Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology

Volume 31 Number 2 Article 1

7-1-2020

Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology Vol. 31, No. 2

Kansas State University. Architecture Department

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Besides “Place and COVID-19,” “Items of interest,” and “citations received,” this issue includes the following items: An “in memoriam” for architect and sacred geometer Keith Critchlow, who died in London in April; A “book note” on philosopher Dermot Moran’s study, Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (2010); A “book note” on philosopher Ingrid Leman Stefanovic’s The Wonder of Water (2020), an edited collection examining how human experience relates to decisions about water; Torontonian Robert Fabian’s update on downtown neighborhood planning in his city (“A New Urban Place”); Philosopher John Russon’s exploration of the lived ambiguity of travelling to a foreign place (“The Border at the Heart of Human Life”); Independent researcher Stephen Wood’s discussion of two contrasting modes of science teaching—what he calls “knowledge-based learning” vs. “understanding- based learning” (“An Understanding-Grounded Approach to Science Education”)’; Science educator Henri Bortoft’s explication of Goethe’s proto-phenomenology of nature as one example of a science of wholeness (originally published as four separate essays in the last four EAP issues and now integrated into one) (“Seeing and Understanding Holistically: Goethean Science and the Wholeness of Nature”).

Recommended Citation Kansas State University. Architecture Department (2020) "Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology Vol. 31, No. 2," Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology: Vol. 31: No. 2.

This Full Issue is brought to you for free and open access by New Prairie Press. It has been accepted for inclusion in Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology by an authorized administrator of New Prairie Press. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology, Vol. 31 [2020], No. Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology

Vol. 31 ▪ No. 2 ISSN 1083–9194 Summer/Fall ▪ 2020

his EAP completes 31 years and includes “items of interest” and “citations received.” Archi- T tect and sacred geometer Keith Critchlow died in London in April; see an “in memoriam” on p. 4. Note the flower photographs from his last book—The Hid- den Geometry of Flowers (2011)—right. We include two “book notes,” the first focusing on philosopher Dermot Moran’s study, Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenome- nology (2010). We highlight philosopher Ingrid Leman Stefanovic’s The Wonder of Water (2020), an edited collection ex- amining how human experience relates to decisions about water. This EAP includes four essays. Toronto- nian Robert Fabian provides an update on downtown neighborhood planning in his city. Second, philosopher John Russon explores the ambiguity of travelling to a foreign place. Third, independent re- searcher Stephen Wood writes about two contrasting modes of science teaching— what he calls “knowledge-based learning” vs. “understanding-based learning.” Some readers will remember that, in the last four EAP issues, we have run a series of essays on Goethean science by the late science educator Henri Bortoft. Several readers requested that we integrate the four entries into one, which we have done in this issue. By far this is the longest essay EAP has ever run; we are honored to in- clude it because Bortoft’s work offers an unusual new manner of understanding, grounded in “authentic wholeness.” We thank Jacqueline Bortoft for allowing us to include the full essay here.

Right: Photographs from Keith Critch- low’s The Hidden Geometry of Flowers (2011, p. 181). These flowers, representing “five-ness” geometrically, are among the most common of British wildflowers. See the “in memoriam” for Critchlow on p. 4. ISSN: 1083-9194 1 Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology, Vol. 31 [2020], No.

Place and COVID-19 Doctors diagnose through screens; myself off my phone, I’ve never spent therapists are on speaker phones; so much time on it. As we continue to be threatened by the friends are on FaceTime and nowhere This is not so far, it seems to me, a pandemic, one wonders whether and how else. Evolving media technologies that revolutionary moment for change away the human relationship with place will were slowly gaining speed have been from our recent past. At least not yet. change. As phenomenologist Maurice suddenly sucked from the future into It’s more like a fast-forward of existing Merleau-Ponty emphasized, intercorpore- the present…. trends, a speeding up of social atomiza- ality—i.e., human bodies together in phys- The struggle of small, local retail tion, even as the cultural wreckage re- ical space—is an integral aspect of human stores, already pummeled by Amazon, mains. being. How this key social need is to be re- gets more intense and doomed each Perhaps this will in turn prompt a re- integrated via social distancing and volun- day. And they are not just economic action and help us restore the human to tary isolation is a difficult question that units: They’re social ones. They’re our world. But humans adjust, and this may or may not find a workable answer. where we see neighbors and strangers time we have had to adjust very One of the most astute commentators on and friends. quickly. The tools we have used to COVID-19 is Andrew Sullivan, former The collective human experience of keep going in this era will surely re- blogger and columnist for New York Mag- a football or basketball game cannot be main in our hands—we will get used to azine. His recent takes on the pandemic replicated in an empty stadium; the co- them, and, in turn, we will get attached have been especially perceptive and, be- median cannot bring people together to them. Insofar as they have made low, we reproduce a portion of the NYM around a joke that ends in silence; the businesses more efficient, or our own column he wrote for Friday, May 15, 2020. dates we once had—for a play or a lives simpler, they’ll stick. Sullivan lives in Washington, D.C. movie or a concert—have had to end. The quiet out there that seemed so In a crisis of loneliness, we have some- shocking only a month ago now seems An accelerating how managed to make life lonelier much more familiar. What we needed, still. in some ways, for our collective mental social atomization? The restaurants that have helped re- health, was a catalyst for greater physi- None of us has any solid notion yet of generate neighborhoods and sustain cal socialization, more human contact, quite how transformative our current new communities are being culled at a and more meaningful community. plague will be…. But one thing really terrifying rate. The bars where we What we’re getting, I fear, is the oppo- does seem clear. All the trends in the flirted; the coffee shops where we site. culture that have led us to withdraw worked and chatted; the gyms where physically from one another, to live in we recognized familiar faces: These an online space, to replace real life are all in suspension, underlining mo- Items of interest with virtual existence: These shifts dernity’s already dehumanizing soli- The editors of Phenomenology + Practice have all been artificially accelerated. tude. are producing a special issue entitled The essential socializing mecha- Even family life, which is an essen- “Practices of Phenomenological and Artis- nisms of school and college, from kin- tial base for so much of our social ac- tic Research.” The prospectus reads that dergarten onward, have evaporated tivity, can’t play the role it should. the aim is to move “beyond traditional overnight. Religious practice, for so Packing everyone into the same space views of the relationships between art and long a communal and physical thing, is all day and night, with no outlet for phenomenology by considering both as suspended in midair, the sacraments others, is a recipe for marital failure fields of research, or more specifically, as withheld, the rituals that bind us to- and family suffocation. The abuse of ways of researching through phenomena.” gether as Christians or Jews or Mus- spouses and children this crisis has en- The focus is “research practices developed lims and connect us to the past aban- abled will echo into the future. through the influence, combination or even doned. Extramarital sex has gone com- hybridization of phenomenological and ar- Workplaces, our other major forum pletely virtual—an ephemeral series of tistic approaches.” Contacts: info@alex- for socialization, have disappeared into online flirtations and porn fantasies. arteaga.ne; [email protected]. thin air, as Zoom meetings proliferate, We barely even acknowledge one an- and we live in a Brady Bunch square other in supermarkets, our faces The Journal of Civic Architecture is a set onscreen. Public transport that masked, our hands in gloves, our dis- peer-reviewed effort presenting creative forced us to interact with one another tance nervously kept. Social media— work “oriented toward city life.” One focus daily continues for essential workers— the addictive, distractive habit we were is “creative life in the city, in the everyday but in a far more attenuated way for trying to get some handle on—is now world of work and human being….” The most white-collar and affluent Ameri- the only real-time socialization we journal is published by London’s Ca- cans, further dividing classes. have. After some success at weaning nalside Press. www.canalsidepress.com.

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Citations received In this edited collection, a winemaker ronment to the urban landscape.” The em- (Patternson) and wine educator (Buechsen- phasis is “phenomenological thinking Patrick Lynch, 2017. Civic stein) assemble a wide-ranging set of read- [that] presents fine-grained ethnographies Ground: Rhythmic Spatiality ings arguing for and against the reality of of the practices of everyday life in Lon- and the Communicative terroir. The following sidebar includes the don.” The ten chapters focus on residential opening passage from their introduction. and public places. Entries include: Movement between Architec- “Change and continuity in a central Lon- ture, Sculpture and Site. Lon- The earthly link in wine don street” (Ilaria Pulini); “Towards a don: Artifice Books. The notion of terrior is at the heart of phenomenology of the concrete mega- what makes wine special. No other structure: Space and perception at the This British architect criticizes the conven- foodstuff, no other agricultural com- Brunswick Centre, London” (Clare tional modernist comparison of buildings modity, grips the human imagination Melhuish); “Isolation: A walk through a with sculptures and instead argues for an with such immeasurable force as a London estate” (Dave Yates); “Liminality understanding grounded in “rhythmic spa- great wine from a great growing area. and the carnivalesque in Smithfield An- tiality,” which situates the designed thing When you taste a great wine, it tiques Market”; “Holland Park: An elite in relation to a shifting physical setting and seems inevitable that a connection ex- London landscape” (Christopher Tilley); civic context. This book is complemented ists between those inimitable flavors and “Observation and selection: Objects by an earlier edited collection entitled and the particulars of that place—the and meaning in the Bermondsey Antique Memesis (Artifice Books, 2015); this ear- soil, the climate, the elevation, the as- Market” (Dave Yates). lier volume include entries by Lynch, Al- pect, the parcel’s unique position on The following sidebar highlights selec- exandra Stara, David Grandorge, Peter the hill or in the vale. tions from Tilley’s Preface. Carl, and Laura Evans. No other connection between food Another way of telling James M. Magrini, 2019. Ethi- and place has inspired as extensive a body of literature as the earthly link in This book aims at least partially, and in cal Responses to Nature’s wine. Many agricultural products ex- an exploratory way, fill two gaps in the Call: Reticent Imperatives. hibit some degree of regional and sub- literature: (a) the paucity of thick eth- NY: Taylor & Francis. species variation, but since wine in- nographic description of place in Lon- volves a dramatic transformation of don; and (b) discussion of the material This philosopher argues “for a renewed raw grapes through fermentation, the significance of the places forming Lon- view of objects and nature” and “considers lingering pedigree of origin is all the don’s urban landscape in relation to how it is possible to understand our ethical more remarkable. everyday life. Filling them amounts to duties—in the form of ethical intuitional- Wine is unique, and terrior is the “another way of telling” about the city, ism—to nature and the planet by listening reason. The Greeks and Romans had the subtitle of this book…. to and releasing ourselves over to the call wine gods; there is no record of any Each chapter discusses and analyzes or address of nature.” deity responsible for, say, Vidalia on- a particular place in the city. The ions, tasty as they are (p. 1). places discussed … were chosen to Tim Patterson & John Buech- represent a wide a range of different senstein, eds., 2018. Wine places as was possible in the scope of a and Place: A Terroir Reader, Christopher Tilley, ed., 2019. short book. The individual discussions range from streets to housing estates to Berkeley: Univ. of California London’s Urban Landscape: markets and parks, from living on a Press. Another Way of Telling. Lon- houseboat to the rhythms of a taxi don: Univ. College London rank, to the material politics of graffiti In studies of “sense of place,” one of the Press. and street art (pp. xiii–xiv). most intriguing and applicable notions is the French terroir—the claim that the In the field of anthropology, Christopher unique quality of a particular wine is a Tilley is perhaps the foremost advocate of product of its place qualities, including nat- a phenomenological perspective. The ural (soil, topography, drainage, weather, chapters in this volume are said to “stress and climate) and human aspects (the care the significance of place and the built envi- of vineyards and the craft of winemakers).

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ISSN: 1083-9194 3 Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology, Vol. 31 [2020], No. In Memoriam: Keith Critchlow (1923–2020)

rchitect and sacred geometer The Prince Charles’ Institute of Architec- The hidden geometry of Keith Critchlow died on ture in 1992–1993, where Critchlow was April 8, 2020, in Kingston- director of research. flowers Upon-Thames, London. He This institute later became the Prince’s This book, like the flowers them- A selves, speaks primarily in the lan- was 87 years old and a co-founder of the Foundation, within which the School of Temenos Academy, a group focusing on Traditional Arts was housed. Critchlow guage of images. It also follows a education in philosophy and the arts in the was a professor emeritus at VITA and four-layered structure. These can be light of Eastern and Western sacred tradi- served as director for research. He also called points of view. The first looks tions. taught at the Prince’s Foundation for the into the tangible structure of flowers, Critchlow studied at the Summerhill Built Environment in London. the second takes account of the social School and the Royal College of Art. Critchlow was an expert in sacred ar- value flowers have for us. The third Originally trained as a classical painter, chitecture and sacred geometry and concerns the symbolic or cultural use he wrote many books on the lived quali- founded Kairos, a society which studies of flowers. The fourth celebrates the ties of geometry, including Order in and promotes traditional values of art and inspirational effect flowers have on Space (1969), Islamic Pattern as a Cos- science. Critchlow’s architectural work us. All four are integral as well as ex- mological Art (1976), Time Stands Still included the Krishnamurti Study Centre isting within their own separate con- (1979), Islamic Art and Architecture: in England; the Lindisfarne Chapel in texts. System of Geometric Design (1999), and Crestone, Colorado; and The Sri Sathya This is not an ‘easy read’ book that The Hidden Geometry of Flowers: Living Sai Institute of Higher Medical Sciences follows a single flow of reasoning Rhythms Form and Number (2011; see in Puttaparthi, India. from start to finish. On the contrary, it sidebars below and next page). In his memory, we reprint items from is composed of insights as well as Critchlow’s professional posts in- his last major work, The Hidden Geome- outsights, focusing on how we regard cluded lectureship at London’s Architec- try of Flowers (2011). flowers. It is designed to encourage tural Association School of Architecture —David Seamon all who read it to look at flowers in a and professorship at London’s Islamic new way. There are also pauses, dur- Art at the Royal College of Art. He Below: Examples of flowers with nine, ten, ing which the reader is encouraged to founded the School of Visual Islamic and eleven, and twenty-one petals: “Names are turn to the nearest flower and contem- important but here we wish to focus on other Traditional Arts (VITA) in 1984, which plate it and hopefully see it anew. aspects of the flowers” (p. 185). moved from the Royal College of Art to The illustrations are hand-drawn by the author. Geometry can be consid- ered from at least three viewpoints. First, as a technical exercise mostly serving industrialization. Secondly, as a purely mathematical function. Thirdly, and most importantly, as a science of the soul. This has to be per- formed with the human hand and is fundamental to a deeper understand- ing of the Platonic wisdom tradition. Geometry is only fully understood by doing it. None of the ideas here are dog- matic or fixed, but rather an offering for consideration. We have been guided ourselves by the truth of flow- ers, their beauty and what makes them so important to us—maybe they are also our teachers of the time-honored objective truths of number, geometry, harmony, and wholeness (p. 15).

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On the symmetry of flowers the last illustrated in the Daisy family] The Pythagoreans, we assume, first Symmetry must rank highly as one of (pp. 173, 174, 177–78, 181). posited that education should best be the chief mysteries in [life’s] impulse founded in the four unfoldings of for order…. Flowers express a pleth- number. First, pure number becomes ora of beautiful symmetries ranging The importance of geometry arithmetic; second, number in space is geometry; third, number in time is from the twofold to the manifold. The Geometry is a universal, objective considered to be music or harmony; most predominant symmetry, particu- language and is the study of the order fourth, number in space and time be- larly in wildflowers, is fivefold …. in space…. This, in turn, brings us to comes astronomy, cosmology, or There is more than a single way to two most fundamental tools for bring- spherics. measure the geometry of a flower and ing the laws of geometry into experi- We advocate that all might “partici- its petals. Not only does each petal mental consciousness: these are the pate” in the art/science of geometry… have its own characteristic profile and compasses (or dividers) and the We are under the complete guidance curvature, but the ensemble of the straight edge (or square). They are of the movement of the compasses as petals is what we call the flower. This likely the most ancient and revered of well as the rigorousness of following collective geometry includes the total all scientific instruments. They em- the discipline of the straight edge (or symmetry. [For example, there are] body actualities that can express “ab- ruler). With geometry, we “partici- three-petalled flowers such as the solutes” symbolically and directly. pate” in the timeless truths of the Snowdrop, the Tulip, the Iris, and the These two tools guide the human products of “straightness” or “round- Lily…. hand into the realm of objective uni- ness.” Socrates affirmed that geome- Next, there are some very beautiful versality. This is in contrast to what is try was the “art of the ever true” (pp. fourfold flowers [such as] the Clema- called “freehand” drawing, which is 291–92). tis, the Balloon Flower, and the beau- completely subject to the will and tifully fragrant Wallflower…. Next, skill of whosoever’s hand holds the we come to the most frequently oc- pen or pencil. curring symmetry in wildflowers: the “Freehand” work … is totally rele- fivefold or pentagonal symmetry. The vant to the psyche but is of a different list is impressive and includes the order from expressing and experienc- original Dog Rose…, the Buttercup, ing geometric graphics. The word the Herb Robert, the Periwinkle, Bor- “participation” was very popular with age, and soon. the later Platonic philosophers such as Six-ness is found in the Daffodil, Proclus, Iamblichus, and Plotinus. whose flowers fuse into its hexagonal This refers to practices—both theoret- shaft. [Critchlow goes on to highlight ical and operative—where the human examples of seven-ness, eight-ness, concerned becomes the instrument nine-ness, ten-ness, eleven-ness, participating in a higher or superior twelve-ness, and twenty-one-ness— intelligence….

Image, right, above: Critchlow’s drawing of the underlying geometry of the Forget-Me-Not.

Image, right, below, a photograph of one Forget-Me-Not flower with an overlay of its underlying geometry. Critchlow writes: “The geometry of this remarkably proportioned small flower is startling in its conformity to pen- tagonal symmetry. The centre of this flower is a decagon or ten-pointed white star. The parallel white extension [Critchlow has drawn in three of these parallel black lines in the flower’s geometric rendition] can be de- rived from the central star pentagon” (p.226).

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Book Note Dermot Moran, 2012. Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phe- nomenology [Cambridge Introductions to Key Philosophical Texts]. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

f all the phenomenological The Crisis is also, undoubtedly, Hus- Moran, D. (2011). Edmund Husserl’s phenomenol- philosophers writing today, serl’s most influential book, continuing to ogy of habituality and habitus. Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 42(1), 53–76. Dermot Moran, is one of the this day to challenge philosophers reflect- Moran, D. (2014). The ego as substrate of habitual- most knowledgeable, accessi- ing on the meaning of the achievements of ities: Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology of the O habitual self. Phenomenology and Mind, 6, 26– ble, and prolific. His Introduction to Phe- the modern sciences and their transform- nomenology (Moran 2000) is an ap- ative impact on human culture and on the 47. Moran, D. (2015). Between vision and touch: From proachable overview of the history and world as a whole. The Crisis of the Euro- Husserl to Merleau-Ponty. In R. Kearny and B. styles of phenomenology and phenome- pean Sciences is by any measure, a work Treanor, eds. Carnal hermeneutics (pp. 214– nologists. His article-length introductions of extraordinary range, depth and intel- 234). New York: Fordham Univ. Press. to phenomenology offer direct and under- lectual force ( pp. 1–2). Moran, D. (2015). Everydayness, historicity and the world of science: Husserl’s life-world reconsid-

standable venues for newcomers, particu- ered. In L. ‘Učník, I. Chvatík, and A. William, larly researchers who are not philoso- Chapters 1 and 2 of Husserl’s Crisis are eds. The phenomenological critique of mathe- phers (see references below). Two of his an overview of the philosopher’s life and matisation and the question of responsibility most informative writings are review arti- writings, including a thorough history of (107–132). cles that explore the lived body and habit- Crisis’s genesis and publication trajec- tory. Moran then devotes six chapters to uality in phenomenology founder Ed- On phenomenology mond Husserl’s writings (Moran 2011, Crisis’s key themes and arguments, in- The Crisis claims to offer an introduc- 2014). cluding “Galileo’s revolution and the ori- tion to transcendental phenomenol- In Husserl’s Crisis, a volume in Cam- gins of modern science,” “the crisis in ogy, and, of course, Edmund Husserl bridge University Press’ “introductions to psychology,” “Husserl on history,” “Hus- is best known for founding and devel- key philosophical texts,” Moran offers an serl’s problematic conception of the life- oping the new science of phenome- “explanatory and critical introduction” to world,” and “phenomenology as tran- nology, developing an insight into the Husserl’s last work, partly published in scendental philosophy.” intentionality, or directedness, of con- 1936 and today “acknowledged as an en- In his last chapter, Moran discusses the scious experiences that had been pro- during masterpiece” (p. x). In his intro- significance of Crisis today, concluding posed by his teacher Franz Brentano duction, Moran described Crisis as: that, “even in its incomplete and program- matic form, the Crisis is a remarkable and (1838–1917). A disrupted, partially published and ulti- visionary work—a work that analyses the Phenomenology, as developed by mately unfinished project, written when past history of philosophy only in order to Husserl and furthered by his stu- its author was in his late 70s, struggling understand its future mission” (p. 297). dents… and followers… quickly es- with declining health and suffering under Drawn from Moran’s text, the sidebars tablished itself as the dominant philo- the adverse political conditions imposed below highlight Husserl’s understanding sophical approach on the European by the German National Socialist Regime of phenomenology as philosophy, em- continent in the first half of the twen- that had come to power in 1933. bodiment, lifeworld, and natural atti- tieth century. Indeed, phenomenology The Crisis is universally recognized as tude—all crucial concerns for environ- continues to hold its own as a move- his most lucidly written, accessible and mental and architectural phenomenology. ment of international significance, engaging published work, aimed at the both within Continental philosophy general educated reader as an urgent ap- References and also as a specific outlook and peal to address the impending crises— Moran, D. (2000). Introduction to Phenomenology. methodological approach to human London: Routledge. subjectivity in the cognitive and scientific, moral, and existential—of the Moran, D. (2001). Phenomenology. In C. Meister age. Husserl is writing with the authority and J. Beilby, eds. The Routledge companion to health sciences. of a lifetime of practice as a phenomenol- modern Christian thought (pp. 349–363). Lon- Phenomenology may be character- ogist and with a fluidity previously not don: Routledge. ized broadly as the descriptive science Moran, D. (2005) Edmund Husserl: Founder of phe- of consciously lived experiences and found in his tortured prose. There is the nomenology. Cambridge, UK: Polity. strong sense of a philosopher with a mis- Moran, D. (2008). The phenomenological approach: the objects of those experiences, de- sion, a mission to defend the very rele- An introduction. In Lucas Introna, Fernando Il- scribed precisely in the manner in vance of philosophy itself in an era de- harco, and Eric Fay, eds. Phenomenology, organ- which they are experienced (Moran ization and technology (pp. 21–41). Lisbon: Uni- 2012, pp. 3–4). fined both by astonishing scientific and versidade Católica Editora. technological progress and by political barbarism.

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On embodiment (Leiblichkeit) all forms of bodily experience, what “children of the world” (Weltkinder), We cannot leave the discussion of Husserl calls somatology in Ideas III. a term not used in the Crisis itself but pure psychology without discussing The anorexic’s peculiar sense of her frequently found in other works… (p. the theme of lived embodiment, which own body would have to come into 186). is one of Husserl’s great contribu- play here, as well as the experiences tions. Despite being framed in the of athletes or dancers. metaphysical language of the “incar- Empirical psychology, due to its On the obviousness of lifeworld nation (Verkörperung) of souls,” his method, has treated [the lived body] thinking about embodiment or in an objectivist and piecemeal man- and natural attitude “livedbodiliness” is strikingly origi- ner. The manner in which a living Husserl introduces the natural attitude nal…. (p. 129). body is spatio-temporally localized as the commonsense outlook of naïve and is involved in a living relationship realism with which humans of all cul- The live body (Leib) is experienced, with causality differs greatly from the tures and in all periods of history nor- as Husserl puts it, as a series of “I body understood purely as a physical mally engage with the world. People can’s.” I am, as he puts it, an “ego of entity (p. 131). live in a distinctly personal and inter- abilities or capacities” (Ich der Ver- personal social communal world, sur- mögen) I can turn my head and look rounded by other human beings and around, moving my eyes, shifting my within social, historical and cultural upper body. All these bodily move- On the lifeworld groupings. ments belong to and enable percep- [Husserl understands the] lifeworld as Although this is obvious to the or- tion to take place. a horizontal structure, one that in- dinary person in the street, this “obvi- The living body is both literally and cludes contexts, possibilities, tem- ousness” has in the past not been in- figuratively the centre of my experi- poral distantiations which are intui- terrogated by science or by philoso- ences and the means of my perceptual tively experienced and can never be phy. Moreover, there are remarkable encounter with the world. It is an “or- objectified in science. Rather than be- features to this supposed “obvious- gan of perception”; it is experienced ing an extant totality of things, the ness” or “taken-for-grantedness” of as a living, functioning tool, but one lifeworld is actually a “horizon” that our social and communal world. that, in normal situations, does not stretches from indefinite past to indef- First of all, there is the sense of the call attention to itself. It becomes ob- inite future and includes all actualities unity of world, its “tendency to con- trusiveness only if something goes and possibilities of experience and cordance” (Einstimmigheit), that is, to wrong, e.g., I move my head, but my meaningfulness. The lifeworld pro- unfold in consistent, harmonious neck is stiff; I touch something with a vides a living context or “world-hori- ways. There is also the sense of hori- blister on my finger. zon” (Welthorizont) which precisely zon, the manner in which all experi- All forms of ego-relatedness to the makes humans human. ence… is against a backdrop of co-in- world are mediated through my body; Natural life is characterized by tended meanings. There is the sense even abstract thought (consider Ro- Husserl as “mundane” or “worldly.” of a visual and spatial world beyond din’s sculpture The Thinker). I am al- For Husserl, as for Heidegger (whose what is immediately seen, the sense of ways related to things as lifting, car- equivalent concern is “being-in-the- the stability of objects despite the rying, holding, reaching for, standing world”), human beings are beings passing of time, the sense of the conti- back from and so on. who essentially live immersed nuity of experience and personal iden- The body is not a passive centre of (Dahinleben) in a world understood tity across time, and so on. experiences but a locus for action and as a vaguely defined context of mean- The contemporary positive sciences self-directed movement. In this sense, ing and action. Heidegger himself assume (with the Kantians) that the the lived body is never absent from states that it has become common- real world is the world of physical the perceptual field—a point which is place to say that humans require a forces, spatio-temporal objects and so later repeated by Merleau-Ponty…. “surrounding world” or “environ- on. But living humans experience a (p. 130). ment” (Umwelt), but the deeper onto- somewhat different and, for them, no logical meaning of this statement is less real world which has within it This experienced and experiencing not appreciated—to be in a world is such entities as persons, animals, body, Husserl claims, as mediator of an a priori character of human exist- tools, works of art, money and so on. our experienced world, has never ence… Husserl recognizes that all of these been the proper subject of any science Husserl’s version of this claim is to “senses” or meanings are not just en- before phenomenology. Husserl is speak of natural “world-life countered “ready-made” in the world surely right there is no one science (Weltleben), and indeed he character- but are always experienced as already that addresses the lived body as expe- izes humans as essentially belonging unified (pp. 273–74). rienced—such science would include to the world, as being, in his phrase

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ISSN: 1083-9194 7 Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology, Vol. 31 [2020], No.

Book Note Ingrid Leman Stefanovic, ed., 2020. The Wonder of Water: Lived Experience, Policy, and Practice. Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press.

As editor, her aim is to incorporate think- ration, and Non-Human Agency”; phi- ing that highlights “the genuine meaning losophers Trish Glazebrook and Jeff of water in its visceral quality, its vitality Gessas’ “Standing Rock: Water Protec- and its primordiality.” The volume’s con- tors in a Time of Failed Policy”; philoso- tributors are said to: pher Henry Dicks’ “Phenomenology, Water Policy, and the Conception of the move us beyond statistics and calcula- Polis”; and philosopher Robert Muger- tions, helping us to see water differently auer’s “Towards a Complexity Ethics: and behave more discerningly in respect Understanding and Action on Behalf of of water.... [M]ight a deeper, embodied Lifeworld Well-Being.” vision of the wonder of water inspire The sidebars below include passages more throughout policies? Could our from Mueller’s article on past and present built places be more wisely designed if we situations where salmon have been attended to water’s lessons in a more deemed “superfluous and in the way of meaningful way? In recalling the full industry” (p. 58). depth of the lived experience of water, is it possible to rethink the meaning of water Salmon as symbol ethics, a new and growing field of study The dismantling of the two Elwha unto itself? (pp. 3–4). dams [two hydroelectric dams built in Stefanovic organizes the 12 chapters of the Pacific Northwest in the 19th cen- tury; before their construction, the the volume in terms of three major parts: first, the lived experience of water; sec- Elwha River was one of the few rivers s illustrated by her Safeguard- in the contiguous United States to ing Our Common Future ond, the relationship between water and places; and, third, rethinking water pol- house all of the anadromous salmon (2000), philosopher Ingrid and trout species native to the Pacific Leman Stefanovic has been a icy, practice, and ethics. A Part I includes ecologist Stephan Har- Northwest] marks a concrete politi- central figure facilitating research in en- cal act of restoring a landscape, but it vironmental phenomenology. ding’s “Water Gaia: Towards a Scientific Phenomenology of Water”; pedagogue also marks an important sym- In Safeguarding, Stefanovic discussed bolic gesture: the dismantling of the ways to allow our world, especially, the Stephen J. Smith’s “Flow Motions and Kinetic Responsiveness”; philoso- dams has initiated a re-examination of natural world, to become a place sustain- the various peoples’ complicated rela- able and sustaining for both present and pher David Abram’s “Creaturely Migra- tions on a Breathing Planet”; and environ- tionship with the larger living com- future generations. Her aim was to point munity, and salmon are increasingly toward an environmental understanding mental educator Martin Lee Mueller’s “When Salmon Are Deemed Superflu- recognized as being the keystone to that might illuminate the “referential this inter-ethnic work of restoring. whole within which we are situated.” ous: Reflecting on a Struggle of Stories.” Part II includes philosopher Janet They are being recognized as crea- Stefanovic argued that the basis for eth- tures deeply entangled not only with ical actions must shift from an emphasis Donohoe’s “The Place of Water”; philos- opher Irene J. Klaver’s “Engaging the the ecology but also with the mind of on “traditional liberal attitudes and self- the Pacific Rim. Salmon are beings of determined concerns of autonomous indi- Water Monster of Amsterdam: Meander- ing Towards a Fair Urban Riversphere”; flesh, blood, intention, sentience, and viduals” to a recognition that, through the intelligence, but they are also sym- ontological primary of place, “individual Stefanovic’s “Water and the City: To- wards an Ethos of Fluid Urbanism”; and bolic creatures, totemic beings who human beings are fundamentally already nourish the human imagination with emplaced in a complex array of sociocul- philosopher Sarah J. King’s “What We’re Talking about When We’re Talk- insights, metaphors, wonder. tural, economic, technological, regula- The Elwha case symbolizes defi- tory, and environmental relationships.” ing about Water: Race, Imperial Politics, and Ruination in Flint, Michigan.” ance, determination, and also love for The 12 chapters of WONDERS pin- the strange and exuberant otherness of point Stefanovic’s ethical and moral con- Part III includes philosopher Bryan Bannon’s “The Bonding Properties of the salmon. And it symbolizes a striv- cerns in relation to water, the landscapes ing to recreate a more complex, recip- of water, and places associated with wa- Water: Community, Urban River Resto- ter, whether river, bay, sea, or otherwise.

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DOI: 8 Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology, Vol. 31 [2020], No.

rocal, integrated, and beautiful rela- Life wants to live Our mindful bodies are still being tionship between humans and the It bears repeating: Voices that con- drawn toward, called upon, awak- more-than-human world. tinue thinking of salmon as inconven- ened, stirred, and roused by rainstorm, There, as elsewhere across the Pa- ient disturbances to industrial devel- solstice, or autumn moon, by moose cific Northwest, people are asking: opment are not uttering inalienable or beaver or wolf; still salmon radiate What are the needs of the salmon in truths; their claims to legitimacy are a particularly vigorous eloquence and these streams? What are the needs of not unchallengeable. enflame a special kind of awe in us, those rivers, and the many other crea- They may—while conflicts still charging encounters between our tures that depend on salmon flesh for flare up—co-opt such notions as sus- kinds, now as ever, with [a] pro- their lives? tainability or even responsibility but foundly erotic tension.... Further: How can the multi-ethnic they cannot, once and for all, contain These are dynamics worth taking groups of humans inside the many the persistent upwelling of wonder in seriously for that which keeps surging watersheds live in such a way that the encounter with wildness, or block- and leaping and running up against they once again become accomplices ade the spawning, sprouting, birthing, the physical and metaphysical dams of the land, rather than disturbances? and hatching of new life, or obstruct of the human-centered lifeworld is Those are questions one now en- the instant and intuitive recognition of none other than life itself, raucous, counters again and again across kinship between fly fisher and untamable life, wanting to live. Salmon Nation, and the chorus of de- salmon, or seal the countless ways in This may be warning or pledge, de- fiant and devoted voices who chal- which our breathing bodies still re- pending on where our allegiances lie: lenge the anthropocentric story is still spond alertly, and competently, to the Life will not be contained or owned. swelling to a crescendo (pp. 63–64). voices of river, wind, or estuary. Really, it never has been (pp. 72–73).

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ISSN: 1083-9194 9 Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology, Vol. 31 [2020], No. A New Urban Place

Robert Fabian

Fabian is a retired Canadian management and systems consultant. He was the first Chair of Computer Science at York University in Toronto. In the last several years, he has become deeply involved in downtown Toronto neighborhood planning, especially along Yonge Street, a major Toronto thoroughfare on which he lives. His first two EAP reports on neighborhood involvement were in the winter 2012 and fall 2013 issues. See his website at: www.fabian.ca. Text © 2020 Robert Fabian. [email protected].

his is a report on my journey to a neighborhood is skyrocketing. Within just roads and lanes. We’re calling it a “Living new urban place. Fifty years ago a few blocks of our condo, there are more Urban Block,” with intended pedestrian- my wife and I moved to To- than 20 new residential towers built, going priority designation on the side streets and ronto’s Bloor West neighbor- up, planned, or discussed. These towers lanes. Thood. It wasn’t all that fancy a neighbor- range from a “short” 26 storeys to more hood, at least not back then. The retail strip than 80 storeys. A typical floor will have Creative city building along Bloor between High Park and Jane 10 or more residential units. A typical unit I started my professional life in mathemat- Streets provided the place that anchored will be home to 1.5 people. In just a few ics. I took great comfort in the universality the neighborhood. That retail strip of sev- years, there will be thousands of new resi- of mathematical truth. Mathematical laws eral local stores delivered a village retail dents in our part of Toronto. had universal applicability. Things got a bit presence, offering all the necessities and a Shortly after we moved to Toronto, ge- muddy as I studied computability in grad- few of the luxuries. ographer Edward Relph identified the uate school. That focus led me to computer As we approached retirement age, a placelessness that often accompanies life science, where the value of computing was downtown condominium augmented by a in the suburbs or in residential towers [1]. critically dependent on context. There are country cottage became increasingly at- There is now a growing literature on the few important computing processes uni- tractive and, almost 20 years ago, we human importance of having a neighbor- versally relevant and valuable. For me, moved to a condo in downtown Toronto lo- hood place that can anchor residents to what followed was a natural transition to cated on the edge of the Church Wellesley where they live and to the communities the “real world” of management and sys- neighborhood—Toronto’s first “gay” which critically define their local social re- tems consulting, where context was key. hood. The neighborhood was anchored in ality. In retirement, I started to pay attention to the village retail strip located along Church A lack of place can be felt in our neigh- urban planning. Given that we were living Street between Dondonald and Alexander borhood today. Add thousands of new res- in downtown Toronto where there are Streets. Again, all the necessities and a few idents, and the lack of place will be felt more tall-building-construction cranes of the luxuries were offered by smaller lo- much more acutely in the future. The her- than any other North American city, this cal retail stores along that strip of Church. itage folks stridently defend the architec- interest was a natural step. Early on, I was Fast forward to today. Retail has been tural spaces formerly holding the village forced to recognize that there are precious transformed by big-box stores and online retail that was the heart of many older few universal truths in the behavioral sci- sales. When we moved downtown, there neighborhood places. But preserving the ences. What was true for undergraduate were five stores offering food along the spaces that held village retail isn’t nearly students in psychology courses had little Church Street strip. Today, there is one re- enough to preserve village retail. Big-box useful relevance for retirees living in maining food store, but within walking dis- stores will continue to attract a growing downtown Toronto. That led me to a tance, there are six supermarkets, includ- share of the spending for necessities. recognition of and respect for a phenome- ing a flagship Loblaws located in the old Online sales will continue to undercut the nological approach to urban planning. The home of the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey high margin sales that were so important to need is not urban engineering but creative team. Loblaws is two blocks south of the the economic reality behind village retail. city building. old Church Street retail area. On the other side of Yonge Street from The placelessness challenge of today’s Something similar seems to have hap- our condo (in Bay Cloverhill) there is an downtown Toronto is merely an aspect of pened along the Bloor West retail strip. interesting opportunity to do something a broader concern for social infrastructure The retail strips which provided a central, about local placelessness. There are three [2]. Toronto does a reasonable job engi- natural place for our old and new neighbor- short side streets and a service lane within neering the city’s services infrastructure, hoods have faded. They haven’t become a larger block bounded by bus and subway with dozens of departments reviewing new placeless, but they no longer engage resi- transit lines. Toronto and other cities have development proposals. Thus far the city dents the same way that the old retail strips identified the potential value of what is has not paid much explicit attention to the provided such natural defining places for called “Shared Space” streets and lanes. changes required in its social infrastructure their neighborhoods and their residents. The idea is almost a return to the early days to accommodate the thousands of new res- Simultaneous with these declining of the twentieth century when all public- idents who will be calling downtown places, the population of our downtown realm users had equal access to streets, “home.”

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DOI: 10 Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology, Vol. 31 [2020], No. I look back on mathematics’ universal that motor vehicles do not need to automat- Yonge Business Improvement Area likes truths and wish there were similar univer- ically be given street priority, especially on the idea. The central YMCA would love to sal social-infrastructure truths. What will it lanes and side streets. Cities throughout the see the neighborhood defined by a shared- take for the thousands of people moving world are taking steps to regain a balanced space street immediately north of its build- into the dozens of new residential towers in use of pedestrians and vehicles on selected ing and adjacent park. In addition, there are my neighborhood to feel that they are part roadways. Many of these initiatives in- significant voices in the local urban plan- of a “real” neighborhood and can draw on volve major transit routes, with streetcars ning establishment who are active support- the support of their local community? The or buses given exclusive use of some of the ers. absence of old-fashioned “village” retail roadway. This approach makes transporta- The effort will extend over multiple places is bound to have an impact. Could a tion sense—the limited public realm can be phases. An initial phase could put in place shared public realm substitute for these re- more efficiently used by dedicating a por- temporary indicators of shared-space in- tail places and provide the space that ena- tion as exclusively for public transit. tent. Perhaps eliminate most of the on- bles residents to recognize a defining place The use of pedestrian-priority streets street parking, square the corners at inter- for their neighborhood? considered in Saviskas’ study is different. sections, and put in place some planned all- That question and a raft of similar ques- Her focus is providing spaces that would season events. These possibilities are sim- tions cannot have definitive answers. It be transformed into meaningful places for ilar to how Toronto approached changes in would depend on the new and old resi- the new neighborhoods being crammed some of its high-transit-volume streets. dents. It would depend on the larger social, into downtown Toronto. The old-village With a demonstrated initial success, plans economic, and political climate. It would retail model for a meaningful neighbor- could be developed for a permanent con- depend on the public and private third hood place is less and less tenable. Retail version of the first side street to pedestrian- spaces that are connected to potential has changed and is changing enough that priority designation. Initial plans could be neighborhood places. It would depend on successful retail primarily needs a service developed for conversion of additional the formal and informal events that take rather than a geographic focus. But retail, side streets and lanes. place in the available spaces. And those are especially third-space retail, can play a One “official” step is critical. The city just the initial dependencies that come to meaningful role in the establishment of needs to designate an experienced planner mind. neighborhood places linked to pedestrian- as the person in charge of this initiative. priority streets. Fortunately, there are several planners ap- Making it happen There’s a commercially attractive oppor- proaching retirement who would look fa- Urban planning in Toronto (and I suspect tunity to integrate shared streets as new vorably on such an assignment. There are elsewhere as well) moves at a slow and of- residential towers are completed and reasons to be cautiously optimistic that ten ponderous pace. There are plans to up- brought to market. Advertising a new de- such an appointment will be made and that date Yonge Street, the city’s central north- velopment as “a vital part of the new the neighborhood stakeholders will sup- south street. In many parts of Toronto’s neighborhood being developed in ...” port the initiative. Conversion of the side downtown, services infrastructure is more should, almost certainly, translate into streets will be an important step toward than a century old and needs upgrading. A faster, higher margin sales and rentals. maintaining the local social infrastructure major study has begun. Some of the early Such an advertising push makes sense and in the face of a massive increase in the ideas have been quite attractive, but it’s encourages the change in mind set that number of local residents. It’s what the city likely to be a decade or more before my lo- might transform shared-space streets into should be doing. cal section of Yonge Street is transformed identifiable neighborhood places. into a more pedestrian-friendly place. At The time to act is now. Just across Yonge that point, all possible sites will be occu- Street from our condo is a modest mixed- Notes pied, and there will be virtually no new de- use area bounded by transit routes on all 1. E. Relph, Place and Placelessness (Lon- velopment opportunities in the area. sides. There are seven new residential tow- don: Pion, 1976). A recent master’s professional report by ers completed, being constructed, or 2. E. Klinenberg, Palaces for People (NY: Berkeley graduate student Sarah Saviskas planned. Soon there will be no potential Crown, 2018). provides a useful summary of shared space development sites remaining. 3. S. Saviskas, Taking Back Our Streets, or what she calls “pedestrian-priority Developers generally like the idea of master’s professional report, Univ. of streets” [3]. There is a growing recognition shared-space streets. The local Downtown Berkeley, 2016.

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ISSN: 1083-9194 11 Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology, Vol. 31 [2020], No. The Border at the Heart of Human Life

John Russon

Russon is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Guelph and the Director of the Toronto Summer Seminar in Philosophy. He is the author of many books and articles in phenomenology; his most recent works are Sites of Exposure (Indiana Univ. Press, 2017) and Adult Life (State Univ. of NY Press, 2020), two books that focus on the political and psychological parameters of our experience of space and place. This article was originally published as “Insan Yaşaminin Merkezindeki Sinir,” in the Turkish magazine, sabah ülkesi, vol. 62 (2020), pp. 10–13. The article is reprinted with the editor’s permission. © 2020 John Russon.

here is an ambivalence at the Travelling to a foreign place presents a only ever exposed to the challenging out- heart of dating. similar ambivalence. On one hand, the ex- side without ever being able to “come in On one hand, much of the ex- citement that white American tourists from the cold,” we are worn down, and we citement and energy of dating might feel in crossing from McAllen, feel as empty on the inside as we feel im- Tcomes from the fact that one is venturing Texas, to Reynosa in Mexico, comes poverished on the outside when we are into an unknown terrain, hoping to make a largely from Reynosa’s reputation as a ma- without “a life.” connection with someone unfamiliar, jor site for the drug-trade and the The other with whom we settle allows us someone from a different world. Each per- knowledge (or the imagination) that, in- to feel anchored in the world, to have a re- son here is a kind of alien surface to the deed, one might be kidnapped, and part of ality of our own that endures despite what- other, exciting in part, no doubt, because the pleasure in the activity of visiting is the ever happens “outside.” In the ambiva- one can imaginatively write whatever one relief of getting out again successfully. lence of dating, then, we see the essential likes on that blank slate. And this alien- Here, it is the dangerous unfamiliarity of two-directedness of our engagement with ness of the other is also a matter of risk, for the place that is exciting, and one enjoys others: we have a trajectory toward en- the person one connects with may be un- the voyeuristic pleasure of brushing up gagement with the outside and a trajectory pleasant, or, worse, violent; and this dan- against that world while still relying on the toward the establishment of an inside. The ger, too, is no doubt part of the thrill of the comforting assurance that one can return to contradictory paths in dating reflect a ten- situation—as long as that danger does not the familiar world of the U.S. On the other sion at the heart of our existential condi- in fact turn into a reality. hand, a different American traveler might tion. On the other hand, the excitement also well visit Istanbul, not with such voyeuris- That tension is evident in the situation of comes from the possibility that something tic intent, but with the hope of encounter- border-crossing as well. In the simple de- further will come from the date, and a new ing a cultural world that is differently ori- sire to see something different and exotic, relationship will develop. In that future, ented and richer than the pre-packaged and or even in the more extreme situation of those involved will become familiar to one commodified world of the United States— wanting to be close to danger, there is, another, and the interaction will not be a a world that might broaden one’s horizons again, an honesty to both the recognition matter of engaging with what each imagi- and, indeed, offer one a new home. that an other culture is other, and the recog- natively projects on the other but will be a There is something honest about the da- nition that there is something satisfying in matter of both parties learning who the ting situation. The desire associated with seeing a reality beyond the horizon of our other is in a process of mutual adaptation. the possibly threatening mystery of the familiar world that does not answer to its In this case, one does not want the other other is a kind of recognition of the other- terms. simply to be an unresisting “blank slate,” ness of other people—of the fact, that is, Whether one is simply enjoying an allur- but to be someone specific—someone who that they are not the same as oneself. The ing view or seeking the rush of excitement offers one a new home into which one can desire to engage with that other is a desire that comes from flirting with danger, the precisely retreat from the demands of con- to go beyond one’s home and to have that contact with the exotic alien acknowledges stant engagement with an alien world and breath of outside air breathe life into one’s the novelty and difference of the world be- a supportive platform from which to ven- world—to make one feel alive. yond one’s limits, even as it stays closely ture forth rather than a surface upon which The engagement with a challenging out- tethered to the reassuring support of the fa- to project. The other here is more a beacon side is integral to the very meaning of “liv- miliar. And yet, the very recognition that than a mystery and harbors a promise ra- ing,” and one can feel that one “doesn’t there is a tantalizing world beyond one’s ther than a threat. have a life” in the absence of such outside own can itself, by underlining the limits of The ambivalence of dating, then, is that stimulation. At the same time, we have a one’s own world, lead one to realize that one’s desire demands that the other be both desire to settle, and the experience of the one could live otherwise: those others, alien and familiar, both an open possibility other as a repository for one’s hope is a though exotic and threatening to oneself, and a closed actuality, both a thing of the recognition of the other as harboring the are not exotic and threatening to them- momentary present and an enduring real- possibility of, essentially, giving one back selves; on the contrary, for those others, ity. to oneself: of allowing one to feel recon- their ways are precisely what is familiar. ciled with oneself and whole. If we are

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DOI: 12 Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology, Vol. 31 [2020], No. Indeed, the strange other, while offering world in which we can be someone beyond supported by the world of others, both inti- the momentary pleasure of a fascinating who we are for our intimates. The need for mate and indifferent, who let it be such. spectacle, also promisingly invites one to both intimacy and indifference and the A living organism depends on the exist- change one’s own life and live otherwise. back-and-forth between them is the systole ence of a world outside it, a world that the Thus, in the experience of the “threat” of and diastole of our existential health, our organism appropriates according to the the other, one is not just feeling the danger vitality. needs of its own form of life. In the context that one might be subjected to violence but The back-and-forth between intimacy of any life, the outside world is thus neces- also feeling the allure of giving oneself up and indifference presumes the existence of sarily both independently defined and de- to it and coming to be at home in what was a border between them, and in dating, as in fined in terms of the organism. Something formerly strange. politics, it is important to establish borders. analogous is true of our human world. The Like dating, then, visiting another cul- In dating, one is engaging with another and world outside us—both human and natu- ture engages the ambivalence in our desire: it is not yet decided whether or not one ral—is something in its own right, indiffer- we seek to maintain distance from an alien wants to go further with that other. Conse- ent to us. world that offers us an entertaining specta- quently, it is important to be able to say At the same time, there is no escaping cle that ultimately reassures us of our sense “no.” Indeed, the desire to develop some- our need to experience the outside world in of home; simultaneously, we feel the call thing further with that other will likely be terms of our own needs. What we need to to liberate ourselves from the familiar and dependent upon the experience that that recognize is that that the foreign world we become someone new. This, too—this ten- other precisely respects one’s limits. experience is already defined in relation- sion between the desire for a reassuring fa- In that sense, the development of a fur- ship to our borders—our appropriative set- miliarity and the desire for an unpredicta- ther intimate relationship is not an effacing tlement. We need both to respect the inde- ble transformation—is a tension at the of borders but a richer reality built from pendent autonomy of the other life-forms heart of our existence. them. In politics, too, borders reflect the we encounter and to recognize that the The heartbeat that keeps the organism fact that people in groups, like individuals, terms in which we encounter them (and, alive has a systolic and a diastolic phase. do not all choose to live the same way, and likewise, the terms in which they encoun- The systole is when the heart contracts, there is good reason to allow different ter us) are already a reflection of our own pumping oxygen-rich blood to all the parts groups their integrity. Whether between way of establishing borders. of the body; the diastole is when the heart people or between cultures, borders pre- In and of itself, it is not destructive to be relaxes after contraction and allows the re- cisely reflect the fact that we are different a tourist, any more than it is immoral to turn of oxygen-depleted blood for replen- from each other. date people casually. Dating is dishonest ishment. Biologically, the human life de- Normally, we live as if our home were and destructive when the independent in- pends on this heartbeat. Existentially, the neutral and the “other” were exceptional; tegrity and autonomy of the person one is human life depends on the systole and di- this makes sense, because our home is the dating is ignored, and that other is treated astole of being exposed and being at home. basis of our identity—our basal heart-rate, only as an object for one’s use. We humans need a home, which is both so to speak—and so we naturally see the Analogously, the detached, superficial a physical setting dedicated to our own other from this perspective. In reality, perspective on another culture has become needs and a set of human relationships ori- however, the truth is the opposite of this: dishonest and destructive when the foreign ented to our wellbeing. “Home” is the we each become someone precisely by be- culture one encounters is treated as if it world organized in a way that recognizes coming “other”—by differing from the were only an entertaining and fascinating us as uniquely important, the world as inti- neutral indifference that recognizes no one. spectacle, or, worse, as if it were only an mate and close. Without a home, one has We become someone by establishing the occasion for affirming one’s fantasy of nothing else and no one other than oneself border of intimacy that makes it possible to moral superiority, as happens when the alone to establish a sense of one’s reality be someone ourselves and simultaneously role of the U.S. in cultivating the drug- and worth, and that is a lonely and arid ex- makes it possible for there to be others for trade with Mexico is ignored or when the istence, unsettled and unsettling. Without a us. history of Christian-European colonialism home, the world is overwhelming and un- But this border is a way of making the in shaping the contemporary reality of relenting in its indifference to us. world our own, an appropriation and settle- Muslim Asia is ignored. Home-life on its own can be stifling, ment within an open reality that could be In these destructive relationships, the though; as the Buddha says, “house life is lived otherwise. To have a home, then—to other is treated as if it were only how it ap- crowded and dusty; going forth is wide be someone—is something that depends pears to one’s home-perspective, and the open” (Middle Length Discourses, 1.240). upon the cooperation both of those with formative role one’s own establishing of We need a home, but we also need a world whom one makes a home through the inti- borders plays in shaping what is really an beyond—the world of the real—that pre- mate embracing our unique importance interaction of mutually independent aliens cisely does not relate to us intimately and and of those who are indifferent to us but is ignored. recognize us as uniquely important. This is who nonetheless respect our borders. Dis- Healthy dating, though, and likewise the world of engagement, the objective honesty in our experience—a dishonesty healthy cultural interaction, always holds world upon which we work and the public encouraged by the very nature of being at within it an openness to the possibility of world within which we earn recognition home—is not to recognize the fact that our something new developing, and that means for our accomplishments. It is precisely a home reality, our being someone, is only

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ISSN: 1083-9194 13 Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology, Vol. 31 [2020], No. the independent integrity of the other is al- other—personal or cultural—for a momen- other with which it can engage and still be ways alive under the surface, threatening, tary thrill or for an enduring reality is bet- itself. so to speak, to give birth to a mutually ter. Both approaches speak to something The strongest life-form is ultimately the transformative process that reveals to each real in our desires. But only to experience one that, rather than defensively suppress- that that other is in fact one’s “destiny,” others as exotic mysteries is a problem, as ing the autonomy of the other to shore up one’s true home. is only to experience the desirability of be- its boundaries, is one for whom its borders Both personally and culturally, we need ing at home. are experienced precisely as the invitation both to have a site of rest and security—a Any life-form is a reality that maintains to be changed and to come to be at home in home—and to be able to venture forth from itself in encounter with an other. The what was foreign: the one that finds itself that home into an outside. There is no sim- stronger the life-form, the stronger the only in and through that other. ple answer to whether approaching the

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DOI: 14 Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology, Vol. 31 [2020], No. An Understanding-Grounded Approach to Science Education

Stephen Wood

Wood is an independent researcher in phenomenology and the environment. He studied systematic zoology at the University of Cambridge and has held fellowships in the Theoretical Physics Research Unit at London’s Birbeck College; and at the Nature Institute in Ghent, New York. Wood’s four earlier EAP essays can be found in spring and summer issues, 2014 and 2016. [email protected]. © 2020 Stephen Wood.

In this essay, I distinguish between two grounded approaches for sustainability the first time as an entity with a certain contrasting approaches to science teach- education. I argue that the understand- potential and reach in the world. As six- ing, which I name knowledge-grounded ing-grounded approach has the ad- ness or hexad, the phenomenon coa- and understanding-grounded. In the vantage of being more inclusive and less lesces into a recognizable event in space knowledge-grounded approach, the stu- hierarchical, allowing a greater number and time. dent is asked to acquire and to apply of students to advance toward the Each of the phenomenon’s qualitative knowledge with little guidance on how teacher’s own state of expertise. possibilities—monad, dyad, triad, and to develop the necessary understanding so forth—is identified by Bennett as a to make that knowledge personally real. The method of systematics system, which can be defined by the In contrast, the understanding-grounded To facilitate understanding-grounded given number of mutually relevant approach seeks to make knowledge learning, Bennett proposes a method that terms. The monad consists of a single more personally vivid and meaningful he names systematics, which is said to term, the totality. In turn, the dyad has by bringing the student to an overall un- enable investigators to probe ever more two opposing poles, or natures; the triad, derstanding of the subject, within which deeply into the richness of a phenome- three impulses; the tetrad, four sources; relevant knowledge is situated and takes non [1]. Systematics facilitates a pro- the pentad, five limits; and the hexad, six on a deeper, more comprehensive, first- gressive understanding of the phenome- laws. Bennett describes systems up to person significance. non through attention to the qualitative twelve terms and beyond. Drawing on British philosopher J.G. significance of number. For example, As I hope to demonstrate through my Bennett’s insights into the nature of sci- viewing the phenomenon as oneness or example of science education, systemat- entific activity, I illustrate how the un- monad, the investigator looks for whole- ics has the advantage of bringing hith- derstanding-grounded approach appeals ness, which is the central qualitative erto unsuspected aspects of the phenom- to the four aspects of scientific activity meaning of oneness. As twoness or enon into awareness and highlighting that Bennett identifies as contact, vision, dyad, the phenomenon appears as a po- their mutual relevance. Using the sys- knowledge, and technique. For real- larity or a complementarity, and as tematics method, investigators consider world evidence, I draw on my own ex- threeness or triad, as a relationship and the phenomenon in terms of specific sys- periences as a learner, both as a univer- as a process. Probing the phenomenon tems that may draw attention to particu- sity student and as a member of volun- for its fourness, or tetrad, the investiga- lar actions and patterns of interest. teer naturalist groups. tor considers the phenomenon as a pat- To study the scientific enterprise, for I argue that, in my fruitful learning ex- tern of organized activity that has some example, Bennett chooses the tetrad as periences, teachers followed an under- sort of intentional outcome. As fiveness particularly appropriate, since science standing-grounded approach attending or pentad, the phenomenon appears for can be readily recognized as a system of to each of these four as- organized activity with definite aims pects. In contrast, my expe- and hopes of accomplishment. Each riences of knowledge- of the terms of the tetrad—the four grounded teaching led to sources—reveals important aspects learning outcomes that were of science as a directed activity aim- unsatisfactory, at least ing to achieve specific outcomes. partly because the learning As a symbol, the tetrad is pictured process did not fully incor- by Bennett as the cross-filled dia- porate Bennett’s four as- mond of the figure, left. The tetrad’s pects of scientific activity. four points are its four sources, which To provide a thematic fo- Bennett identified, on the vertical cus, I reflect on the implica- axis, as ground and goal; and, on the tions of understanding- horizontal axis, as direction and in- grounded and knowledge- strument.

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ISSN: 1083-9194 15 Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology, Vol. 31 [2020], No. The tetrad of scientific ac- of their passion for the outdoors, for tivity is illustrated in the fig- particular plants and animals, as well ure, right. Note that Bennett as their appreciation of the attitudes of identifies the two endpoints fellow members, their enthusiasm and of the vertical axis as contact conviction, their humility and imagi- and vision. As ground of sci- nation. One wrote that he was also a entific activity, contact refers sculptor. Another described his child- to the scientist’s engagement hood memory of the soothing move- with the material world, ments of the Loire River and feeling which is his or her starting like a pebble rocked back and forth on point and presupposes an the riverbed. Another member pro- “accurate contact with the claimed his conviction that there was thing being studied” [2]. This no frontier between humans and na- situation of contact with the material different scientists have access to the ture. It was gratifying to read of people world is available to the senses and four sources of scientific activity in committed to high intellectual standards measurable, whether directly through unique ways. He writes: who were also willing to speak openly of first-hand observation or through sec- their feelings for the natural world. ond-hand instrumentalist means like tel- No scientist’s work is so perfectly bal- My first meeting with the French as- escopes or electronic microscopes. anced that all four sources play an equal sociation, however, came as a great In turn, vision relates to the scientist’s role. Some scientists have a knack for shock. Sent out to their reclaimed farm, aim for a comprehensive theory provid- seeing empirically, while others have the I was quickly out of my depth. We were ing a thorough understanding of how the ability to synthesize research in a field handed a list of plant species covering world works. This vision of a certain and to integrate their own work accord- fourteen A4 pages and asked to tick off manner of “truth” elevates science ingly. each species as we identified examples above the ordinary and gives it enduring Yet again, some scientists have great in the field. The list was a great intellec- significance and value, a pursuit that technical skill and a determined persis- tual achievement: an exhaustive survey fuels the scientist’s passion and commit- tence to carry their work through, while of all plant species found on the aban- ment: “Significant scientific activity is others are visionaries who can see doned farm. We were expected to con- marked by a special kind of wonder and deeply into the principles of nature. Ein- tribute to the effort of keeping the list faith. The scientist must have insight, vi- stein, for example, conducted theoretical up-to-date and to learn the particularities sion, and a sense of nature’s mystery” experiments on paper and had little in- of each species. Too soon, however, this [3]. terest in empirical research or practical task became a race to tick off as many Next, there are the endpoints of the techniques. He had a remarkable ability species as quickly as possible. tetrad’s horizontal axis, the first of to integrate scientific knowledge and to This task could have been directed so which is knowledge, which provides re- see conceptual patterns hidden from differently. The more experienced mem- search direction for the scientist and a other scientists [7]. bers of the association could have pro- “guiding intelligence” [4]. Scientific er- vided an overview of the site’s ecology udition links researchers with past and Encounters with nature and its plant communities and habitats. future efforts in the field and relates their Though I grew up in England and did my These senior members could have then ideas and findings to the larger disci- doctoral work there, I moved to France directed us to a small number of key spe- pline of which they are a part. in 2008. Right from the start, I was keen cies and given us time to study them, to The tetrad’s other horizontal endpoint to find a community of French natural- draw them, or to take turns at describing is technique, which refers to the practi- ists. If only there could be a way to en- them. This approach would have helped cal feel scientists have for their field of gage in practical activities to understand us to develop accurate contact with the research. Technique involves familiarity and to protect nature better. The advisor plants of the place, to acquire the skills gained over long exposure and relates to helping me with my adjustment to my to study them, and to gain a feel for the instinctive skills that researchers de- new country suggested a wildlife associ- them. The list of species would have velop for conducting effective experi- ation affiliated with the University of started to organize itself into a meaning- ments and obtaining a clear account of Montpellier, itself very active in the ful pattern, once we started to know phenomena. ecology and conservation fields. Head- where to look for different types of plant Bennett suggests that technique incor- quartered in a village not far from Mont- and to recognize the more common spe- porates a field of practical action via pellier, this association had taken over cies. which knowledge becomes actualized an abandoned farm and had restored it as Instead, we were tasked with a cold, [5]. More broadly, he suggests that a wildlife preserve. purely intellectual exercise that was a knowledge relates more to an intellec- Before making contact, I studied the stark expression of the knowledge- tual dimension of scientific endeavor, association’s website and was inspired grounded approach, where thinking is while technique relates more to an emo- by what I read. The salaried members paramount. Despite what association tional dimension [6]. He points out how described their background, all speaking

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DOI: 16 Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology, Vol. 31 [2020], No. members wrote on their website, feel- Telling details leaping out fossil I showed him, but he was unable ings were to play no part in their daily In my final year studying natural sci- to guide me toward the same under- practice. For them, reliable knowledge ences at university, I took a course in standing because he made no place for of nature could only be attained by leav- vertebrate morphology and evolution. showing and discussing—no place for ing emotional sensibilities at the door. The course involved practical sessions dialogue. As a student, I needed to be More than likely, these feelings had led where we studied fossils in the univer- quick, to need no time to digest, reflect members to that door, but once within sity museum’s collections. I always re- or ponder to be able to grasp what he was the hallowed halls of science, only a pro- member the museum director teaching presenting. There was no process, no fessional detachment would allow them us how to look at a fossil of an acantho- gaining familiarity, no tricks for getting to arrive at defensible conclusions. They dian, a kind of early fish. He asked us one’s eye in, and no clues for under- were not interested in a broader under- simple questions such as “Where is the standing the peculiarities of this group of standing of nature to be gained by unit- front?” or “Where is the top?” Before his fishes. ing thinking and feeling. As my PhD su- simple questions, I could not make out This expert conveyed to me his pervisor at the Natural History Museum anything in the fossil. I made a guess at knowledge, but I was left to my igno- in London told me, “You’re not here to where the fish’s nose was and where the rance. I had a similar experience with understand anything!” line of its back was traced out in the another French wildlife association. The The supposed neutrality of science rock. Suddenly, telling details leapt out founder was a professional ecologist. He can be a reassuring refuge. If knowledge at me from the rock. I could now see the was helped by a retired engineer who is the only aim, then we are not to make body outline and make out the fins, with had made his living at the paper factory value judgments but only report on what a strong spine in front of each, the dis- in Beaucaire but had a keen interest in appears to be the case, given the balance tinctive characteristic of the acanthodi- birds. On a field trip to look for birds of of probabilities. We aim for informative ans. prey, I remember how the professional summaries of the data we have so pains- I had a contrasting experience when I ecologist, while describing a particular takingly gathered. We conduct the anal- asked a young postdoctoral researcher species, commented that there were two yses and produce the graphs that our for help. I was struggling to identify the nesting pairs in the neighboring valley. chosen domain requires. We publish and bones of a fossil fish’s shoulder girdle. “How did that help us,” I wondered? On go on to collect and analyze more data. He asked me no questions. In a matter of another occasion, two birds passed us In the face of the climate crisis and the seconds, he produced a sketch of the fos- with a dipping flight. “They’re pipits,” decline of biodiversity, we can make a sil annotated with the names of all the he said, without explanation. Both times, very good career documenting the crisis bones. I saw that I had been confused be- he made an impressive, self-centered as it unfolds. cause the cleithrum, a major component display of his knowledge that was not at Reducing science to the accumula- of the shoulder girdle, had in fact broken all helpful to us learners! tion of knowledge relieves scientists of into many pieces during fossilization. In contrast, the retired engineer would the burden to act. The Guardian ran an On one hand, I was bewildered by how take us aside and give us simple lessons. article that struck an encouraging con- this researcher had worked that out. On He taught us to recognize the song of the trast. It described an attempt to renew the other hand, he complained about my nightingale (Luscinia megarhynchos) seagrass meadows along the United asking him to carry out such a “labelling [9]. I remember how he began to whistle Kingdom’s coast and thereby to help re- exercise” because this was not his role. I the bird’s song for us, and a nightingale duce greenhouse gases, improve water was none the wiser, however, as to how responded in kind from the reeds! We quality, and provide valuable nurseries I could have come to the same conclu- would take turns looking through the for commercial fish species. I was struck sions as he. binoculars at a distant group of birds, by the refreshing candor of one of the In great contrast, the museum director and he would point out the species that scientists behind the initiative, Richard guided us to ask simple questions about we could see. In this way, he helped my Unsworth of Swansea University, for the fossil in front of us. We were able to wife see her first swamphen (Porphyrio whom knowledge is a tool in the service help ourselves to understand the fossil porphyrio) on a visit to the Camargue of an overarching vision, namely the better and make discoveries without de- marshes [10]. In all, he accompanied us mutual flourishing of humans and na- tailed guidance. We were given time to in our learning and helped us to grow in ture. He wrote: get used to “reading” the fossils and to confidence and understanding. make accurate contact with them. He As a scientist, and as a father, I could helped us develop our technique and You must remain critical! spend the next 20 years writing awesome skill. I remember his congratulating us at I remember a discussion I had with the academic papers about seagrass decline the end of the term, at the range of ver- postdoctoral researcher in the university or spend the 20 years doing something tebrate diversity that we could now com- museum. He told me how a consensus about it. We have a responsibility as sci- prehend. He reminded us that this was emerging for the existence of a pre- entists to act, as well as report [8]. achievement would have been unthinka- viously unrecognized group of fossil fishes. I was excited. This was in keep- ble when the course began. For the brilliant postdoctoral re- ing with my vision of what science was searcher, the bones were just there in the all about: patterns of order emerging

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ISSN: 1083-9194 17 Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology, Vol. 31 [2020], No. where before there was only chaos and knowledge, technique, and vision. One move forward in their apprenticeship, confusion. recognized this balance in the depth of the teacher reminds them of what they Seeing my excitement, the postdoc- his understanding and expertise. In his don’t know. The teacher holds on to his toral researcher chided me, saying that teaching, however, he evaluated my per- or her position of power and projects an the jury was still out, and we had to re- formance with regard only to the air of mystique. main critical. I was expressing my vi- knowledge I displayed. sion, but he responded as if I were pre- It is perhaps significant that this judg- Learning and understanding tending to knowledge. For him, ment was accompanied by an aggres- Understanding-grounded teaching is ul- knowledge must be tested and evaluated sive, competitive tone of voice, as if to timately more successful and more valu- critically in view of the evidence. My vi- say: “You should know by now what able than knowing-grounded teaching sion, on the other hand, was an intui- you’re looking at. You should know this because there is a direct, empathetic en- tion—of order in nature—that inspired group of animals. I’m not here to do the gagement with nature that resonates me in my pursuit of science. The goal work for you.” His attitude was cold and with the “wholeness” of human beings. and ideal of science—vision in Ben- demanding, in contrast to the warmth As educator Stuart Hill insists: “It is im- nett’s tetradic sense—cannot be reduced and patience of the museum director. portant to ask: in what ways can educa- to a state of knowledge. This researcher gave me no time for pro- tion help us get out of the many messes One must also realize that contact with longed contact nor time to develop my we are in? Most current education will the material realm being studied may be skills in looking, drawing and interpret- not significantly help us. In fact, it will distorted by the lens of knowledge in ing. He projected no inspiring vision to result in a perpetuation of the mess, and that cerebral abstractions can interfere motivate me. most likely add to it” [13]. What styles with direct engagement with nature. If the scientist follows the knowledge- of teaching offer a way out of this Whereas the role of accurate knowledge grounded approach in his teaching, it be- “mess” toward a just, sustainable coex- in science is easily made explicit, scien- comes the student’s responsibility to de- istence of humans with each other and tists may remain entirely unaware of the velop strategies to acquire understand- with nature? roles of contact, technique, and vision. ing. There will be some students who In emphasizing the dominance of in- Bennett points out how Rutherford have gained the required knowledge out- tellect and cerebral effort, the and Faraday had an uncanny contact side the lesson who will be able to com- knowledge-grounded approach leads to with nature and a sense of how to con- plete the exercise without the teacher’s a style of teaching that is top-down, hi- ceive and carry out experiments that assistance. There will be other students erarchical, competitive, and adversarial. would allow phenomena to reveal them- who have sufficiently developed their In contrast, the understanding-grounded selves [11]. With regard to technique, contact, technique and vision to quickly approach acknowledges the integral im- chemist and philosopher of science Mi- grasp what is required. These students portance of contact, knowledge, tech- chael Polanyi emphasized that practical will be able to carry out the learning task nique, and vision. One can hold these mastery is often passed on by example, asking only a few pertinent questions. four sources in mind as they each play a through apprenticeship. He also high- Yet again, there will be students who pivotal role in one’s research and teach- lighted the role of vision in science—the need to draw on all four sources to un- ing. In this emphasis on understanding, scientist’s intuition of a fruitful problem derstand the lesson. Since these are not science can involve the whole person, to study or of a possible solution even if given explicit attention in a knowledge- drawing on sensing, perceiving, think- dimly glimpsed. Polanyi explained how grounded approach, these students will ing, feeling and intuiting. these “hunches” fuel the scientist’s com- find it difficult to understand and to Cultivating a student’s understanding mitment to his subject [12]. complete the learning task. requires a style of teaching that is bot- The young postdoctoral researcher Following an understanding- tom-up, egalitarian, and collaborative. had spent years in contact with fossils, grounded approach in one’s teaching is Knowledge assures that one’s engage- studying them, gaining a feel for their more inclusive. This approach to learn- ment with nature is well informed con- different peculiarities and developing a ing levels the playing field, offering the ceptually. But understanding is only knack for recognizing bone patterns. To opportunity for most students to pro- possible when knowledge is integrated strengthen his technique, he worked pa- gress. As clarified by the four terms of with technique. Only in this way does tiently through repeated exposure to the Bennett’s tetrad, understanding- contact with nature ascend toward the source material. He read widely and de- grounded learning highlights the role of much broader aim of comprehensive veloped a thorough knowledge of the craft in science and the journey to exper- theory attuned to nature’s diversity and field, not only the anatomy of the differ- tise, thus diminishing the distance be- unity. ent animal groups but also of the process tween student and teacher. For Hill, the choice of the best style of of fossilization. He clearly had a vision In my experience, knowledge- teaching is “profoundly simple.” He of science as the movement toward an grounded teaching is at times reduced to writes: ever more accurate picture of nature. nothing more than testing, checking who In his own practice, this researcher already has the resources to complete the [E]ducators can be most effective by en- drew on all the tetrad’s sources, cultivat- task. Rather than taking students from abling learners to clarify what they want ing a healthy balance among contact, where they are and helping them to to learn, and in supporting them in their

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DOI: 18 Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology, Vol. 31 [2020], No. unique learning journeys. This may in- 2. For an account of the four sources, see 9. https://www.oiseaux.net/oiseaux/ros- volve empathetic, active listening, Bennett, Elementary Systematics, ch. 4 signol.philomele.html, accessed April providing respectful, constructive feed- and pp. 67–69, which include an account 14, 2020. back, appropriate challenging, facilitat- of scientific activity. The tetrad’s four 10. ing access to relevant information and sources as ground, direction, instrument, https://www.oiseaux.net/oiseaux/taleve. resources, mentoring, modelling and and goal are presented in J.G. Bennett, sultane.html, accessed April 12, 2020. sharing (particularly of enabling stories The Dramatic Universe, Vol. 3: Man 11. Bennett, Elementary Systematics, p. from one’s own and other’s experiences, and his Nature, p. 32. 67. including from throughout history), ac- 3. Elementary Systematics, p. 68. 12. M. Polanyi (1958). Personal knowledging and celebrating efforts and 4. J.G. Bennett, The Dramatic Universe Knowledge. Univ. of Chicago Press. achievements… Yes, if we approached Vol. 3, §14.37.7, definition of “direc- 13. S.B. Hill (2012). Education to education in this way humans might ac- tion.” Change the World, p. 1, tually be enabled to become much more 5. Dramatic Universe Vol. 3, §14.37.7, http://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.1.1435.73 fully human, and who knows what might definition of “instrument.” p. 7. 68; adapted from a radio broadcast, ac- happen! [14]. 6. Bennett 1993, p. 68. cessed April 17, 2020. 7. Bennett 1993, pp. 68–69. 14. Ibid., pp. 3–4. Endnotes 8.https://www.theguardian.com/environ 1. For an introduction, see J.G. Bennett, ment/2020/mar/10/uk-lost-sea-mead- Elementary Systematics. Bennett Books: ows-to-be-resurrected-in-climate-emer- Santa Fe, NM, 1993. gency-fight, accessed April 12, 2020.

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ISSN: 1083-9194 19 Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology, Vol. 31 [2020], No. Seeing and Understanding Holistically Goethean Science and the Wholeness of Nature Henri Bortoft

Bortoft (1938–2012) was a philosopher, physicist, and science educator who wrote Taking Appearance Seriously (2012) and the influential Wholeness of Nature (1996). This essay was originally a paper for the conference, “Goethean Science in Holistic Per- spective: Scientific, Ethical, and Educational Implications,” held at Columbia University’s Teacher College, New York City, May 20–22, 1999. The essay is published with the permission of Jacqueline Bortoft. Note that, in the original written version of his talk, Bortoft does not provide complete references. Here, we have added citations as available, but some works remain unreferenced. The editor thanks Stephen Wood for assistance in locating references. This essay was originally published in four parts in the summer/fall 2018, winter/spring 2019, summer/fall 2019, and win- ter/spring 2020 issues of Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology. Several readers have requested that we republish the four parts as one complete essay, and we provide that request here. See EAP, spring, 2013, for the “in memoriam” issue devoted to Bortoft, including his essay, “The Transformative Potential of Paradox.” © 2020 Jacqueline Bortoft.

he central question I ask is what ity of the length of the diagonal of a trian- that which, despite everything, would al- contribution Goethean science gle with unit sides is accommodated by the ways remain single and whole?”]. Try makes to understanding the extension of the system of integers and though we may to split light into fundamen- T wholeness of nature. I contend fractions to “cover” cases that do not fit tal atomic pieces, it remains whole to the that there is something to be known about into that number system, so Bohr believed end. Our very notion of what it means to be the wholeness of nature to which Goethean it possible to accommodate the “irrational” elementary is challenged. Until now we science can contribute. I was first intro- wholeness in quantum physics by an anal- have equated smallest with most funda- duced to the problem of wholeness by ogous procedure of using the concepts of mental. Perhaps for light, at least, the most physicist David Bohm (1917–1992), when classical physics (the only physics he fundamental feature is not found in small- I became one of his post-graduate research thought there could be) in a way that would ness but rather in wholeness. students in the early 1960s (Bohm 1980, “cover” wholeness, even though whole- 2003; Bortoft 1982). Today, Bohm’s name ness as such does not fit into that concep- Completely absent from the world of is associated with wholeness and quantum tual system. classical physics, the irreducible “quantum physics but, in fact, this topic was first rec- Here, we reach Bohm’s disagreement wholeness” became even more evident in ognized and explored by physicist Niels with Bohr: Bohm believed it was possible the discussions between Einstein and Bohr Bohr (1885–1962), who saw that a new to have a content-filled idea of wholeness. that eventually led to the formulation of the factor in physics—what he called “an indi- The huge problem was how to do it? paradox of Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen visible wholeness” and completely absent (EPR) and its later reformulation in Bell’s in classical physics—arose because of the Irreducible quantum wholeness inequality theory (which has now received indivisibility of the quantum itself. The irreducible wholeness in quantum remarkable experimental confirmation; see Bohr was particularly concerned about physics is seen dramatically in the case of Zajonc 1995). This research made evident the consequences of this indivisibility for interference experiments with a single- that quantum wholeness cannot be de- measurement, a problem that led him to photon light source. There arises the diffi- scribed in terms of independent elements speak of the “unanalyzable wholeness” of culty of thinking of the single photon as externally connected. the measuring apparatus and the phenome- having a definite path as would be the case Quantum “non-locality” (as it is called) non being measured. Faced with this con- if the photon were a classical particle. If we seems to involve “two” objects that are far cern, Bohr adopted a somewhat pessimistic insist that the photon is a classical particle, apart physically and yet can be connected view: Although physicists might be able to then we find ourselves in the contradictory instantaneously as if they are not separated speak of the bare concept, “wholeness,” position of saying that the single photon at all. Again, we have a situation where the this was all they could say. Thus, there was travels simultaneously in both one path and language used contradicts what one is try- no possibility of identifying a more ade- two paths. How at the same time can some- ing to say—i.e., we are trying to describe quate, content-filled concept of wholeness thing that seems one also seem two? Here, quantum non-locality in the language of than its “unanalyzability.” with a vengeance, we have the irreducible physical locality. Bohr proposed that wholeness is an irra- wholeness of quantum indivisibility. As In the quantum domain, reality cannot be tionality in nature just as the square root of physicist Arthur Zajonc (1995, p. 299) ex- broken down into independent parts and the number two is an irrationality in math- plained, hence cannot be analyzed (if we mean by ematics. And just as the incommensurabil- that word “broken apart and measured”). Goethe was right [when he said about At this fundamental level of presence, the light, “How often do they strive to divide world cannot be thought of as composed of

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DOI: 20 Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology, Vol. 31 [2020], No. independent parts connected together in introducing what Bennett called “descrip- the meaning “cat,” the letters remain sepa- some way. tive fictions”—i.e., factors introduced into rate but are also connected in a subtler way We do, however, continue to think in descriptions that could not be found in ex- than linking them together by introducing terms of parts and whole, largely because perience. These factors often took the form an external connection of hyphens. This the very form of our language channels our of connecting linkages added to what was experience of seeing the meaning in com- doing so. Bohm pointed to the fact that the given directly in experience—for example, plete words (rather than as separated but subject-verb structure assumed by modern hypothetical entities functioning as hidden connected letters) parallels the experience languages tends to emphasize the role of causal mechanisms. Whereas what was of seeing wholeness directly. separate entities acting on other entities, in- connected entered directly into experience, Although I didn’t know at the time, this teracting by connections external to those these connections themselves did not be- way of seeing is in tune with Wittgen- entities themselves. He stressed how nouns cause they were postulated speculatively. stein’s “new way of thinking.” What I also are the dominant form, whereas earlier lan- The discipline required to describe ac- didn’t realize was that the transformation guages were often verb-based and there- tions and events, excluding all interpretive in Wittgenstein’s philosophy marking his fore did not encourage speakers to think fictions and yet giving a thorough descrip- later extraordinarily creative period was primarily in terms of separate, localized tion, seemed to focus our thinking in a brought about by his encounter with the entities. new, unfamiliar way (as well as evoking work of Goethe [2]. Wittgenstein’s later Niels Bohr himself was acutely aware of states of extreme irritation and exaspera- philosophy is concerned with “the under- the crucial role that language plays in hu- tion). We began to experience “break- standing that consists in seeing connec- man understanding. In fact, it was a major throughs” into a new kind of perception. tions,” which for him was a kind of seeing source of his epistemological pessimism There was a transformation in the mode of that did not need explanation because con- regarding quantum theory. As he ex- togetherness of the elements. At first, we nections are encountered directly. This di- plained, “We are suspended in language in saw these elements only as separated from rect seeing of connections was crucial for such a way that we cannot say what is up each other but, over time, we realized they Wittgenstein because he saw this kind of and what is down” (Petersen 1985, p. 302). were connected directly. In other words, seeing as understanding so that seeing and Since Bohr assumed we cannot escape they were connected at the start and, there- understanding are one, and there is no need from this situation, he thought that the only fore, there was no need to propose some for explanation because it is replaced by way we could describe the quantum world extra “connection” added on after the fact. seeing. Wittgenstein emphasized that to was via concepts already available to us— In seeing this mode of togetherness in connect two things, we do not need a third i.e., the concepts of classical physics. this transformative way, we realized that because things connect directly—i.e., they Hence, we had to learn how to use these one can see wholeness directly, where already stand in connection with one an- concepts in such a way as to accommodate “seeing” means phenomenological seeing other, and therefore there is no need to in- “irrational” quantum wholeness without and not the empiricist’s reduction of seeing troduce some additional connection exter- leading our understanding into contradic- to just sense perception [1]. Although the nally [3]. tion. He mounted a heroic rearguard de- context was different, we felt we had be- fense for a situation that he perceived as gun to learn how to do what Bohr had de- Discovering Goethe impossible. clared impossible: to see wholeness di- My first encounter with Goethe came later rectly as it is in itself (Bortoft 1971). and happened, by a stroke of good fortune, Seeing wholeness directly when a friend mentioned a book he thought Bohm thought differently and brought at- Both separation and wholeness I might find interesting—philosopher tention to the relationship between forms Because nothing extra is added, this expe- Ernst Lehrs’ Man or Matter (Lehrs 1958), of language and ways we perceive and rience of transformation in the mode of to- an introduction to Goethe’s way of science. think about the world. It was studying this getherness can be described as a situation In reading the book’s fifth chapter, “The relationship that partly led to my working where “nothing has changed, but every- Adventure of Reason,” I suddenly found with British philosopher J.G. Bennett thing is different.” When we see that the myself feeling completely at home. The (1897–1974) on the problem of language connections are intrinsic rather than extrin- limitation that Kant put on the human cog- and the perception of wholeness. Bennett sic, separation does not suddenly disap- nitive capacity to know wholes—“Above was particularly interested in time, believ- pear. Rather, we have both together: both all, it is not given to such a thinking to ing that our ordinary language led us into separation and wholeness. The experience think ‘wholes’ in such a way that through wrong ways of thinking about temporal is twofold but not dual. an act of thought alone the single items processes (Bennett 1956–1966). In my One can make a parallel with reading. contained in them can be conceived as work with him, he proposed an experiment Consider the three letters “c,” “a,” and “t” parts springing from them by necessity” in which we adopted an artificial language as they appear in the word “cat.” Perceptu- (Lehrs 1958, p. 82)—reminded me of that modified the way we describe simple ally, the letters appear as separate, and we Bohr’s strictures on our ability to under- actions and events (Bennett, Bortoft, and might attempt to overcome this separation stand quantum wholeness [4]. But here was Pledge 1965). by introducing external linkages as with Goethe declaring that he had done in prac- The aim was to see how this different “c-a-t.” This device, however, eclipses the tice the very thing that Kant declared im- language might modify our perceptions. A possibility of reading. When we recognize possible in principle for the human mind to key feature of the experiment was to avoid know [5].

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ISSN: 1083-9194 21 Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology, Vol. 31 [2020], No. In his conversation with Schiller, Goethe of his two papers on the implicate order, in prompted Goethe’s reply to Schiller, who had said that “there must certainly be an- which he took the hologram as a metaphor had said, “That is no experience. That is an other way altogether [rather than a piece- for the kind of wholeness that he saw as a idea.” But Goethe responded, “I am glad to meal way] that did not treat of nature as di- fundamental new order in physics (Bohm have ideas without knowing it, and to see vided in pieces, but presented her as work- 1980, chaps. 6 and 7). As with Goethe, them with my very eyes.” ing and alive, striving out of the whole into here was another instance of going from Looking back via Husserl, we recognize the parts” (Lehrs 1958, p. 104). Goethe’s the whole to the part. I realized that it that Goethe’s statement was an attempt to work on the metamorphosis of plants illus- should be possible to use this way of un- express the insight that only came later trated this movement from the whole into derstanding to show how the radically new with phenomenology—namely, that we the parts, rather than aiming to move from direction taken by Goethe was a reversal of can and do see ideas directly, but that lack- the parts to the whole, in the way it showed our habitual way of thinking. At the same ing an adequate basis for being able to say all the different organs up to the stem as time, one could use Goethe’s approach to this, Goethe made the mistake of attrib- metamorphoses of one and the same plant illuminate Bohm’s notion of an intrinsi- uting this seeing to sense perception. There organ (Goethe 1790/2009). cally implicate order. I was never able, is both a positive and negative here: nega- As I read Lehrs, it seemed evident to me however, to interest Bohm in the connec- tive, in that Goethe was mistaken about that Goethe could see the wholeness in na- tion with Goethe, perhaps because he was knowing being a matter of sense percep- ture directly and, more so, had developed a not willing to see past scientists’ and phi- tion; positive, in that he recognized a way set of specific practices that could lead to losophers’ typical stereotypical under- of knowing that is seeing. this holistic way of seeing. In fact, one of standing of Goethe’s science. In one sense, Goethe was a phenomenol- these methods—exakte sinnliche phantai- Also at this time, I discovered phenome- ogist, and phenomenology is a crucial way sie, or “exact sensorial imagination”—was nology, which came as a revelation—an of understanding his work, since it has al- familiar to me already from working with experience of stepping into a different di- ways been too easy to mistake his efforts Bennett. We had found that the practice of mension of mind, but one that is there in as naïve empiricism, which is not the case what we called “visualization” to be ex- front of us all the while, only hidden from at all. It is his phenomenological way of tremely valuable for using the mind in a our customary assumptions. The funda- seeing that is exemplified to some degree way allowing us to disengage from the ha- mental insight of Husserl’s phenomenol- by his science of color and his work on the bitual activity of mental associations, a ogy is that we see the necessary structure morphology of plants. One finds more re- dominant characteristic of the ordinary, of experience—the intrinsic necessity— cent examples in the work of zoologist discursive mind [6]. and not just the discrete particulars of ex- Wolfgang Schad (2019) on the morphol- Besides Goethe’s plant studies, there perience that empiricism assumes. Percep- ogy of mammals; and the work of biologist was also his work on color (Goethe tion is twofold: simultaneously, an aware- Craig Holdrege (1998) on seeing animals 1810/1970). Here, his insistence on staying ness of contingent particulars (just the facts whole. There is also the work of ecologist with the phenomenon and refusing to go as such) and perception of necessary struc- Mark Riegner (1993, 1998), who examines “behind” it by the artifice of introducing tures, connections, and relations among the the wholeness of landscapes as revealed hypothetical concepts or models seemed to facts (the idea as such). Empiricism does through their flora and fauna. be the aim of my work with Bennett, albeit not recognize this complementarity, col- our results were far inferior to Goethe’s ef- lapsing the two into one, which it identifies Husserl and Wittgenstein forts, which had produced what amounted with sense experience only. The result is As my work proceeded, the discovery of an to an entirely new way of doing science endless confusion—e.g., the notion that unsuspected affinity between Husserl’s (Bortoft 1996; Seamon and Zajonc 1998). experience itself is incomplete and re- phenomenology and Wittgenstein’s later I also immediately made a connection quires something added by “the mind.” philosophy was particularly astonishing, between Goethe’s work and quantum The key point is that we see directly the since many commentators claimed that the physics in that Goethe’s method pointed to way in which the particulars are neces- two thinkers were philosophical antipodes. the renouncement not only of classical sarily connected. We do not infer the nec- What we realize today, however, is that models in physics but of all models as essary connection by means of intellectual both Husserl and Wittgenstein, in different such. This is the positive side of Bohr’s un- speculation after seeing. We see the neces- ways, were working toward the same derstanding: by insisting that all models be sary structure directly because to know is recognition: that there is a direct kind of renounced, he thereby returned physics to to see—this is Husserl’s fundamental in- seeing that understands without explain- being truly phenomenological—in other sight and is not a metaphor. While we may ing—without the need to explain—be- words, returning to the original phenomena say that seeing the necessary structure in cause this way of understanding is seeing. from which physics as a science arose. the facts is analogous to the sensory seeing For Husserl, to know is to see; this aim of the facts, it would be better to turn the takes the form of seeing the necessary, in- Finding phenomenology phrasing around and say that sensory see- trinsic structures of the phenomenon. For Clearly, there was much to learn from Goe- ing is a particular species of seeing (instead Wittgenstein, there is a way of seeing that the, and I began to explore his work in de- of being the only real case of seeing, as is is also a way of understanding, which takes tail (Bortoft 1985, 1986, 1996, 2012, conventionally assumed). the form of seeing connections—the inten- 2013). At about the same time as I began It is the recognition of this integral to- this task, Bohm distributed draft versions getherness of seeing and knowing that

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DOI: 22 Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology, Vol. 31 [2020], No. sive interlinkages wherein things are to- Goethe’s way of seeing is illuminated by in medieval science, where mathematical gether directly because they “already stand Wittgenstein, just as Wittgenstein’s certainty had its place but was not given in connection with one another.” “new way of thinking” is illuminated by the privileged status of the way to truth. In this sense, the differences between Goethean science; Furthermore, there was no objective basis Husserl and Wittgenstein are far less sig- ▪ Husserl and Wittgenstein were, each in for this demotion in that no one suddenly nificant than their common ground: an ex- his own way, really concerned with the “discovered” that reality is only mathemat- perience of direct seeing likened meta- same kind of seeing; thus, unexpectedly, ical. phorically to another dimension of the phe- one realizes an affinity between two In fact, this emphasis on the mathemati- nomenon itself. In other words, what at the thinkers long thought to be different in cal had no “scientific” basis. It was not dis- start is seen as only “two-dimensional” is their ways of understanding. covered by science but incorporated into suddenly seen as “three-dimensional” [7]. science. Grounded in the cultural-histori- Toward a science of wholeness cal ethos of the time, this mathematical Affinities As I hope the above discussion indicates, I emphasis points to a free-standing decision But only with the publication of Ray am interested primarily in seeing and un- to do science in this way. “Free-standing” Monk’s Wittgenstein biography in 1990 derstanding wholeness, which necessarily is the crux here, since there is nothing in- (Monk 1990), did I first learn of the crucial requires a phenomenological science. My herent in nature that requires consideration influence that Goethe had on Wittgen- concern with Goethean science is the ex- only in terms of its mathematical aspects. stein’s emphasis on “the understanding tent to which it contributes to this science There is no intrinsic scientific basis for this that consists of connections.” Monk claims of wholeness. In locating Goethe’s contri- mathematical choice. Rather, this choice that this emphasis on seeing connections bution to this effort, I begin by considering works as a precept: this is how science will has no precedent in the Western philosoph- his work in the context of the historical de- be done and specifies what counts as “sci- ical tradition “unless one finds a place for velopment of modern science—a task that entific.” The result is a new organizing Goethe… in that tradition” (Monk 1990, p. Goethe himself found of considerable in- idea that transforms science itself. 316). In this sense, one might describe the terest. Goethean way of seeing the wholeness of In spite of our shifting understanding of The historicity of science nature in the manner of either Husserl or the nature of science, the “myth” of empir- The rejection of the senses and the affirma- Wittgenstein. For example, in his percep- icism continues today to dominate science tion of mathematics as the source of truth tive study of the horned mammals, Schad education and popular understanding. This arose from the way in which Platonic phi- makes visible what he calls “the awesome perspective assumes that scientific losophy was interpreted in the Renaissance inner logic of the organism” (Schad 1977, knowledge is based directly on the experi- (together with the role of the Sun as repre- p. 118), which could just as easily be inter- ence of the senses. Empirical observations sentative of God in the visible world and preted as seeing the necessary structure or and experiments are the grounds upon therefore the center of that world). principle (Husserl) or seeing the “gram- which scientific knowledge is built. In this This shift in understanding relates to mar” of intensive connections (Wittgen- view, modern science began when human what historians of science now refer to as stein). beings “came to their senses” and no the intrinsic historicity of science: that cul- Reflecting on the beginnings of my own longer relied on religious or philosophical tural-historical context enters into the very interest in the question of wholeness, I re- speculation. form that scientific knowledge takes. This alize that the work done by a small group The history of science, however, does recognition of an intrinsic historical di- of us with Bennett in the 1960s was unwit- not support this view. In fact, when we mension means that science is not, as is of- tingly an initiation into a wider movement look at the major scientific developments ten assumed, a self-founding and self-gen- in modern consciousness. Our stumbling from Copernicus to Newton, we find that erating activity with absolute foundations. attempts to learn how to see wholeness di- what actually unfolded was the opposite: Nor does this contextual recognition mean rectly in things, prepared a doorway for us people “took leave of their senses” in favor that scientific knowledge is somehow arbi- to enter into a much more comprehensive of the mathematical. From the beginning, trary or relative in a subjective sense. What cultural stream than any of us could have modern science elevated the mathematical it does mean is that nature is portrayed in realized at the time. The pathway I have above all other aspects of nature. Renais- its mathematical aspect because that aspect taken since then reveals certain unexpected sance scientists like Galileo contended that is an integral part of what nature is. But this affinities: the experience of the senses was an illusion way of understanding does not preclude and that reality was to be discovered accu- that there are other ways in which nature ▪ Goethe’s way of seeing is illuminated by rately only by going behind experiential can manifest and thus be. Husserl’s phenomenology, which appearances to discover mathematical rela- Once, however, scientists embark on a among other things, shows us the differ- tionships, ratios, and harmonies not visible research program emphasizing mathemati- ence between Goethe’s science and the to the senses directly. cal knowledge, the possibility of under- phenomenalism for which superficially But why should the mathematical be el- standing nature in other ways is mostly set it can be mistaken; evated above all other factors with the con- aside. At least at first, there was no sugges- ▪ Wittgenstein’s later philosophy was in- sequent demotion to secondary status of all tion that sensory qualities were not real as- spired directly by his encounter with non-mathematical aspects of a phenome- pects of the world, even if they were not Goethe’s way of seeing; consequently, non? There was nothing like this demotion

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ISSN: 1083-9194 23 Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology, Vol. 31 [2020], No. considered to be as fundamental as na- nomenon itself and substituting for the per- When we begin looking, we tend to fo- ture’s mathematical dimension. ception of necessity in the phenomenon cus on distinguishing colors. We give at- Over time, however, sensory qualities what is no more than an external explana- tention to the quality of each color and then were denied any “objective” reality in tion—“external,” that is, as compared to try to do for ourselves, via exact sensorial themselves and, instead, were taken to be the intrinsic nature of the phenomenon it- imagination, what nature provides via di- entirely subjective. Galileo seems to have self [10]. rect experience. We visualize the colors at first introduced this ontological bifurcation Goethe directed attention to the phenom- each edge, seeing them together in the or- into physics, and this point of view was enon in two stages. First, he attempted an der in which they appear. By making our- subsequently adopted by others, most no- active seeing, a way of encountering the selves reproduce the phenomenon we have tably Descartes. The result was that any- phenomenon considerably different from a seen in our mind’s eye imaginatively, we thing in nature not mathematical (i.e., iden- taken-for-granted registering of sense im- become aware of an aspect of the colors tifiable via quantity) was assumed to be pressions. In active seeing, one works to subtler than their separation into “red,” “subjective” and thereby excluded. The reverse the direction of seeing so as to go “orange,” “yellow,” and so forth. eventual result was the impoverishment of from the observer into the observed (rather One comes to realize that the colors are nature [8]. than from the observed to the observer, not just juxtaposed externally but belong which is the habitual way in which one together. There is a “belongingness” Incorporating secondary qualities looks and sees). among the colors at the two edges not vis- Goethe recognized that this elevation of This effort of active seeing is followed ible in sense experience alone. One can ex- the mathematical above other qualities of by what Goethe called exact sensorial im- press this quality by calling it “unity with- nature was unwarranted in that the empha- agination, in which one attempts, without out unification” (though perhaps “whole- sis had no intrinsic validity. He did not looking, to re-envision the original en- ness” is preferable to “unity” here). seek to devalue the mathematical approach counter. The effort is an imaginative but One can recognize this “belongingness” but to restore the distinction between the accurate consciousness of the phenomenon in Heidegger’s distinction between “be- sciences and mathematics in situations [11]. Unlike any fanciful imagination that longing together” and “belonging to- where this distinction had become con- embroiders the phenomenon and envisions gether.” In the former, the “belonging” de- fused, thus distorting a fuller understand- it as something more or less than it is, the termines the “together,” whereas in the lat- ing of nature [9]. aim of exact sensorial imagination is to be ter the “together” determines the “belong- His major aim was to renew the signifi- as true as possible to the perceived phe- ing.” In the latter case, we may “together” cance of the so-called “secondary” quali- nomenon. But this is not a static activity as things that don’t “belong” or simply miss ties of the natural world. In his light stud- if the aim were just to achieve an “inner” the way in which things already “belong” ies, for example, he took color as a phe- picturing of the phenomenon. Because we independently of any attempt on our part to nomenon in its own right and, by giving at- attempt to make the imaginative seeing “together” them [13]. tention to the phenomenality of color, he happen in a way that we do not need to do In workshops, it happens quite often that sought to discover the laws of color phe- with “outer” perception, there begins to be one or two participants spontaneously ex- nomenologically. He hoped to locate the movement and flexibility in our inner pic- perience a “movement” in the colors at the necessary connections that constitute the turing. edges. For example, one participant might “inner logic” of the qualities of color (such It is by this means that consciousness say that “the colors seem to grow out of “laws” being the equivalent in a phenome- shifts, and one becomes a participant in the one another,” or someone else suggests nological science of the quality of color to coming-into-being of the phenomenon ra- that “the boundaries of the colors have dis- the mathematical laws in the quantitative ther than an onlooker observing a finished solved, and I feel like I’m ‘swimming’ science of light). product. This shift of consciousness— from one color into another.” The irony is that, in returning directly to from static observations to unfolding pro- Goethe himself commented that no color the phenomenon via firsthand, sensuous cess—is the key to Goethe’s dynamic way can be considered as stationary [14]. For experience, Goethe was doing what many of seeing. It is this different way of encoun- participants not coming to this shifting pat- people assume science does anyway but tering nature that is Goethe’s most valua- tern directly, one can provide a “guided” which in fact is not done in its mathemati- ble potential contribution for deepening visualization from white to pale yellow, or- cal version. our understanding today [12]. ange, red, and black, and then the reverse. Practicing this shifting pattern of visualiz- A dynamic way of seeing Goethe’s prism experiments ing helps to facilitate a flexibility of seeing Goethe’s method for a science of color can We can get some idea of Goethe’s method [15]. be specified in one word: attention. He by considering the experience of looking Working with exact sensorial imagina- gives attention to the phenomenon in ques- through a prism at a white rectangle with a tion in this dynamic way has the effect of tion and thereby strives to guard against the black background. One sees colors at the strengthening the initially weak sense of introduction of any theoretical factors out- rectangle’s horizontal edges: red, orange, the colors belonging together. One result is side the phenomenon. Such external fac- yellow at one edge; violet and light blue at that we begin to experience a quality of ne- tors could only have the effect of obscuring the other. cessity in the colors. Instead of red, orange, the necessary connections within the phe- and yellow experienced as merely contin- gent—as if the order of these colors were

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DOI: 24 Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology, Vol. 31 [2020], No. just accidental—we experience the order the experiential investigation to what Goe- that what is necessary and essential—i.e., in the qualities as necessary. the called the Urphänomen—the primal or the pure phenomenon—shines forth in see- One way to become more aware of this archetypal phenomenon of color. Goethe ing. This is the phenomenological ground- non-contingent belonging is to visualize an does not mention this transition in “Contri- ing for the “One instance worth a thousand, incorrect color sequence—e.g., red, blue, butions to Optics” (1792), in which he lim- bearing all within itself.” yellow. Most participants recognize that its himself to an investigation of the for- this arrangement simply does not fit: “The mation of colors at different boundaries Universal and particular together blue popped out when I tried to make it go when seen through the prism [19]. What we realize in Goethe’s phrasing here between red and yellow. And the blue The “awkward point” is that the intro- is the emphasis on the universal in the par- makes a separation between the red and duction of the primal phenomenon seems ticular. We don’t see the particular as just yellow. They no longer seem together” like a discontinuity—a sudden jump in see- an instance of the universal in the way that [16]. It is crucial to our understanding of ing. For sure, the workshop leader can a particular triangle is an instance of the Goethe’s way of science that we can come smooth this transition over as a conjuror universal “triangle.” Rather, we see the to have the experience of necessity of the does when he comes to a “gap” in his per- universal in the particular so that, instead phenomenon itself. We are familiar with formance that he covers in a way that spec- of being merely an instance of the univer- this requirement in mathematics, to which tators don’t notice. But the fact remains sal, the particular becomes a “window” it is usually supposed that the intuition of that Goethe does not describe how he came through which we see the universal. Or we necessity is restricted. to his claim regarding the Urphänomen might say that the particular is a “mirror” It is here that Goethe’s way of science that “One instance is worth a thousand, in which the universal appears. becomes phenomenological instead of be- bearing all within itself”—a claim that, in This seeing is twofold—i.e., simultane- ing either phenomenal-empirical or hypo- relation to color, he found in the shifting ously universal and particular. Crucially, thetical-speculative. In both the latter situ- colors of the sun and sky [20]. however, there is no separation. The uni- ations, one goes outside the phenomenon Goethe speaks of this jump from lived versal is twofold but non-dual; it is not “be- to introduce elements of another kind from experiences of color to the broader Ur- hind” the particular and separate from it. outside the domain of color qualities them- phänomen as an aperçu—a sudden mo- The philosopher Ernst Cassirer empha- selves—e.g., wavelengths and their instru- ment of insight and understanding. But this sized that, for Goethe, “the particular and mental measurement. explanation does not tell us how Goethe the universal are not only intimately con- In rephrasing the phenomenon in these came to relate these particular facts—i.e., nected but… they interpenetrate one an- ways, there is no longer any necessity the changing colors of the sun and sky—to other.” Goethe said that “The universal and within the phenomenon. It has been con- the original prism experiments [21]. the particular coincide: the particular is the verted into something other than itself. This recognition that there must be an universal itself appearing under different When we see the necessity, then it is part “instance worth a thousand, bearing all conditions.” The mode of consciousness of understanding the phenomenon that within itself,” indicates that Goethe’s way that sees the universal in the particular is there is no need to look beyond it for any- of proceeding is phenomenological rather “inside out” to that which sees the particu- thing further. This point is very difficult to than empirical. An empirical procedure lar as merely an instance of the universal. explain to anyone who has not yet had the would collect many different instances of a In relation to Goethe’s color studies, one experience of necessity [17]. phenomenon and compare them to find realizes that, via the varying colors of sun A corollary is that, when we have not something they had in common. The pres- and sky, we see how colors arise from light reached the experience of necessity, then ence of this commonality would then be and dark alone—the darker colors arising we feel impelled to search for some expla- taken to be essential for the occurrence of from light overcoming darkness; the nation external to the phenomenon. One the phenomenon. An empirical approach lighter colors, from darkness overcoming recognizes this importance of necessity in involves induction—i.e., generalization light. The qualities of the different colors Goethe’s often-quoted remarks: arising from many cases. become intelligible in themselves. In a phenomenological approach, in con- In addition, the order of the colors be- ▪ Let the facts themselves speak for their trast, only one instance is needed to see comes intelligible, and the quality of ne- theory. what is essential. The difference is that, cessity is now grounded in the coming into ▪ Don’t look for anything behind the phenomenologically, we see the necessary being of the phenomenon itself—as also phenomena; they are themselves the principle in the facts. We do not infer, de- does the experience of the belonging to- theory. duce, or construct this principle but see it gether of the colors, particularly the two ▪ The greatest achievement would be to directly. This is not to say that such seeing different edge-color phenomena, which are understand that everything factual is always happens clearly at once. Rather, the now seen to belong together as a dynamic already its own theory [18]. recognition will more likely be achieved polarity. only with difficulty because, in many in- Where with the senses we see separate- The Urphänomen stances, there will be contingent and acci- ness, we can simultaneously see whole- There is an awkward point in workshops dental factors that obscure what is neces- ness—as we now see the wholeness of the on Goethe’s approach to color in which sary and essential. yellow sun and the blue sky, which are oth- participants must make a transition from What is needed is an instance in which erwise just juxtaposed facts. Where before these “asides” are reduced to such a degree there was only contingency, there is now

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ISSN: 1083-9194 25 Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology, Vol. 31 [2020], No. necessity grounded in the coming into be- while giving the illusion that it is returning means by the Urorgan, a term often trans- ing of the phenomenon. to the source by back-projecting the fin- lated either as “primal organ” or “arche- This dynamic relationship is seen espe- ished product into the origin. typal organ” (each of which is misleading cially when the “poles” of the two color There are two quite different movements in its own way, the first leading in the di- edges are brought together and green ap- of thinking here. If we cannot transform rection of Darwinism; the second, in the di- pears [22]. Now for the first time we have from the product into the producing, then rection of Platonism). Similarly, when the colors that Newton described as the our efforts at explanation can only take us Goethe talks about the Urpflance, it is sup- “spectrum of light” and that he took as the further away from what we imagine they posed that he means what all the many dif- beginning of his investigation. But now, take us toward. The result is Goethe’s dy- ferent plants have in common—the group instead of being just a contingent arrange- namic mode of consciousness: to follow plan of all plants. Here, again, the terms ment of colors, this spectrum is a necessary the coming into being of the phenomenon “primal plant” and “archetypal plant” are whole and intelligible as such. Each color instead of beginning with the phenomenon misleading. is intelligible in itself and hence in relation in its finished state. This different way of These misinterpretations can be dis- to the others, in terms of its coming into seeing and thinking may be his most im- pelled by looking at what Goethe says being. portant contribution to our understanding (though he does not always help himself Newton wrote about the origin of the today. here) and, on this basis, learning to see the colors seen with the prism, but the so- plant “striving out of the whole into the called “spectrum of light” that he took as From the whole into the parts parts.” It will help to first consider what his starting point is a secondarily derived Goethe’s way of seeing dynamic whole- others have said about Goethe before con- phenomenon instead of the simple phe- ness is encapsulated in his remark to Schil- sidering what Goethe says himself. At the nomenon he took it to be. He began with ler that there must be a way of seeing na- start, however, we should note that it is un- what is in fact already a “finished product” ture that “presented her as working and realistic to consider Goethe in isolation that he then tried to explain by projecting alive, striving out of the whole into the from the context of his time, a period when the colors back into light, imagining them parts”(my emphasis). We notice here a re- the search for “archetypal forms” was a already there but not visible until separated versal in perception: not from the parts to concern of many thinkers. In Germany, by the action of the prism. Newton’s claim the whole, but from the whole into the this interest was known as “transcendental was that the prism simply brings out what parts. The parts are seen within the whole, morphology”; in France, “philosophical is already there [23]. instead of seeing the whole arise out of the anatomy.” This approach extended to all Newton’s understanding here reminds parts. This way of seeing nature, “striving organisms—for example, the attempt to one of the person who, in Rumi’s saying, out of the whole into the parts,” is illus- find an archetypal form for all vertebrates tries to “reach the milk by way of the trated by Goethe’s own work on the meta- (pursued especially by Richard Owen in cheese.” What Newton claims about the morphosis of flowering plants and also in England). origin of color is like saying that cheese current Goethean research—e.g., Craig Comments made about Goethe, there- comes from milk because it is in the milk Holdrege, Mark Riegner, and Wolfgang fore, are typical of what is said of the mor- already. He no more describes the origin of Schad’s interest in the wholeness of the an- phological approach in general. In fact, color than this saying describes the origin imal organism and the organization of Goethe (who coined the term “morphol- of cheese. mammals as an organic whole [24]. ogy”) is almost invariably taken as repre- Goethe, on the other hand, does describe There are two common misunderstand- sentative of this school of biological the origin of color. He shows how the col- ings of Goethe’s way of seeing the meta- thought, even though his way of thinking ors are “excited” in the light when condi- morphosis of flowering plants. First, there is dynamical throughout and is different tions are right. When conditions cease, the is the misunderstanding that what he meant from the more static thinking of others with colors cease. Instead of starting with a phe- by metamorphosis is a historical or procre- whom he is often associated in the search nomenon that is a “finished product”—the ational change—i.e., that one organ for archetypal forms in the organic world. so-called spectrum of colors—he follows changes directly into a different organ as if, through the coming into being of this phe- for example, a petal changes into a stamen. An abstract, reductive unity nomenon. In doing so, he consciously par- This misunderstanding has been particu- Bearing this historical context in mind, the ticipates in the phenomenon instead of re- larly encouraged by erroneously thinking following are typical examples of the kind maining an independent onlooker. about Goethe in Darwinian terms. of thing said about Goethe, together with The other misunderstanding is to sup- similar statements about the project of Different movements of thinking pose that Goethe thinks of the different or- transcendental anatomy in general and the In making this transition from the phenom- gans up the stem—leaf, sepal, petal, sta- contribution of Richard Owen in particu- enon in its finished state to its coming into men—as being formed on the same pattern lar. These examples are taken from books being, Goethe ends up where we usually according to a common plan. This so- that happen to be on my shelves [25]: begin. What he does, in effect, is to go back called “ground plan” is imagined to be “upstream” and “flow down” again to fin- what the different organs have in com- “Goethe searched for the ideal archetype ish where the standard Newtonian explana- mon—their lowest common denominator. of the vegetable world, the general plan tion begins, a direction of understanding It is supposed that this is what Goethe common to all plants.” that simply flows further “downstream”

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DOI: 26 Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology, Vol. 31 [2020], No. “Goethe perceived the unity of plan or The idea of unity illustrated by these structure common to whole groups of or- quotations is the unity of what is “com- ganic beings.” mon.” But the common property that con- stitutes this unity is not separate from it but “Goethe believed that nature, despite its there in the multiplicity. The “unity in mul- diversity, was a manifestation of a single tiplicity” is part of the multiplicity of the plan or ‘Idea’. Consequently, it was his ob- given, being in fact a selection from the ject to reveal the underlying unity of na- contents of the given and is, therefore, not ture.” in any way different or separate from the We come in this way to “unity and mul- many individual entities (organs or organ- “Seemingly influenced by Plato’s theory of tiplicity” by the elimination of difference. isms). This is what is meant by saying that Universals, Goethe was transfixed by uni- The result is a unity that is abstract and re- “unity in multiplicity” is an abstract unity. formities and commonalities in nature.” ductive because it abridges multiplicity to Yet if we look at expressions such as

“The distinguishing characteristic of tran- unity and diversity to identity by finding “the underlying unity beneath the diver- scendental anatomy was the presupposi- the respect in which the different “entities” sity” or “an Ideal Plan or Type that lies be- tion of an Ideal Plan or Type that lay be- (organs or organisms) don’t differ at all but neath the multiplicity,” we realize that the hind the great multiplicity of visible struc- are the same. This is the static unity of self- very form of this phrasing introduces a sep- tures in the animal and plant kingdoms.” sameness, generated by a manner of move- aration between the unity and the multi- ment—“unity in multiplicity”—that is the plicity, as if the unity had been hyposta- “For Owen, … nature’s plan could be unity of the dead end. I repeat: sized into an abstract object itself. It is as if demonstrated … by seeking the underlying the idea of unity as what is common to unity beneath the diversity of living forms. “Unity in Multiplicity is the static unity many had “solidified” into a mental im- He sought the ‘archetype’ or ground plan of self-sameness.” pression of the common property as an ab- stract entity and, as such, is separate from on which all forms of life, or at least the With this movement of thinking, the “enti- vertebrates, are modelled. The archetype the multiplicity given to experience. ties” can be anything whatsoever. In the This manner of understanding produces was an idealized vision of the simplest form early “Socratic” dialogues of Plato, for ex- of living creature, from which the anato- a “doubling” of the world—an unneces- ample, they are virtues. The following quo- sary duplication that is the source of meta- mists’ mind had been stripped the special- tations are some other examples (at least in ized organs required by real living be- physics. The implication is always that the the form given to them by modern English unity “behind” or “underlying” the multi- ings.” translations). From these phrasings, one plicity is in some way superior to, or more We can recognize what happens here by notes that the movement of thinking is to fundamental than, the multiplicity itself. In following the movement of thinking that look for “unity in multiplicity”—a unity in this way, a two-world theory develops that produces these statements. We realize that which all differences are cancelled out, incorporates an ontological dualism: The this movement begins with the finished leaving only what is everywhere the same unity is more real than the multiplicity products, whether organs or organisms. [27]: even though it is the latter that is the more

This manner of thinking begins from a set “What is that common quality, which is the immediately visible. of entities taken as given, and from there it same in all these cases, and which is called The most influential example is the phil- can only go farther “downstream,” ab- courage?” (Laches) osophical tradition of Platonism, which stracting from the entities what is “com- cannot by any means necessarily be identi- mon.” Thus, by comparing any one organ “Isn’t it true that in every action piety is fied with Plato himself in any straightfor- or organism with another, this manner of self-identical? … What I urged you to do ward way. In Platonism, we encounter the thinking looks for similarities and rejects was not to tell me about one or two of these primary reality of Forms or Ideas over the differences, until one can identify one fac- many pious actions but to describe the ac- reality of visible objects that are secondary. tor as present in every organ or organism tual feature that makes all pious actions pi- The relation of the unitary platonic arche- of the set. This factor is then taken as what ous. For you were in agreement, surely, type to the multiplicity of sensory ob- the specific individuals all have in com- that it is virtue of a single characteristic… jects—e.g., Beauty to the things that are mon. The result, therefore, is unity in the that all pious things are pious.” (Eu- beautiful—is referred to as “being the one multiplicity. thyphro) over many.” Here, the unity is made trans- Thus, beginning with a set of given or- cendent and, as Aristotle pointed out, the gans or organisms A, B, C … (that organi- “We have discovered a number of virtues result is an unnecessary duplication of the cally are “finished products”), we reconsti- when we were looking for one only. This world of sense objects, since, in its crude tute them in the form of αA', αB', αC' …, single virtue, which permeates each of aspect, the reality of Forms or Ideas is where α is what is common and where A', them, we cannot find…. What is the char- clearly derived from the very sense world B', C' … comprise all about them that is acter in respect of which they don’t differ whose true origin the Forms or Ideas are different. This reconstitution can be repre- at all, but are all the same?” (Meno) then back-projected as being. sented in the drawing above, next column What we recognize here is the hyposta- [26]. tization of the “unity in multiplicity” to “a

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ISSN: 1083-9194 27 Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology, Vol. 31 [2020], No. unity underlying multiplicity,” a situation law is the same for all bodies moving with Unity behind multiplicity of trying to “reach the milk by way of the uniform acceleration (neglecting air re- In the historical development of science, cheese,” as a consequence of beginning sistance), no matter how they differ in the laws of nature have not only been un- from things in their finished state (the weight, size, physical nature, or chemical derstood as being the “unity in multiplic- given) and then going farther “down- constitution; where they are on the earth ity” but, more fundamentally, as being the stream” in abstraction, instead of reversing (or anywhere else); whether or not they are unity underlying or behind the multiplicity. the movement of thinking so as to catch moving; and so on. This perspective comes directly from the things in their coming-into-being and It is with Newton that this idea of the influence of Neoplatonism on the develop- thereby ending instead of starting with “the universality of science really caught hold ment of modern science, with its emphasis given” [28]. of the imagination, and the idea of a unified on the mathematical, together with the in- science that applies to all natural phenom- fluence of the Christian tradition [31]. Mathematical thinking ena begins to have widespread influence, What this means is that the mathematical The unity in the manifold phenomenon ap- not only in science but in the entire West- laws of nature are conceived as separate pears in the form of a “law of nature” in ern culture [29]. Newton’s first law of mo- from, and acting externally upon, matter in science, where it also usually takes a math- tion stipulates that “Every body….”—in the manner of the two-world metaphysics ematical form. Though such laws do not in other words, it is true regardless of all dif- of Platonism. In this picture, it is the math- fact have the form of “unity in multiplic- ferences whatsoever. In fact, the very term ematical laws that are ontologically more ity,” they are nevertheless most often pre- “body” in physics seems to denote a low- fundamental. In other words, they act on sented and understood as if they did. In it- est-common-denominator “thing” that has matter—i.e., they are not intrinsic to matter self, mathematical thinking is intrinsically been stripped of all differences. but impose order on what otherwise is dynamical, and its mode of unity is very But it was really Newton’s law of grav- chaos. different from the static unity of what ity that captured the imagination and be- Thus, in the fashion of metaphysical du- things have in common. From the way, came the very paradigm for the movement alism, these mathematical laws transcend however, that mathematical thinking is of thinking that finds “unity in multiplic- the world they act upon and were identified seen afterward—from an awareness of the ity” or “identity in diversity,” whereby the as being thoughts in the Mind of God, who “finished product,” which sees only the re- common factor within different phenom- was therefore conceived as a divine math- sults of mathematical thinking and not the ena comes to be seen as what is “essential,” ematician with his priest, the physicist, il- dynamics of the thinking itself—it seems whereas the differences come to be seen as luminating the mathematical Plan of Crea- as if the mathematical laws of physics refer merely “superficial.” How utterly unex- tion. Although this identification with God to what phenomena have in common, so pected it was to discover that the proverbial has now dropped out of science—notwith- that the unity in the phenomena that they apple falling from the tree, the moon orbit- standing the tendency of some mathemati- characterize has the form of “unity in mul- ing the earth, and the planets and comets cal physicists from Einstein to Hawking to tiplicity.” circling the Sun (all of which are evidently resurrect it—the dualism that it entails has Certainly, this is undeniably true of the so different), nevertheless have something not dropped away. way in which science is taught today. Take, in common with regard to which they don’t In some ways, this dualism is even for example, Galileo’s discovery that, for differ at all but are the same. And then to stronger in contemporary physics than ever uniformly accelerated motion, the total dis- “discover” that this pattern applies to all before—for example, the fundamental tance traversed from the start of the motion bodies in the Universe! equations of a unified field theory are is directly proportional to the square of We are so accustomed to this line of thought by some physicists to be independ- time that has elapsed. It is simply supposed knowledge that we not only fail to be sur- ent from, and ontologically prior to, the that, by experiment, this law was found to prised but fail to notice the movement of material universe itself. This claim often be the common factor in many instances. thinking that it assumes. The point can be seems strange to laypeople who suppose The history of science shows, however, made by seeing this manner of understand- that physicists discovered mathematical that this law was not discovered in this way ing through the eyes of someone from an- laws from an investigation of the intrinsic at all. In fact, the philosophy of science other culture in which it has not become properties of matter itself—i.e., these laws shows that it couldn’t have been discov- “second nature” to think in this way. One are not beyond matter but essentially part ered in this way. Certainly, it can be pre- example is what Nobel-Laureate physicist of it. This puzzlement is reasonable, even sented afterward (beginning with the “fin- T.D. Lee said when asked about his educa- though, if the laws of nature had not been ished product”) as if it had been, and there- tional experiences in China before emi- conceived as being separate from the mat- fore as if the unity in the phenomenon that grating to America: ter they act upon, and if the intrinsic nature this mathematical law represents has the of matter had had to be understood first, Without hesitation, Lee replied that it was form of “unity in multiplicity.” then more than likely modern Western sci- the concept of universality of physical laws From this external point of view, it does ence would not have developed at all. that had struck him most deeply—the idea seem to be the characteristic of mathemat- Again, a comparison with the Chinese that physical laws applied to specific phe- ical laws of physics that they exclude the situation makes this point clear. In tradi- nomena here on earth, in one’s living room ways in which phenomena differ in favor tional Chinese culture, the belief was that as well as on Mars, was new and compel- of what they have in common. In relation order developed spontaneously in the to Galileo’s discovery just mentioned, this ling…. [30]. world, out of the intrinsic character of the

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DOI: 28 Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology, Vol. 31 [2020], No. things themselves. Thus, the Chinese idea Nature “produces one part of another and the dynamical unity of self-difference. We of law was that it was latent within things creates the most varied forms by the modi- do not realize how fundamentally different and not imposed from without. Hence, fication of one single organ.” this situation is from the static unity of self- since everything had its own law, there was sameness [34]. no idea of universal law in the Western “The process by which one and the same sense. Consequently, the kind of scientific organ presents itself to us in manifold Multiplicity in Unity thinking that developed in China was very forms has been called the metamorphosis Following the growth of a plant in imagi- different from modern Western science of plants.” nation is one accessible way to discover [32]. this dynamical movement of thinking [35]. “It is a growing awareness of the Form This kind of thinking was subsequently The procedure is the same as in the work with which, again and again, nature plays extended from the physical to the organic on color: active seeing followed by exact and, in playing, brings forth manifold sciences. The idea was to find the morpho- sensorial imagination [36]. When we prac- logical laws of organisms, which would be life.” tice this method of looking and seeing, we for biology what the mathematical laws “The thought becomes more and more liv- find that we begin to experience the plant were for physics. The result would be biol- ing that it may be possible out of one form “striving out of the whole into the parts.” ogy as a properly based science as physics to develop all plant forms.” The idea of the dynamical unity of self-dif- already was. ference forms as a movement in our mind As suggested by the quotations I pre- In these descriptions, we see nature as if it were the plant itself doing this sented earlier, the kind of unity looked for “working and alive, striving out of the movement. in morphology was the “unity in multiplic- whole into the parts” and not just what the We now have difference within unity ra- ity” formed when the movement of think- parts have in common externally. Instead ther than a unity that excludes difference. ing begins with the finished products. As of beginning from the “given” (the finished Furthermore, this mode of “seeing” is con- in the case of physics, however, this as- organs or organisms) and going farther crete rather than abstract. Instead of a sumption did not stop at simply discover- “downstream” to abstract what is common, “unity in multiplicity,” we have “multiplic- ing what different organs or organisms had Goethe’s thinking moves “upstream” and ity in unity, which is the unity of the living in common. This “common plan” was very “flows” down with the coming-into-being source: often made transcendental—i.e., as a unity of the phenomenon. Consequently, he ends underlying or behind the multiplicity. This with “the given” that, in contrast, is the ar- “Multiplicity in Unity” is the dynamical archetype was conceived as being separate bitrary point of departure for modes of unity of self-difference.

from the organs or organisms that it orga- thinking assuming “multiplicity in unity.” We must be careful here not to think of nized, like the mathematical laws of phys- This facilitation of coming-into-being is “multiplicity in unity” as if it implied that ics. This archetypal understanding could the dynamic thinking of the participant unity is divided—in which case, it would play the role in biology equivalent to that mode of consciousness instead of the static not be unity. This error happens if we think played by the laws of physics. thinking of onlooker consciousness. What of “multiplicity in unity” in an extensive we see is the dynamical unity of the com- sense (as we would think of “unity in mul- Thinking moving upstream ing-into-being instead of the static unity of tiplicity”). Rather, if the unity is not to be We have already seen that Goethe is often the finished products. We could say that divided, “multiplicity in unity” must be in- associated with this manner of understand- this result is the dynamic unity of the living tensive, a situation that can be understood ing. We will now see, however, that the source instead of the static unity of the via simple examples such as dividing a hol- movement of his thinking is entirely differ- dead end. ogram or propagating a plant by means of ent—in fact, it moves in the opposite direc- This way of seeing turns the one and the cuttings [37]. tion. To provide this understanding, we many inside out. Instead of many different For example, we can contrast holograms will follow the same procedure as before ones that are the same, we now see one that and photographs. If we cut a photograph in by looking at some of Goethe’s statements. is becoming itself in many different ways. two, we have two halves with half its im- Once again, it is a matter of following the What is important to understand is that age on each piece. When we cut a holo- movement of thinking grounding these each of these different manifestations is the gram in two, however, we have, astonish- claims [33]: one itself and not another one—it is other ingly, two holograms with the whole image but not another. on both parts (though those images are “Hypothesis: All is leaf. This simplicity What we have here is self-difference in- somewhat less clear than the original im- makes possible the greatest diversity.” stead of self-sameness, whereby each is the age). We have divided the hologram mate- very same one but differently instead of “It has occurred to me that in the organ of rially but, optically, it remains one. each the different ones being the same. If the plant that we ordinarily designate as Clearly, there are two holograms materi- we follow this movement of thinking, we leaf the true Proteus is hidden, who can ally but, since each is the original whole, begin to see in the mode of consciousness conceal and reveal himself in all forms. there is, in some sense, one hologram only. corresponding to this concrete idea of or- Forward and backward the plant is only We easily miss what is happening in this ganic unity instead of the unity of abstrac- leaf.” hologram example because of our in- tion. This shift is the important step to grained habit of thinking in terms of the make because, otherwise, we cannot see

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ISSN: 1083-9194 29 Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology, Vol. 31 [2020], No. logic of solid bodies. The arithmetic of One instead of the extensive dimension of stayed for a moment; it unfolded and from wholeness is very different from the arith- many ones. within it new flowers continuously devel- metic of bodies. This difference points to For convenience, we shall adopt the con- oped with coloured petals and green leaves how we must think intensively rather than vention of distinguishing the intensive One [40]. extensively: it’s not one and another one from the extensive one by capital and small (two) but one and its own other (not two letters. Thus “multiplicity in unity” is an What is important here is that the expe- but one). In the intensive dimension of intensive dimension within the One. Nei- rience Goethe describes is intrinsically dy- wholeness, something can be one and ther one nor many but at the same time namical. It is not one plant followed by an- many at the same time—both same and both: This is the intensive dimension of other and another with a result that is an other. This situation means that ontology is One with the others of itself—“multiplicity extensive sequence of different plants. Ra- “free from the limitation of single-valued in unity” instead of the extensive dimen- ther, Goethe describes One plant be-ing it- existence” [38]. sion of one and another one. self differently [41]. What we must do here Perhaps the best we can say is that each Evidently, this intensive aspect cannot is “to give up thinking in terms of beings is the very same one and not another one, be mapped onto the bodily world; thus, we that do and think instead of doings that be” but this is not the best we can do because cannot form any sense-based mental pic- [42]. This formative doing—the be-ing of we can see it in the phenomenological ture of it. But we can see it in the phenom- the plant—is the self-producing “forming sense. Comparing the hologram with a enological sense, though it takes practice to itself according to itself” for which Goethe photograph helps to make this point in that, be able to do so, partly because we must set adopted the term “entelechy.” to achieve the same result photograph- aside the habit of forming mental pictures Furthermore, since Goethe did not ac- ically, we would have to make a copy of based on the bodily world we encounter cept a purely representational theory of the original photograph and then there through the senses [39]. knowledge (i.e., a Cartesian/Kantian epis- would be two because the copy is another temology), we should try to avoid reading one and not the other of the one. Thinking intensively what he says in the light of a subject-object Admittedly, the holographic and plant il- dualism. Thus the “movement that takes Indivisibility of the whole lustrations are somewhat static, but they place in imagination”—i.e., the effusions of plants—is not merely subjective but is This process of hologram division illus- are only intended to help us think inten- in fact the intrinsically dynamical One trates the mode of unity that I call “multi- sively rather than extensively. If we exam- plant be-ing itself imaginally instead of plicity in unity.” The value of such an ex- ine Goethe’s statements quoted earlier, we materially. ample is that it can form a template for see that they express a more dynamical It is a consequence of the disciplined thinking in a new way—in this case, help- quality. Here we see “multiplicity in unity” practice of imagination that the phenome- ing us to think intensively instead of exten- directly as the dynamical unity of self-dif- non (in this case, the coming-into-being of sively. In such cases, however, we must be ference. the One plant) can form itself imagina- careful not to confuse the container with At first reading, however, we might miss tively so that what is being experienced is the content. One way to avoid this diffi- the way that it is always the one organ or literally the self-manifesting of the phe- culty is to use several different examples. organism manifesting different forms of it- nomenon itself and not just a mental repre- For example, vegetative reproduction by self. In other words, it is always the same sentation of it. This seems strange to us taking plant cuttings is another illustration organ or organism ontologically because moderns—especially when we conven- that can help us to see the intensive “mul- existence is not single-valued in the inten- iently forget about the intractable difficul- tiplicity in unity.” Here, again, we tend to sive dimension of One. Some of these ties with a representational theory of miss what is happening because our cus- statements might be read in the extensive knowledge. tomary thinking is attuned to the external manner, in which case the differences But hermeneutic philosopher Hans- world of solid bodies. If we divide a fuch- would not be seen intensively as the One’s Georg Gadamer reminds us that “this in- sia plant into pieces and grow them all, we differences but extensively as the differ- volvement of knowledge in being is the have many new fuchsia, each separate ence of one organ or organism from an- presupposition of all classical and medie- from the others spatially. Organically, other—i.e., existence is now single-valued val thought,” which is understood as however, they belong together because so that there are many organs or organisms “knowledge as an element of being itself each is the same plant. There is “inten- with a common factor among them. and not primarily as an attitude of the sub- sively one” plant organically, but we see What Goethe means, however, by “met- ject” [43]. It is within the context of this “extensively many” plants that can be amorphosis” is this dynamical unity of hermeneutic tradition that Goethe’s fol- counted physically. self-difference—the intensive movement lowing remarks are to be understood: Here, again, we have the indivisibility of that produces the intensive dimension of One that is “multiplicity in unity.” This is the whole, which can be divided but re- Through the contemplating of an ever-cre- how Goethe’s description of the inner ac- mains whole. No matter how many plants ating nature, we should make ourselves we can count, in the intensive dimension of tivity of imagination should be understood: worthy of conscious participation in her wholeness there is One plant that is many production. but not many ones. What we discover here When I closed my eyes and lowered my head, I could imagine a flower in the centre is that there is an intensive dimension of There is a delicate empiricism that makes of my visual sense. Its original form never itself utterly identical with the object,

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DOI: 30 Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology, Vol. 31 [2020], No. thereby becoming true theory. But this en- for all others, and the entire series incorpo- the abstract universal of the empirical tra- hancement of our mental powers belongs rates a dynamical unity of self-difference dition [47]. to a highly evolved age. that generates an intensive dimension of Although Cassirer does not mention One. Goethe directly, it is nevertheless clear that An undivided wholeness This is what Goethe meant when he said what he says about the form of universal If we return to Goethe’s work on morphol- that “All is leaf.” Because of the habit of concepts is very much in accord with the ogy, we realize what he means when he thinking in the mode of “unity in multiplic- way that Goethe understood the dynamical suggests that the organs up a plant’s stem ity,” this statement is usually interpreted as wholeness of the organism. As Gerry Web- can be perceived in the mode of One or- implying somehow a common plan, with ster and Brian Goodwin explain, “Cassi- gan’s metamorphosing into different the term “leaf” referring to a kind of gen- rer’s important concept of ‘serial form’ modes of itself, whereupon the visible se- eralized image formed by abstraction. If re- seems to have been anticipated, if only in- quence of organs can then be seen as a ally engaged with Goethe’s meaning, how- tuitively, informally, and obscuring, by whole movement of which these organs are ever, we realize that this interpretation is Goethe in his ‘Theory of Metamorphosis’” simply “snapshots.” There is a reversal of like trying to fit a square peg into a round [48]. Webster and Goodwin draw on phi- perception in this way of seeing: The hole. losopher Ron Brady‘s work to show how movement is not made out of the sequence The reason for this dissonance is now Goethe’s transformation series of organs is of organs, but the organs are “made out of” clear: Goethe thinks of the organs, not as a of a similar kind to Cassirer’s concept of the movement—for example, physicist set of finished products to be compared serial form [49]. David Bohm’s holomovement, which he but, rather, as a “coming-into-being” series Though they discuss this link between described as “undivided wholeness in produced by the One organ metamorphos- Goethe and Cassirer, Webster and Good- flowing movement” [44]. ing into different modes of itself. The re- win also indicate how the two thinkers dif- What is perhaps most important to em- sult is that any one mode of this organ can fer in that Cassirer ultimately assumed a phasize here is the way this manner of see- function as a concrete symbol representing representational theory of understanding ing illustrates the true phenomenological the entire series thus generated. Alter- that separates being and knowledge into character of Goethe’s way of science. We nately, we may say that this diversely met- different domains, with the latter restricted see the discrete particulars and their intrin- amorphosed organ has no name and moves to the domain of cognitive representation. sic connection with twofold vision [45]. In through the series in both directions (e.g., Consequently, Webster and Goodwin see this case, the necessary connection is dy- a stamen is a contracted leaf; or a leaf, an Goethe’s phenomenology of organic form namical: It is the whole movement, of expanded stamen). Whichever way, what as emphasizing only “the epistemic order, which the individual organs now appear as is important is the dynamical wholeness of the forms of thought in terms of which be- arrested stages. There is a single form, but the series of organs and not what members ing is represented or described—the struc- it is not what the particular organs have in of the series have in common. ture of a set of concepts or propositions— common and it is not what is “behind” the and not to the forms of being per se, the appearances. Rather, it is the unity that is Participating in thinking ontological order” [50]. the whole movement whereby the single The difference between the concrete dy- To some extent, the tendency to depend form is not static but dynamical. A com- namical wholeness of the series and the ab- on a representational theory of knowledge mon form could not generate the move- stract common factor of a set was recog- is itself a consequence of failing to incor- ment, whereas here it is the movement that nized very early on by philosopher Ernst porate a dynamical mode of consciousness generates particular forms. As Brady Cassirer. He saw that, although universal in scientific thinking. The reductive result writes, concepts were traditionally (i.e., in the em- is that thinking remains in the onlooker pirical tradition) supposed to be formed by mode of consciousness and consequently Thus the movement is not itself a product the abstraction of a common factor, this too closely tied to things in their finished of the forms from which it is detected, but widely held view was intrinsically contra- state. As a result, the question of rather the unity of those forms, from which dictory because it presupposed the very knowledge becomes that of how we can unity, any form belonging to the series can concepts the origins of which it sought to know things that have already become with be generated [46]. explain. the result that the subject-object dualism of Cassirer recognized that, more funda- representational theory seems quite “natu- Furthermore, we can now see why any mentally, concepts in mathematics and ral.” form belonging to the series (whether of mathematical science took the form of a se- In contrast, a dynamical mode of con- leaves only or all organs up the stem) can ries rather than a common factor. Once the sciousness invokes a participation in be taken as representing all others in the se- general principle is known, then far from “thinking the coming-into-being of things” ries. Each part is a manifestation of the eliminating differences, it is possible to and encountering generatively what other- whole (“striving out of the whole into the generate all the different possibilities. In wise we would only know as a completed parts”) so that each member of the series is other words, the particular cases in their product. In Goethe’s manner of seeing, the the One organ metamorphosing into differ- concrete totality can be evolved from the coming-into-being of the phenomenon ent modes of itself. Thus, any organ of the concept so that the concept can be said to forms itself in thinking so that the dynam- series can function as a concrete symbol include diversity within itself. In short, the ical mode of understanding is no longer di- concept is a concrete universal instead of vorced from the phenomenon. Knowledge

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ISSN: 1083-9194 31 Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology, Vol. 31 [2020], No. is no longer apart from being because a new way. His perceptive, readily under- has its own reason to be.” This phrase de- knowledge is the phenomenon be-ing itself standable examples facilitate a new move- scribes precisely what a phenomenological through thinking. Understanding becomes ment of thinking. As one studies the book, science of wholeness is about: giving at- a part of being itself. he or she is astonished to see the wholeness tention to seeing the “idea” of the organism of nature emerge in such a natural way that (in the same sense that we say, in practical The whole entering into each part it seems as if it is there “in front of our very life, “I’ve got the idea of it now”). In a sim- When we are able to encounter nature eyes” (but of course it is not). ilar way, Husserl used the term essence “working and alive, striving out of the Schad’s way of seeing is so clear that (Wesen) by which he meant not something whole into the parts,” we come to see the I’m convinced it makes a far better intro- hidden behind the appearances or some whole reflected in the part because the part duction to a Goethean phenomenology of supposed inner core but the characteristic is an expression of the whole—literally a nature than Goethe’s work on color that way of being of something that presents it- part-ial expression. When we look in this more often gets phenomenological atten- self directly in experience. way, we really see the unity of nature as tion [51]. When we see nature “striving out This is what Holdrege (2009) does so the dynamical unity of self-difference and, of the whole into the parts,” via Schad’s beautifully in his work on the sloth. He hence, in the mode of the intensive dimen- example of mammals, we see in a way that shows how the characteristic way of this sion of One. It is especially characteristic is “inside out” to what is usual. We see creature’s being reveals itself through a of what is living that, in philosopher Ron how the whole enters into each part, which range of manifestations so that “Every de- Brady’s succinct phrase, “It is becoming is therefore a part-ial expression of the tail can begin to speak ‘sloth’.” other in order to remain itself” (Brady whole. Phenomenology does not try to explain 1987, p. 286). This way of seeing naturally leads to a but to understand. It tries to catch sight of Anyone can practice this way of seeing. dynamical classification of the mammals the intrinsic intelligibility of the phenome- For example, one can see a particular fam- instead of the static “pigeonhole” classifi- non (“its own reason to be”) instead of ily of plants in its organic mode. It is an cations with which we are more familiar. leaving the phenomenon and thereby ex- enlivening experience to observe the dif- The difference between a thinking arising plaining it by means of something outside ferent members of a family such as the from a “coming into being” and a thinking itself. When we begin to see the whole an- Rosaceae (rose, blackberry, strawberry, arising from a “finished product” is expe- imal, then each of its details is seen to be apple, and so forth) and realize they are rienced vividly in Schad’s account, which consistent with the characteristic way of One plant in the form of “multiplicity in leads us to discover intrinsic relationships that animal’s being. unity.” How different this experience is among mammals that otherwise would not For example, we see this characteristic from that of looking for what these differ- be recognized. As Schad explains, way of being in the giraffe, a mammal that ent plants have in common! cannot be considered in isolation from Here, we witness the awesome inner logic other mammals if we are to come to expe- A Phenomenology of mammals of the organism and experience a diversity rience the being-what-it-is. In other words, Though Goethe’s way of seeing works sat- ordered in a living way and not merely the giraffe must be seen in the context of isfactorily with plants, one finds it intensi- schematized (Schad 2019, p. 4). all the other mammals within the order of

fied when looking at animals. Here, we ungulates. The most striking feature of the In Schad’s understanding of mammals, we turn to the extraordinary work of biologist giraffe—its long neck—becomes intrinsi- see the phenomenological science of na- Wolfgang Schad (2019) and ecologists cally intelligible when one realizes that: ture clearly—i.e., that it is phenomenolog- Craig Holdrege (1998, 2003, 2009) and ical in Husserl’s sense because it returns to Mark Riegner (1993, 1998, 2008, 2013). The tendency [of ungulates] towards elon- “the things themselves.” Schad’s work on Their research provides some of the best gation is carried to an extreme in a very animal wholeness also exemplifies Witt- examples of the phenomenology of nature particular way in the giraffe, which does genstein’s new kind of understanding (re- that we yet have. This work is rooted in a not merely have a long neck. Rather, this placing explanation) that consists in seeing Goethean approach yet developed and pre- length is mirrored in the formation of the relationships—i.e., recognizing the way sented with only minimal reference to rest of its body, especially in its very long whereby things (in this case, mammals) Goethe. This distancing is important if legs (Schad 2019, p. 667). “already stand in connection with one an- phenomenological research on the whole- other” (the “grammar” of the mammals) When the wholeness of the giraffe is ness of nature is to develop into a real sci- [52]. seen, every detail begins to speak “gi- ence. What is not needed is making Goethe raffe.” The long neck is now no longer seen into some sort of romantic scientific hero, as a contingent feature, an accidental de- battling against mainstream Western sci- Intrinsic relationships velopment resulting from random variation ence. The phenomenologist of nature sees the in- and natural selection but as a necessary ex- All the themes I have discussed here are trinsic relationships and necessary struc- pression of the characteristic way of being exemplified in these animal studies when tures that, otherwise, would appear only that is the giraffe. This “elongation” is con- seen in the light of “multiplicity in unity” externally as contingent facts. Holdrege’s sistent with all the other necessary mani- rather than “unity in multiplicity.” Schad’s research on the “whole organism” begins festations of the giraffe’s “being-what-it- book works as a “template” for thinking in with Goethe’s remark that “Every creature is” so that one recognizes a coherent whole in which no detail is contingent. No longer

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DOI: 32 Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology, Vol. 31 [2020], No. is any creature just a bundle of accidental from thinking in terms of static endpoints. ing. We then see how “the world” is con- developments as claimed by current geno- There has been a shift toward thinking in stituted in experience, whereas, in the nat- centric biology. terms of coming-into-being. ural attitude, we begin at the end with the It is a consequence of the way that mod- This dynamical mode of understanding world as independent object (what is ern biology developed that the organism as is illustrated in quantum physics, which “given”) and then try to explain experience such has disappeared to be replaced by has moved away from thinking in terms of in terms of the world (instead of under- genes as the fundamental units of life [53]. entities in their finished state. One example standing the way that the world is consti- As a counter to this reductive, genetic view is the development of so-called “elemen- tuted in experience). of organism, an alternative “organo-cen- tary particle” physics, which provides an Beginning at the end, we ask how our ex- tric” biology—i.e., a biology of the whole exceptional illustration of the need to think perience “in here” is related to the world organism—cannot possibly be overesti- in a dynamical, transformative way. Phys- “out there.” Thus, we begin with the sepa- mated. Even without considering the ge- icist Werner Heisenberg never tired of ration of subject from object, whereas in netic factor, the conventional tendency pointing out that there really are no ele- phenomenological seeing, we catch the among biologists is to see organisms in a mentary particles comprising the ultimate coming into being of this separation. We mechanical fashion—i.e., as an aggregate building blocks of the universe or the ulti- realize that any representational theory of of parts rather than an organism-as-whole. mate constituents of matter. He maintained knowledge based on this subject-object One example is Holdrege’s study of the that our familiar language of “division” separation ends in a cul de sac because it cow (Holdrege 2004, ch. 4), which demon- and “consists of” is highly inappropriate starts from the end and therefore gets strates how the isolation of a single fac- and obstructs our understanding of the re- things “back-to-front.” Any representa- tor—milk production—leads to unhealthy markable processes actually taking place. tional theory of knowledge is another case practices that would be ended immediately Experiments with high-energy machines of milk and cheese. if we saw the organism as a whole and not do not show the fragmentation of matter A particularly good example of the dy- just an aggregate of traits and functions. but, rather, its dynamical unity. All the dif- namical mode of thinking typical of phe- When the organism is seen as no more than ferent “particles” that appear are in fact nomenology is provided by Gadamer’s un- an aggregate of bits, then it seems quite mutable forms of one another and self-dif- derstanding of hermeneutics, which begins natural, now that biotechnology is availa- fering forms in which energy-matter can with the coming into being of meaning in ble, to simply change one part of the crea- appear. the event of understanding (rather than be- ture, independently of other parts. With ge- What is observed in these revealing ex- ginning with meaning as a finished product netic engineering, this piecemeal manipu- periments should be seen in the manner of in the author’s mind). By following the lation of organisms is commonplace. As the dynamical unity of self-difference, pro- coming into being of meaning in the event Holdrege (1998, p. 230) concludes: ducing “multiplicity in unity”—i.e., a of understanding, we discover that this ex- mode of the intensive dimension of One. perience takes the form of the dynamical In this respect, the ignorance of the life of Instead of fragmentation, there is unity, al- unity of self-difference. When we see the organisms in our day is staggering, and beit in a form that we weren’t expecting way that Gadamer’s hermeneutics illus- Goethe’s approach is needed more than and therefore overlooked at first. On the trates the dynamical unity of self-differ- ever. other hand, when we say that such experi- ence, we find the closeness to Goethe’s or- ments are revealing the fundamental build- ganics quite astonishing! One of the most significant values of ing blocks of matter, we project our think- Goethean science is countering this reduc- ing backward and see the situation back-to- Modes of counterfeit wholeness tive, piecemeal approach to the natural front. In other words, we lose sight of the I end by emphasizing that the science of world, particularly as one might facilitate formative processes and only see instead wholeness can take two counterfeit forms, research and education in Goethean phe- the finished products—yet another in- the first of which is systems thinking, nomenology. stance of trying to reach the milk by way which ranges from Ludwig von Ber- Appearance and being together of the cheese [55]. talanffy’s “general systems theory” (Ber- talanffy 1968) to Ervin Laszlo’s “evolu- By facilitating a “coming-into-being” ra- A dynamic phenomenology tionary systems theory” (Laszlo 1987). ther than assuming a finished product, Instances of this dynamical way of Whatever its specific formulation, systems Goethe avoided a metaphysical dualism thinking are not confined to science alone. thinking claims to be a science of whole- without falling into the flatland of positiv- In various ways, this approach is a hall- ness. These formulations are a “mechanis- ism. He avoided separating being and ap- mark of some of the major movements in tic” counterfeit in the sense that, no matter pearance, where being is “behind” the ap- twentieth-century philosophy, especially how sophisticated, they ultimately fail to pearance, without reducing everything to in the case of phenomenology. escape from the mechanistic paradigm “merely” appearance. Instead, appearance The shift of attention from what Husserl they claim to counter—the so-called “Car- is the manifestation of being [54]. called “the natural attitude” to seeing the tesian” or “Newtonian paradigm.” Goethe’s dynamical mode of conscious- taken-for-grantedness of that natural atti- One key problem with systems thinking ness is in tune with a development in think- tude has the effect that we catch (but not is that it sees things in isolation from one ing that has gradually developed over the catch hold of) “the world” coming into be- another and therefore ignores the ways in last 200 years. There has been a shift away

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ISSN: 1083-9194 33 Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology, Vol. 31 [2020], No. which things already belong to- gether. Unaware of this intrinsic relationality, these theorists ar- bitrarily identify parts that are not really of the whole because they don’t belong [56]. Holism is the second counter- feit form of a science of whole- ness. In contrast to systems the- ory, holism overreaches the whole in that, whatever form it takes, this manner of under- standing always turns wholeness into something metaphysical. Often irrational, mystical, and pseudo-spiritual, this manner of holistic thinking typically re- jects science and has too often been used as a front for preju- 5. Kant’s motivation here may well have been that 10. For a discussion of how this approach differed dice and domination, the most egregious he hoped to save Newtonian mathematical physics from Newton’s work on light and color, see Bortoft example being Germany’s National So- not only from the skepticism of Humean empiricism 1996, pp. 205–07; pp. 223–26. Also see Bortoft 1971, cialism. Too often Goethe has been un- but also from the claims of Swedenborgian “spirit 1982, 1985, 1986, 2012, 2013. seeing,” which for Kant posed an equal threat to what 11. Exact sensorial imagination is often mislead- fairly associated with holism, as in the he saw as the greatest achievement of human ingly described as producing a mental image in con- “Goethe against Newton” syndrome. This knowledge—mathematical physics. sciousness, whereas phenomenologically it is not a association has done much to harm Goe- 6. The capacity to form mental images intention- content of consciousness but a mode of consciousness the’s remarkable contribution to the evolu- ally was crucial for Bennett, and he sometimes called and a special kind of intentionality. the practice by the German word vorstellung. 12. Hjalmar Hegge (1987) identified the practice tion of scientific thinking. 7. At a 1986 seminar at London’s Goethe Institute, of exact sensorial imagination as the means by which I summarize the three contrasting ap- philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer declared that necessary connections can be seen within the domain proaches to wholeness via the diagram “Wittgenstein has the same kind of phenomenological of qualities. Mastering Goethe’s method of seeing and above. Note that in both counterfeit ver- imagination as Husserl.” Philosopher John Heaton understanding amounts to a way of developing the told me that people in Vienna who knew Wittgenstein mode of consciousness needed for Goethe’s way of sions, the movement of understanding is in the 1930s said that he was really doing phenome- science. In other words, the activity of Goethean sci- away from the phenomenon as that phe- nology (and this at a time when, according to the ence is an educational activity. It is the education of a nomenon is in itself. In contrast, Goethe’s standard Wittgenstein narrative, he was a logical pos- mode of consciousness. approach moves into the parts as they illu- itivist!). 13. For a thorough explication of “belonging to- 8. There are no grounds for this way of understand- gether” versus “belonging together,” see Bortoft, minate the whole. An authentic science of ing nature other than the elevation of the mathemati- 1996, pp. 3–26; 290–320. wholeness as exemplified by Goethe’s cal, for which, in turn, there are no grounds other than 14. See Theory of Colours, ⁋ 772 (Goethe 1970). phenomenological approach should today cultural-historical context. This situation did not stop 15. Older workshop participants sometimes have interest all individuals who aim to avoid thinkers from trying to offer foundations, but the key more difficulty with exact sensorial imagination, per- point is that there is no intrinsic scientific foundation. haps because the capacity atrophies through lack of the pitfalls of intellectualism, on one hand, Descartes made the most notable effort to provide this use. But it can be restored given time. and mystical pseudo-science, on the other. foundation by arguing that the new science of mathe- 16. Biologist Brian Goodwin first suggested this matical physics was grounded both ontologically and effort to visualize a wrong color sequence. Notes methodologically in God. For further discussion, see 17. The awkwardness is that we usually don’t rec- 1. At the time, because we were not aware of the Bortoft 1996, chaps. 1–3. ognize that we were experiencing the order as contin- phenomenological perspective, we were not able to 9. Note the two following passages from Goethe: gent and accidental until after we have begun to ex- make this distinction between seeing directly and see- perience the quality of necessity—a situation that ing reduced to sense perceptions. An important task: to banish mathematical-philo- makes describing this difference difficult. 2. And at the time, I knew nothing of Goethe either. sophical theories from those areas of physical science 18. One thinks of related comments by Wittgen- 3. During the time I worked with Bennett, we were where they impede rather than advance knowledge, stein: “A phenomenon isn’t a symptom of something influenced by Wittgenstein in the approach we took those areas where a one-sided development in mod- else. It is the reality” (Wittgenstein 1953, section toward language, but his influence was mostly limited ern scientific education has made such perverse use 126). Or “Since everything lies open to view, there is to our emphasizing the ways in which language can of them. nothing to explain” (Wittgenstein 1964, p. 283). “sleepwalk” us into using concepts inappropriate for 19. Goethe understood the Urphänomen of color to a given situation, leading one into confusion that he I can receive mathematics as the most sublime and be the tension between light and darkness—what he or she then mistakes for some difficulty in the situa- useful science, so long as they are applied in their described poetically as “colors as the deeds and suf- tion itself—for example, a “problem” to be “solved.” proper place; but I cannot commend the misuse of ferings of light.” Lightness overcome by darkness This alternative way of seeing was very much “in the them in matters which do not belong to their sphere, leads to the lighter colors of yellow, orange, and red, air” in Britain in the 1960s, but we were unaware of and in which, noble science as they are, they seem to while darkness overcome by lightness leads to the Wittgenstein’s emphasis on a new kind of seeing— be mere nonsense. As if, forsooth! Things only exist darker colors of blue and indigo. Goethe argued that, i.e., an understanding that sees connections and thus when they can be mathematically demonstrated. It in nature, the Urphänomen could be seen in the sun’s removes any need for explanation. would be foolish for a man not to believe his mistress’ shifting color—from yellow at midday to orange and 4. These strictures might have been because Bohr love because she could not prove it to him mathemat- red while setting; or in mountain ridges receding in had absorbed the Kantian attitude. ically. She can mathematically prove her dowry, but the distance, with nearer ridges indigo and farther not her love! ridges blue. Goethe understood the blue of the sky as

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DOI: 34 Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology, Vol. 31 [2020], No. the lightness of the atmosphere in front of the dark- modes of understanding not traditionally found in more in the product (e.g., “the unification of multi- ness of outer space. Chinese culture. plicity”) and, at other times, becoming free from this 20. See note 19. 31. And, subsequently, the emergence of the Na- static sense and moving toward the processual (e.g., 21. My guess is he found the idea of the Urphäno- tion State, with its transition from common law to “we have to create this multiplicity”). men in a book. This determination is not unusual— statute law. 48. Webster and Goodwin 1996, p. 110. Copernicus, for example, explained that he found the 32. See Needleman, 1976. 49. Brady 1998. idea for the heliocentric universe in ancient books. In 33. No citations are provided for these quotations. 50. Webster and Goodwin 1996, p. 101. this sense, it is not what one finds but what he or she In his last entry of this list, Bortoft quotes Rudolf Stei- 51. See Bortoft 1996, pp. 212–36. does with it that counts. We know that Goethe re- ner (1963), who wrote that Goethe “seeks to bring the 52. See the first part of this essay for Bortoft’s re- searched thoroughly the history of color, and he may diversity back into the unity from which it originally marks on Wittgenstein. well have found his “One instance worth a thousand, went forth.” 53. See Goodwin 1994. bearing all within itself” in the writings of the Renais- 34. In parentheses, Bortoft writes that “You know 54. As Gadamer (1989, p. 484) explained, “being sance painters—Leonardo da Vinci perhaps? If this is that you’ve seen it when you feel that your seeing has is self-presentation.” true, it would explain why there seems to be such a been turned inside out.” 55. Bortoft draws on this phrase several times in “jump” when presenting Goethe’s work on color in 35. In parentheses, Bortoft writes that “I have Parts I–III of this series. workshops. Nevertheless, by whatever means Goethe found a Busy Lizzie plant very helpful.” 56. In Wholeness of Nature, Bortoft (1996, p. 290) came to it, the recognition that there is a connection 36. See Bortoft’s earlier discussion of active seeing writes: “[Systems thinking] tries to put together what between the prismatic colors and the colors of the sun and sensorial imagination. already belongs together. Thus, the intrinsic related- and sky is an insight in itself. For further discussion 37. In parentheses, Bortoft writes that “As simple ness is not seen, and instead, external connections are of the Urphänomen, see Bortoft 1996, pp. 231–46. as these examples are, it helps to think doing them in introduced with a view to overcoming separation. But 22. Significantly, when one uses the prism to view imagination instead of only thinking of the result.” the form of such connections is such that they, too, a black rectangle on a white background, one sees 38. Bortoft attributes this quotation to philosopher belong to the level of separation.” how the two colored edges move together in reverse J.G. Bennett but does not provide a citation. On order and “blend” to generate a new color—a ruby- Bortoft’s relationship with Bennett, see the earlier References magenta, or “peach blossom,” that is the complemen- part of this essay. Bennett, J.G., 1956–1966. The Dramatic Universe, 4 tary color to green. One can now form a circle that 39. The intensive dimension of One is no stranger vols. London: Hodder & Stoughton. marks Goethe’s color wheel based on complementary than many of the “difficulties” we face in quantum Bennett, J.G., 1977. Talks on Beelzebub’s Tales. York colors. The result is a circle that is a dynamic whole physics—think, for example, of the interference ex- Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser. in which, as Goethe wrote, “no color can be consid- periment with a single photon. The fact that we cannot Bennett, J.G., Bortoft, H., and Pledge, K. W., 1965. ered stationary.” map the intensive dimension of the One into a sensory Towards an Objectively Complete Language, Sys- 23. For a discussion of the ambiguities and hidden representation does not mean that it is an abstraction. tematics, 3(3): 185–229. influences in Newton’s 1672 paper to the Royal Soci- On the contrary, “multiplicity in unity” is a concrete Bertalanffy, L. von, 1968. General Systems Theory. ety, see Bortoft 1996, pp. 192–212. unity, even though it cannot be recognized sensorily NY: George Braziller. 24. For example, Holdrege 1998; Riegner 1993, or caught in the logic of solid bodies. It is “unity in Bohm, D., 1980. Wholeness and the Implicate Order. 1998, 2008; Schad 2019. multiplicity” that is abstract. London: Routledge. 25. No citations are provided for these quotations. For further discussion of the hologram, see Bortoft Bohm, D, 2003. The Essential David Bohm, L. 26. Bortoft explains that, in this diagram, he adapts 1996, pp. 4–13. Nichol, ed. London: Routledge. a notation used by Ernst Cassirer in Substance and 40. No citation is provided for this quotation. Bortoft, H., 1971. The Whole: Counterfeit and Au- Form (Cassirer 1980). 41. In parentheses, Bortoft writes that “A some- thentic, Systematics, 9 (2): 43–73. 27. No citations are provided for these quotations. what more static (because non-living) ‘model’ is il- Bortoft, H., 1982. A Non-Reductionist Perspective for 28. There can be no transcendence without imma- lustrated by the construction of a multiple hologram, the Quantum Theory [thesis]. London: Department nence, or immanence without transcendence because which lacks the intrinsically dynamical character of of Theoretical Physics, Birkbeck College. each is the condition of possibility for the other. There living being but does nevertheless demonstrate the Bortoft, H., 1985. Counterfeit and Authentic Wholes: is duality here but no dualism—no dichotomy as there notion of ‘multiplicity in unity’ in a way that imitates Finding a Means for Dwelling in Nature. In D. Sea- is in the two-world theory, where each world is mutu- artificially the dynamical wholeness of living be- mon and R. Mugerauer, eds., Dwelling, Place and ally external to the other. The difficulty arises from ing”—see Bortoft 1996, Part 2, note 58. Environment: Towards a Phenomenology of Per- the counterfeit transcendence, which has the quality 42. Bennett 1977, p. 64. Bennett’s precise phrasing son and World. Dordrecht: Martinus-Nijhoff, pp. of externality and is therefore conceived as being sep- is: “We can hardly bring ourselves to see that there 289–330. arate from and outside the sense world, and hence as are doings that be things. If I say something, it is not Bortoft, H., 1986. Goethe’s Scientific Consciousness. another “world” (see Miller 2005, esp. pp. 120–21). I that says it but that the speaking says me.” Nottingham, UK: Russell Press. Significantly, Plato was not a Platonist—he did not 43. No citation is given for this quotation. For fur- Bortoft, H., 1996. The Wholeness of Nature. Hudson, subscribe to the two-world theory that is central to the ther discussion of Gadamer, see Bortoft 2012, pp. NY: Lindesfarne Press. Western metaphysical tradition. In view of this, we 121–26. Bortoft, H., 2012. Taking Appearance Seriously. Ed- should perhaps refer to the Neoplatonic tradition, es- 44. See Bortoft 1996, pp. 283–89; Brady 1998. inburgh: Floris Books. pecially as it influenced the development of modern 45. Bortoft 1996, pp. 303–20. Bortoft, H., 2013. The Transformative Potential of science from the Renaissance onward, as “pseudo- 46. No citation is given for this quotation; either Paradox, Environmental and Architectural Phe- Platonism” (See Bortoft 2012, pp. 158–59, pp. 183– Brady 1987 or 1998? nomenology, 24 (2):12–14. 86). 47. This remarkably valuable insight is discussed Brady, R., 1987. Form and Cause in Goethe’s Mor- 29. This idea of a unified science is the source of in some detail in Cassirer’s early Substance and phology. In F. Amrine, J. Zucker, and H. Wheeler, the Enlightenment idea of universality in human na- Function (Cassirer 1980). Although he does not ex- eds. Goethe and the Sciences. Chicago: Univ. of ture and the belief in universal reason that can dis- plicitly consider the idea of a different mode of unity Chicago Press, p. 280–93. cover universal principles in morality, politics, and (so that he does not consider the generative serial con- Brady, 1998. The Idea in Nature: Rereading Goethe’s religion, as well as in science. cept [as distinct from the abstract generic concept] in Organics. In D. Seamon and A. Zajonc, eds., Goe- 30. Prigogine and Stengers 1984, p. 64. The impli- terms of the of the metamorphosis of One into differ- the’s Way of Science. Albany, NY: State Univ. of cation here is not that Chinese culture is somehow de- ent modes of itself (i.e., producing an intensive di- New York Press, pp. 83–111. ficient. Rather, comparative studies illustrate that mension of One), Still, it is clear (even when not made Cassirer, E., 1980. Substance and Function. NY: Do- Chinese culture emphasizes aspects of phenomena explicit) that the movement of Cassirer’s thinking is ver reprint [originally 1923]. different from those emphasized in modern Western away from entities in their finished state toward their Gadamer, H.-G., 1989. Truth and Method. London: culture, most notably giving priority to the uniquely coming-into-being. His thinking becomes dynamical. Sheed and Ward. particular rather than the underling unity. This differ- If one reads what he writes carefully, it becomes clear Goethe, J.W. von, 1970. Theory of Colours (C.L. ence means that the Chinese culture developed a from the language he uses that sometimes he moves Eastlake, trans.). Cambridge: MIT Press [origi- mode of perception that we Westerners tend to lack, toward one mode in his thinking and, at other times, nally 1810]. just as our Western culture has developed some moves toward the other, sometimes getting caught

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Goethe, J.W. von, 2009. The Metamorphosis of Schad, W., 1977. Man and Mammals. Garden City, Lecture 2, Part II: Plants (photographs by G. Miller, Jr.; D. Miller, NY: Waldorf Press [originally 1971]. trans.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press [originally Schad, W., 2019. Understanding Mammals 2 vols. https://www.youtube.com/watch?tim 1790]. Harlemville, NY: Adonis Press [expanded revision e_con- Goodwin, B., 1994. How the Leopard Changed Its of Schad 1977]. tinue=351&v=UmdLQMlV3KE Spots. NY: Scribner’s. Seamon, D. and Zajonc, A., eds., 1998. Goethe’s Way Hegge, H., 1987. Theory of Science in the Light of of Science: A Phenomenology of Nature. Albany, Goethe’s Science of Nature, in Goethe and the Sci- NY: State Univ. of NY Press. Lecture 3: ences (pp. 195–218), F. Amrine, F. J. Zucker, and Steiner, R., 1963. Goethe’s World View. Hudson, NY: https://www.youtube.com/watch?tim H. Wheeler, eds. Dordrecht: Reidel. Anthroposophic Press [originally 1918]. e_continue=1&v=nsH6-n7BUtw Holdrege, C., 1998. Seeing the Animal Whole: The Webster, G. and Goodwin, B., 1996. Form and Trans- Example of Horse and Lion. In D. Seamon and A. formation. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. Zajonc, eds., Goethe’s Way of Science. Albany, Wittgenstein, L., 1953. Philosophical Investigations. Lecture 4, Part I: NY: State Univ. of New York Press, pp. 213–32. Oxford: Blackwell. https://transitionconsciousness.word- Holdrege, C., 2003. The Flexible Giant: Seeing the Wittgenstein, L., 1964. Philosophical Remarks. Ox- press.com/2018/12/30/the-henri- Elephant Whole. Ghent, NY: Nature Institute. ford: Blackwell. bortoft-lectures-day-four-part-one-2/ Holdrege, C., 2004. Genetics and the Manipulation of Zajonc, A., 1995. Catching the Light. NY: Oxford Life. Great Barrington, MA: Lindesfarne Press. Univ. Press. Holdrege, C., 2009. What Does It Mean to be a Sloth? Lecture 4, Part II: Harlemville, NY: The Nature Institute. http://natu- Bortoft Lectures on-line https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= reinstitute.org/nature/sloth.pdf. aCywGtSeWi4 Laszlo, E., 1987. Evolution—The Grand Synthesis. Writer Simon Robinson has up-

Boston: New Science Library. loaded on YouTube several lectures Lehrs, M., 1958. Man or Matter. London: Faber & Lecture 4, Part III: that Henri Bortoft presented on Faber. https://www.youtube.com/watch?tim wholeness at Schumacher College in Miller, M. H., Jr., 2005. Plato’s Parmenides. Univer- e_continue=2&v=thMjGQzhEN0 sity Park, PA: Penn State Univ. Press. the 2000s. These lectures are an ex-

Monk, R., 1990. Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of cellent introduction to Bortoft’s Genius. London: Penguin. Lecture 5, Part I: thinking, including his understanding Needleman, J., 1976. History and Human Values: A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I of Goethean science. The links are Chinese Perspective for World Science and Tech- LVxvP_S9zI nology, The Centennial Review, 20(1), pp. 1–35. below.

Petersen, A. (1985). The Philosophy of Niels Bohr. In There is also available a tape re- A.P. French. ed., Niels Bohr: a Centenary Volume. Lecture 5, Part II: cording of Bortoft’s presentation at Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, pp. 299– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= the 2011 J. G. Bennett’s Dramatic 310. LLy14NKt0TQ Prigogine, I. and Stengers, I., 1984. Order out of Universe conference; this link is Chaos. NY: Bantam. listed below after the Schumacher Riegner, M., 1993. Toward a Holistic Understanding Bortoft’s J. G. Bennett lecture of Place: Reading a Landscape Through its Flora links. Note that, in the early 1960s, https://soundcloud.com/seandotcom- and Fauna. In D. Seamon, ed., Dwelling, Seeing, Bortoft was a researcher under the 1/du-008-henri-bortoft and Designing. Albany, NY: State Univ. of New direction of Bennett. York Press, pp. 181–215. Riegner, M., 1998. Horns, Hooves, Spots, and Bortoft’s Schumacher lectures Stripes: Form and Pattern in Mammals. In D. Sea- mon and A. Zajonc, eds., Goethe’s Way of Science. Albany, NY: State Univ. of New York Press, pp. Lecture 1:

177–212. https://www.youtube.com/watch?tim Riegner, M., 2008. Parallel Evolution of Plumage e_continue=8&v=iGEl2E2CcTo Pattern and Coloration in Birds, The Condor, 110 (4): 599–614. Lecture 2, Part I: Riegner, M., 2013. Ancestor of the New Archetypal Biology: Goethe’s Dynamic Typology as a Model https://www.youtube.com/watch?tim for Contemporary Evolutionary Developmental e_continue=1&v=1Tzx5EOWHe0 Biology, Studies in History and Philosophy of Bi- ological and Biomedical Sciences, 44: 735–44.

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Questions relating to environmental and architectural phenomenology (from EAP, 2014 [vol. 25, no. 3, p. 4])

Questions relating to phenomenology ❖ Do the “sacred” and the “holy” have a spaces and their relationship to mobility and related interpretive approaches role in caring for the natural world? For and movement? and methods: places? For lifeworlds broadly? ❖ What is phenomenology and what does ❖ Can phenomenology contribute to envi- Questions relating to architecture and it offer to whom? ronmental education? If so, in what environmental design and policy: ❖ What is the state of phenomenological ways? ❖ Can there be a phenomenology of archi- research today? What are your hopes ❖ Can there be a phenomenology of the tecture and architectural experience and and concerns regarding phenomenol- two laws of thermodynamics, especially meaning? ogy? the second law claiming that all activi- ❖ Can phenomenology contribute to bet- ❖ Does phenomenology continue to have ties, left to their own devices, tend to- ter architectural design? relevance in examining human experi- ward greater disorder and fewer possi- ❖ How do qualities of the designable ence in relation to world? bilities? Are there ways whereby phe- world—spatiality, materiality, lived ❖ Are there various conceptual and meth- nomenological understanding of life- aesthetics, environmental embodiment odological modes of phenomenology world might help to reduce the acceler- etc.—contribute to lifeworlds? and, if so, how can they be categorized ating disordering of natural and human ❖ What are the most pertinent environ- and described? worlds? mental and architectural features con- ❖ Has phenomenological research been tributing to a lifeworld’s being one way superseded by other conceptual ap- Questions relating to place, place ex- rather than another? proaches—e.g., post-structuralism, so- perience, and place meaning: ❖ What role will cyberspace and digital cial-constructionism, critical theory, re- ❖ Why has the notion of place become an technologies have in 21st-century life- lationalist and non-representational per- important phenomenological topic? worlds? How will they play a role in spectives, the various conceptual ❖ Can a phenomenological understanding shaping designed environments, partic- “turns,” and so forth? of place contribute to better place mak- ularly architecture? ❖ Can phenomenology contribute to mak- ing? ❖ What impact will digital advances and ing a better world? If so, what are the ❖ Can phenomenology contribute to a virtual realities have on physical em- most crucial phenomena and topics to generative understanding of place and bodiment, architectural design, and be explored phenomenologically? place making? real-world places? Will virtual reality ❖ Can phenomenological research offer ❖ What roles do bodily regularity and ha- eventually be able to simulate “real re- practical results in terms of design, bitual inertia play in the constitution of ality” entirely? If so, how does such a planning, policy, and advocacy? place and place experience? development transform the nature of ❖ How might phenomenological insights ❖ What are the lived relationships be- lifeworld, natural attitude, place, and ar- be broadcast in non-typical academic tween place, sustainability, and a re- chitecture? ways—e.g., through artistic expression, sponsive environmental ethic? ❖ Can virtual worlds become so “real” theatrical presentation, digital evoca- ❖ How are phenomenological accounts to that they are lived as “real” worlds? tion, virtual realities, and so forth? respond to post-structural interpreta- ❖ What are the most important aims for tions of space and place as rhizomic and Other potential questions: future phenomenological research? a “meshwork of paths” (Ingold)? ❖ What is the lived relationship between ❖ Do the various post-structural and so- ❖ Can phenomenological accounts incor- people and the worlds in which they cial-constructionist criticisms of phe- porate a “progressive sense of place” find themselves? nomenology—that it is essentialist, argued for by critical theorists like ❖ Can lifeworlds be made to happen self- masculinist, authoritative, voluntarist, Doreen Massey? consciously? If so, how? Through what ignorant of power structures, and so ❖ Can phenomenological explications of individual efforts? Through what group forth—point toward its demise? space and place account for human dif- efforts? ferences—gender, sexuality, less- ❖ Can a phenomenological education in Questions relating to the natural abledness, social class, cultural back- lifeworld, place, and environmental em- world and environmental and ecologi- ground, and so forth? bodiment assist citizens and profession- cal concerns: ❖ Can phenomenology contribute to the als in better understand the workings ❖ Can there be a phenomenology of na- politics and ideology of place? and needs of real-world places and ture and the natural world? ❖ Can a phenomenological understanding thereby contribute to their envisioning ❖ What can phenomenology offer the in- of lived embodiment and habitual iner- and making? tensifying environmental and ecological tia be drawn upon to facilitate robust ❖ Is it possible to speak of human-rights- crises we face today? places and to generate mutual support in-place or place justice? If so, would ❖ Can phenomenology contribute to more and understanding among places, espe- such a possibility move attention and sustainable actions and worlds? cially places that are considerably dif- supportive efforts toward improving the ❖ Can one speak of a sustainable life- ferent (e.g., different ethnic neighbor- places in which people and other living world? hoods or regions)? beings find themselves, rather than fo- ❖ What is a phenomenology of a lived en- ❖ Can phenomenology contribute to mo- cusing only on the rights and needs of vironmental ethic and who are the key bility, the nature of “flows,” rhizomic individuals and groups without consid- contributors? spaces, the places of mobility, non- eration of their place context?

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Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology

Published digitally twice a year, EAP is a forum and clearing house Beginning in 2016, EAP is digitally open-source only. Current and for research and design that incorporate a qualitative approach to back digital issues of EAP are available at the following digital ad- environmental and architectural experience, actions, and mean- dresses: ings. https://ksu.academia.edu/DavidSeamon One key concern of EAP is design, education, policy, and advocacy http://newprairiepress.org/eap/ supporting and strengthening natural and built places that sustain http://krex.k-state.edu/dspace/handle/2097/1522 (archive cop- human and environmental wellbeing. Realizing that a clear con- ies) ceptual stance is integral to informed research and design, the edi- tor emphasizes phenomenological approaches but also gives atten- Readers who wish to receive an email notice when a new issue is tion to related styles of qualitative research. EAP welcomes essays, electronically available, should send an email to the editor with letters, reviews, conference information, and so forth. Forward sub- that request. Though EAP is now digital, we still have production missions to the editor. costs and welcome reader donations.

Editor Because EAP is now only digital, we have discontinued all library subscriptions. Libraries that wish to remain subscribed should link Dr. David Seamon, Professor Emeritus their digital catalogue to the archival digital address provided Architecture Department EAP th above. A limited number of back issues of , in hard copy, 1088 Seaton Hall, 920 17 Street 1990–2015, are available for $10/volume (3 issues/volume). Con- Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS 66506-2901 USA tact the editor for details. tel: 785-532-5953; [email protected]

Exemplary Themes Copyright Notice All contents of EAP, including essays by contributors, are protected ▪ The nature of environmental and architectural experience; by copyright and/or related rights. Individual contributors retain ▪ Sense of place, including place identity and place attachment; copyright to their essays and accompanying materials. Interested ▪ Architectural and landscape meaning; parties should contact contributors for permission to reproduce or ▪ The environmental, architectural, spatial, and material dimen- draw from their work. sions of lifeworlds; ▪ Changing conceptions of space, place, and nature; ▪ Home, dwelling, journey, and mobility; Open Access Policy ▪ Environmental encounter and its relation to environmental re- EAP provides immediate access to its content on the principle that sponsibility and action; making research freely available to the public supports a greater ▪ Environmental and architectural atmospheres and ambiences; global exchange of knowledge. ▪ Environmental design as place making; ▪ Sacred space, landscape, and architecture; Archival Policy ▪ The role of everyday things—furnishings, tools, clothing, in- EAP is archived for perpetual access through the participation of terior design, landscape features, and so forth—in supporting Kansas State University’s New Prairie Press in CLOCKSS (“Con- people’s sense of environmental wellbeing; trolled Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe”) and Portico, managed ▪ The progressive impact of virtual reality on human life and through the Digital Commons Publishing platform. New Prairie how it might transform the lived nature of “real” places, build- Press also participates in LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff ings, and lifeworlds; Safe). Once published, an issue’s contents are never changed. Ar- ▪ The practice of a lived environmental ethic. chival copies of EAP are also available at Kansas State Univer- sity’s digital archive, K-Rex (see links above). For additional themes and topics, see the preceding page, which outlines a series of relevant questions originally published in the Note: All entries for which no author is given are by the EAP Edi- 25th-anniversary issue of EAP in 2014 (vol. 25, no. 3, p. 4). tor.

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