__NOTOC__ Robert K. Logan (born August 31, 1939), originally trained as a

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...

, is a media ecologist.

Career

He received from

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

a BS in 1961 and a

PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * '' Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic * Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group ** Ph.D. (Ph.D. al ...

in 1965 under the supervision of

Francis E. Low Francis Eugene Low (October 27, 1921 – February 16, 2007) was an American theoretical physicist. He was an Institute Professor at MIT, and served as provost there from 1980 to 1985. He was a member of the influential JASON Defense Advisory Grou ...

. After two post-doctoral appointments as a research associate at the

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Un ...

(1965-7) and the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution ...

(1967-8), he became a physics professor in 1968 at Toronto until his retirement in 2005. He is now professor emeritus."Robert K. Logan"

faculty page. He is a fellow of St. Michael's College,

, the

Origins Institute The Origins Institute (OI) is an interdisciplinary science research institute at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. It began its operations as an institute on July 1, 2004. The OI's vision is to promote origins research that addresses funda ...

McMaster University McMaster University (McMaster or Mac) is a public research university in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The main McMaster campus is on of land near the residential neighbourhoods of Ainslie Wood and Westdale, adjacent to the Royal Botanical Ga ...

and Institute of Biocomplexity and Informatics at the

University of Calgary The University of Calgary (U of C or UCalgary) is a public research university located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The University of Calgary started in 1944 as the Calgary branch of the University of Alberta, founded in 1908, prior to being ins ...

. While active at the

, in addition to math-based physics courses he taught an interdisciplinary course – ''The Poetry of Physics'' – which led to his collaboration with

Marshall McLuhan Herbert Marshall McLuhan (July 21, 1911 – December 31, 1980) was a Canadian philosopher whose work is among the cornerstones of the study of media theory. He studied at the University of Manitoba and the University of Cambridge. He began his ...

, and his research in media ecology and the evolution of language. His best known works are ''The Alphabet Effect'' – based on a paper Logan co-authored with McLuhan – which develops the hypothesis that the

alphabet An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syllab ...

, codified law, monotheism, abstract science and deductive logic form an autocatalytic set of ideas that developed uniquely between 2000 BC and 500 BC between the Tigris-Euphrates river system and the

Aegean Sea The Aegean Sea ; tr, Ege Denizi ( Greek: Αιγαίο Πέλαγος: "Egéo Pélagos", Turkish: "Ege Denizi" or "Adalar Denizi") is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea between Europe and Asia. It is located between the Balkans ...

; ''The Sixth Language: Learning a Living in the Internet Age'' which deals with the hypothesis that speech, writing, math, science, computing and the Internet form an evolutionary chain of languages; ''The Extended Mind: The Emergence of Language, the Human Mind and Culture'' develops a model for the

origin of language The origin of language (spoken and signed, as well as language-related technological systems such as writing), its relationship with human evolution, and its consequences have been subjects of study for centuries. Scholars wishing to study th ...

, the human mind and culture using ideas from ''The Sixth Language''. Logan has also been Chief Scientist at Strategic Innovation Lab at

OCAD University Ontario College of Art & Design University, commonly known as OCAD University or OCAD, is a public art university located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The university's main campus is spread throughout several buildings and facilities within d ...

in Toronto, Ontario since 2007, and a senior fellow at the university's Strategic Innovation Lab (sLab)."Robert K. Logan"
faculty page at

Part of his work at OCAD involved a language-based project to change popular attitudes about the environment, which resulted in the coining of the word " depletist". In September 2010, Logan founded the McLuhan Legacy Network, a non-profit organization based in Toronto dedicated to renewing the legacy of Marshall McLuhan and celebrating the centenary of McLuhan's birth in 2011. Logan's work is influenced by

Harold Innis Harold Adams Innis (November 5, 1894 – November 9, 1952) was a Canadian professor of political economy at the University of Toronto and the author of seminal works on media, communication theory, and Canadian economic history. He helped deve ...

Alvin Toffler Alvin Eugene Toffler (October 4, 1928 – June 27, 2016) was an American writer, futurist, and businessman known for his works discussing modern technologies, including the digital revolution and the communication revolution, with emphasis on t ...

Stuart Kauffman Stuart Alan Kauffman (born September 28, 1939) is an American medical doctor, theoretical biologist, and complex systems researcher who studies the origin of life on Earth. He was a professor at the University of Chicago, University of Pennsylv ...

and

Terrence Deacon Terrence William Deacon (born 1950) is an American neuroanthropologist (Ph.D. in Biological Anthropology, Harvard University 1984). He taught at Harvard for eight years, relocated to Boston University in 1992, and is currently Professor of Anth ...

Awards and honors

''The Sixth Language'' won the Suzanne K. Langer Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Symbolic Form in 2000 from the Media Ecology Association, and in June 2011 Logan received the Walter J. Ong Award for Career Achievement in Scholarship from the same Association."The 2011 MEA Awards"
on the Media Ecology Association website

Books

*(ed.) ''The Way Ahead for Canada''. (1977)

Lester and Orpen Lester & Orpen Dennys was a Canadian book publishing company based in Toronto, originally as Lester & Orpen. It operated as a publisher from 1973 to 1991. Writers who published with the company included Graham Greene, P.D. James, June Callwood, ...

. *with Steven.D. Berkowitz (eds.) ''Canada’s Third Option''. (1978)

MacMillan Canada Macmillan of Canada was a Canadian publishing house. The company was founded in 1905 as the Canadian arm of the English publisher Macmillan. At that time it was known as the "Macmillan Company of Canada Ltd." In the course of its existence the n ...

. *''The Fifth Language: Learning a Living in the Computer Age''. (1997) Stoddart Publishing. *with Louis W. Stokes. ''Collaborate to Compete: Driving Profitability in the Knowledge Economy'' (2004)

John Wiley & Sons John Wiley & Sons, Inc., commonly known as Wiley (), is an American multinational publishing company founded in 1807 that focuses on academic publishing and instructional materials. The company produces books, journals, and encyclopedias, i ...

(Mandarin Edition ). *''The Alphabet Effect''. (2004) Hampton Press. *''The Sixth Language''. (2004) Blackburn Press. *"The Extended Mind Model of the Origin of Language and Culture" in Gontier, Nathalie; Van Bendegem, Jean Paul; and Aerts, Diederik (eds.)'' Evolutionary Epistemology, Language and Culture''. (2005)

Springer Publishing Springer Publishing Company is an American publishing company of academic journals and books, focusing on the fields of nursing, gerontology, psychology, social work, counseling, public health, and rehabilitation (neuropsychology). It was e ...

. *''The Extended Mind: The Emergence of Language, the Human Mind and Culture''. (2007)

University of Toronto Press The University of Toronto Press is a Canadian university press founded in 1901. Although it was founded in 1901, the press did not actually publish any books until 1911. The press originally printed only examination books and the university cale ...

. *''Understanding New Media: Extending Marshall McLuhan''. (2010) Peter Lang Publishing. *''The Poetry of Physics and the Physics of Poetry''. (2010)

World Scientific Publishing World Scientific Publishing is an academic publisher of scientific, technical, and medical books and journals headquartered in Singapore. The company was founded in 1981. It publishes about 600 books annually, along with 135 journals in various f ...

. *''McLuhan Misunderstood: Setting the Record Straight''. (2013) The Key Publishing House. *''What Is Information?: Propagating Organization in the Biosphere, Symbolosphere, Technosphere and Econosphere''. (2014) *with Marshall McLuhan. ''The Future of the Library: From Electric Media to Digital Media''. (2016) Peter Lang Publishing.

References

External links

Profile on University of Toronto website
for Strategic Innovation Lab
Figure/Ground interview with Robert K. Logan. August 18th, 2010Lecture on The Origin and Evolution of LanguageAcademia.edu profileResearchgate.net profile
{{DEFAULTSORT:Logan, Robert K. 1939 births Living people Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni University of Toronto faculty 21st-century American physicists