The German sculptor and theorist whose The Problem of Form Bob cannot name until Cameron supplies it, and who then becomes the first name in the tactility chain the session reconstructs. His significance here is entirely positional: McLuhan's 1961 sentence credits Wölfflin with teaching "the Hildebrand stress on visual forms as haptic," which makes Hildebrand the point the whole lineage down to Carpenter runs from. The page holds Bob's evidence that the tactile vocabulary had a vogue in art criticism before McLuhan inherited it. New to it — start with dialogue 70.
Across the dialogues
Enters as the head of the tactility chain — the name Bob gropes for all evening and finally fixes, giving the sequence its starting point
The question that opens the chain — Bob has the shape of the lineage before he has its first name, and needs Cameron to fill it in.
"who's the guy, the art critic who did The Problem of Form back then at the time of Wölfflin?"
The recovery happens live and by halves, which is why the genealogy reads as a joint reconstruction rather than either man's prior possession of it.
"I think it starts with H. Oh, Hildebrand."
Bob's evidence that the term was explicit, not implied — tactility was already a named category in art criticism, not something McLuhan had to invent.
"With Hildebrand, he has a chapter, I think he even has the word tactile in the chapter titles."
The claim that reframes McLuhan's originality — tactility was a period discovery shared across art criticism, and McLuhan's contribution was to carry it out of art and into media.
"and that's another guy discovering this tactile factor. The word had a bit of vogue in the teens, I guess, right?"
Connections
Cameron rejects Bob's teacher-pupil reading — the two were contemporaries, though on tactility Hildebrand may have arrived first.
McLuhan's 1961 sentence has Wölfflin teaching "the Hildebrand stress on visual forms as haptic" — Hildebrand is the source the chain begins from.