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The author ponders on differences between the organisation of the sensorium – defined as a sensory apparatus functioning as a complex operational system impacted by culture and, at the same time, one that creates culture. A presentation of diverse meanings ascribed to particular senses in different societies and of heretofore pertinent research, which makes it possible to define culture as an entity in all of its aspects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents the author's reflections of the years 1938-1941 when he and the late Marshall McLuhan were student and instructor, respectively, at Saint Louis University, focusing on McLuhan's teaching of the Cambridge version of the New Criticism, which applied analysis of writers of the past such as Homer, Virgil, and Shakespeare, to comtemporary writers; this approach "changed the pitch and intensity of literary analysis.

Discusses the differences between oral and written language in modern times, focusing on the impact of the mass media on the merging of oral and written literacy, 1970's.

The article analyzes the psychological problem in conceiving the social development. The concept of the people on the society is often derived from the distracting and persistent irrelevancies which drive the human mind to believe that society is developed in human persons and life cycles. People are suggested to view the nation in an open model which is more reactive to historical fact rather in a cyclic model.

Focuses on the speech given by the poet T.S. Eliot in Saint Louis on November 11, 1959 at the centennial of Mary Institute. Reference to his poem 'Burnt Norton'; Personal life of Eliot.

Reflects on the neglect of grammar in the present educational tradition which represents a major cultural attitude. Significance of the lost of the appeal and nerve of grammar; Historical background on grammarians Otto Jespersen and James Harris; Reasons early grammar should have veered consistently toward the written rather than the spoken word.

A reprint of the article "Is Literacy Passe?" by Walter J. Ong which appeared in the November 28, 1959 issue of the "Saturday Review," is presented. It reflects on the communications systems used by preliterate and pre-typographical man, from the oral-and-aural tradition and the spread of the alphabet to the invention of the printing press. The overhaul of grammar and the transformation away from the typographical and toward an oral-and-aural culture are also discussed.