge days. I also owe a great deal to S[amuel] T[aylor] C[oleridge]. You may know that Dwight Culler in The Imperial Intellect discusses how Newman's Idea of a University derives from Coleridge's idea of an encyclopedia. Bartlett's Remembering, long out of print, makes such a natural introduction to your own work that I wish you could encourage somebody to reissue it with an introduction by yourself. [Sir Frederick Charles Bartlett, Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology]. Using Coleridge's principel that the most effective approach to anyone's knowledge is via his ignorance, would you agree that Plato was quiet unaware of the imperceptible environment of "visual space" created for the first time in humna history by the phonetic alphabet? This concerns your Plato citation on page three. Do you think it indicates that Plato regarded phonetic letters as giving th eye dominance over the other senses for the first time. thus creating a new environment? As the evolutionary process has shifted from biology to technology in the electric age, I am fasicnated by your suggestion (on page three) of the possibility of a non-verbal language of macroscopic gesticulation, an interface of entire cultures. Is it your impression that Red China expects to attain the effects of Western literacy in their educational program? Naturally, the iconic and tactile quality of the Chinese written character keeps the Chinese entirely unacquainted with visual and continuous or connected space. Your wonderful word, "feedforward", suggests to me the principle of the probe, the technique of the "suspended judgement", which has been called the greatest discovery of the 20th century.



Sincerely yours, Marshall McLuhan