Naturally Equanimous
摘要
Knowledge, as I have been suggesting, is performative, a function of ongoing multiplex relationships to the world. According to the humanist geographer Yi-Fu Tuan (1930-2022), “perception is an activity, a reaching out to the world.” “Sense organs,” he adds, “are minimally operative when they are not actively used. Our tactile sense is very delicate but to tell differences in the texture or hardness of surfaces, it is not sufficient to put a finger on them; the finger has to move over them. It is possible to have eyes and not see, ears and not hear” (Topophilia, p. 12). Information about the world depends upon sensory mobility more than it does upon passive sensing, however acute it may be. The German-American phenomenologist and neurologist Erwin Straus summarized it succinctly: “Only a being whose structure affords it the possibility of movement can be a sensing being” (The Primary World of Senses, p. 235). We know to the extent that we “move”—perceptually, intellectually, physically, emotionally, spiritually. Coming to know the world is the felicitous result of our ongoing flexibility.