(no subject)
Without upright posture, does man have the capacity for science?
No.
1. A child crawling on his hands and knees not only keeps contact with the ground but is, in his all-fours locomotion, like the quadrupeds, directed toward immediate contact with things. The length-axis of his body coincides with the direction of his motion. With getting up, all this changes. In walking, man moves his body in a parallel transposition, the length-axis of his body at a right angle to the direction of his motion. He finds himself always "confronted" with things. Such remoteness enables him to see things, detached from the immediate contact of grasping and incorporating, in their relation to one another. Seeing is transformed into "looking at." The horizon is widened, removed; the distant becomes momentous, of great import. In the same measure, contact with near things is lost.
and now, in reference to the "freeing up" of the front limbs.
2. Only in relation to action space, then, will the hand be understood as a sensory organ. It is true that the microscope does not reveal any tactile receivers specific to the skin of the hands. While motion is indispensable for tactile impressions, the impression-guided fingers function as working tools. This intimate interpenetration of sensorium and motorium is well expressed in such worlds as "handling," which combines the transitive and intransitive meanings of touching into one. The gnostic function of touching depends on the upright posture, which through its permanent distances produces a hiatus in the immediateness of contact.
I'm coming to Los Angeles in the early hours of Friday morning. I'll be with about six friends from St. John's College, because we're driving in together.
No.
1. A child crawling on his hands and knees not only keeps contact with the ground but is, in his all-fours locomotion, like the quadrupeds, directed toward immediate contact with things. The length-axis of his body coincides with the direction of his motion. With getting up, all this changes. In walking, man moves his body in a parallel transposition, the length-axis of his body at a right angle to the direction of his motion. He finds himself always "confronted" with things. Such remoteness enables him to see things, detached from the immediate contact of grasping and incorporating, in their relation to one another. Seeing is transformed into "looking at." The horizon is widened, removed; the distant becomes momentous, of great import. In the same measure, contact with near things is lost.
and now, in reference to the "freeing up" of the front limbs.
2. Only in relation to action space, then, will the hand be understood as a sensory organ. It is true that the microscope does not reveal any tactile receivers specific to the skin of the hands. While motion is indispensable for tactile impressions, the impression-guided fingers function as working tools. This intimate interpenetration of sensorium and motorium is well expressed in such worlds as "handling," which combines the transitive and intransitive meanings of touching into one. The gnostic function of touching depends on the upright posture, which through its permanent distances produces a hiatus in the immediateness of contact.
I'm coming to Los Angeles in the early hours of Friday morning. I'll be with about six friends from St. John's College, because we're driving in together.