ABSTRACT
McLuhan's work, with its literary echo of Canada's self-consciously synthetic cultural environment constitutes a unique reflection on how nature is related to culture, namely, via technological mediation. This chapter discusses the types of causal analysis deployed in McLuhan's tetrad. Moreover, its intrinsic final causality, of offering support to what is placed on top of it (such as meals, or board games, or study materials), is intrinsic to the table whose very form is conceived with a view to offering such support. McLuhan's philosophy implicitly overcomes the unresolved dualisms of both ancient Greek philosophy and modern semiological thought. Just as the Canadian Constitution bridges what others might see as unbridgeable dualisms, so McLuhan's philosophy transcends technological tribalism and its concomitant ripeness for tyranny. McLuhan is aware not just of the promise and peril of formal causality, but also the promise and peril of the reversals that happen according to the nature of final causality.
