Austrian-Canadian endocrinologist of stress and homeostasis, long based in Montréal. In this series he surfaces as one of the two scientific sources — with Adolphe Jonas — behind McLuhan's account of media "numbing." Cameron, "doing some work on Selye lately," brings him in through Selye's article in the first Explorations (1953) and the endocrine "communication system" of hormones. New to it — start with dialogue 37.
Across the dialogues
Enters as the physiology behind McLuhan's "numbing" — the endocrinologist of stress and homeostasis, his hormone "communication system" and benzene-ring chemistry drawn in beside Adolphe Jonas as the science McLuhan built auto-amputation on
Selye's relevance staked out — endocrinology studies a bodily "communication system" of hormones rather than nerves, so the physiologist of stress reads, in Cameron's hands, as a media theorist of the organism.
"And endocrinology is concerned with the organics of the communication system,"
The chemistry that hooks Selye to the series — hormones rest on the benzene ring's "six carbon atoms," letting Bob tie Selye's endocrinology to "iON chemistry" and the number-six architecture of his bodies.
"And the basis of hormones is the benzene ring."
Selye named as the key to McLuhan's hardest problem — why humans are numbed by their own extensions, the thing McLuhan said "nobody has explained" and then explained in Understanding Media "based on Selye."
"Hans Selye is supremely important."
Moved from McLuhan's physiology of numbing to the fourth term of a historical series — the stress worldview named as the body image proper to field theory, the phase after humors, pump, and chemistry factory
Selye given a periodizing role rather than a physiological one — his stress model is what the body becomes once physics stops being mechanical, the fourth term in a series driven by media.
"But the rise of field theory in physics now has its medical counterpart in Dr. Hans Selye's worldview."
The debt raised from metaphor to method — both men begin from structures already in place and read what follows as effects, which is the shape of pattern recognition itself.
"McLuhan's view of consciousness is either taken from Selye or at least is consonant with Selye. Because both start with pre-existing structures and then they understand what they're looking at."
The identification that collapses the parallel into a synonymy — if stress just is mediation, Selye was doing media study in physiology without the vocabulary for it.
"Stress is actually another word for medium."
Connections
Selye's stress physiology is the basis McLuhan gave, in Understanding Media, for why humans are "numbed" by their own extensions.
With Adolphe Jonas's book on irritation and counter-irritation, Selye supplies the two-source account of auto-amputation.