British mathematician and philosopher, author of Science and the Modern World (1925) and the "fallacy of misplaced concreteness." Bob uses Whitehead as the inverse of McLuhan: where Whitehead warned against mistaking abstractions for particulars, McLuhan works the other way — particulars doing the work of fundamental specification.
Across the dialogues
The inverted Whitehead — misplaced concreteness run backwards, and why McLuhan's readers go wrong
McLuhan inverts Whitehead's "fallacy of misplaced concreteness" — not abstractions mistaken for particulars, but particulars carrying the weight of abstractions.
"So he has the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. And then with McLuhan, it is the opposite of Whitehead. Whitehead saw abstractions misplaced as particulars. But with McLuhan, it's particulars misplaced as abstractions."
The inversion explains how McLuhan's readers go wrong — taking "the book" or "the alphabet" as his concrete subject, when he means what makes them possible.
"Or the book did this, or the alphabet did this."
Connections
McLuhan inverts Whitehead's "fallacy of misplaced concreteness" — particulars doing the work of abstractions, not abstractions mistaken for particulars.