Читать книгу Empire and Communications - Harold Adams Innis - Страница 3

Table of Contents

Top

In this preface I must express my thanks to Sir Reginald Coupland for his kindness in extending to me an invitation to deliver the Beit lectures on Imperial economic history. I am grateful to him for his consistent encouragement. To his name I must add those of Professor W. K. Hancock, Sir Henry Clay, and Humphrey Sumner, Warden of All Souls College, for innumerable kindnesses. I have been greatly encouraged also by Professor and Mrs. John U. Nef and the Committee on Social Thought and Professor F. H. Knight of the University of Chicago. An interest in the general problem was stimulated by the late Professor C. N. Cochrane and the late Professor E. T. Owen. Professor Grant Robertson, Professor W. T. Easterbrook, Mr. R. H. Fleming, and Mr. D. Q. Innis have read the manuscript in whole or in part. I am under heavy obligations to Mr. W. S. Wallace and his staff in the library of the University of Toronto and to my colleagues in the department of political economy.

No one can be oblivious to the work of Kroeber, Mead, Marx, Mosca, Pareto, Sorokin, Spengler, Toynbee, Veblen, and others in suggesting the significance of communication to modern civilization. I have attempted to work out its implications in a more specific fashion and to suggest the background of their volumes. The twentieth century has been conspicuous for extended publications on civilization which in themselves reflect a type of civilization. It is suggested that all written works, including this one, have dangerous implications to the vitality of an oral tradition and to the health of a civilization, particularly if they thwart the interest of a people in culture and, following Aristotle, the cathartic effects of culture. ‘It is written but I say unto you’ is a powerful directive to Western civilization.

H. A. I.