Before discussing propositions such as modern science’s “mechanization of the world picture”[1], one should note that the concept of the “world picture” is quite extraordinary. Before the world can possibly be mechanized as a picture, there is a prior step: the picturing of the world. The world does not become a picture for human beings from the very beginning; in fact, once the world has come, as a matter of course, to be a picture, whether that picture is mechanized or not, some vitally important change in human knowledge has already quietly taken place.
As Heidegger put it: “The world picture does not change from a medieval world picture into a modern one; rather, it is the fact that the world becomes picture at all which characterizes the essence of the modern age.”[2]
So what does it mean that “the world becomes picture”? Heidegger, Collingwood, Bert, and other philosophers or historians of science have all stressed that this means human beings are detached from the world as spectators, that the world is objectified, and so on. These statements are of course all correct. And yet the most fundamental and simplest implication of “world picture” is this: a picture belongs wholly to vision; the other senses, especially touch, can no longer participate in the cognition of this picturized “world.” No matter whether this world picture appears cold and monotonous or rich and colorful, no matter whether it is mechanical or mysterious, for touch it can only ever be an indifferent flat surface.
In modern theories of human knowledge, touch has been thoroughly expelled and abandoned, and that is why human beings have become spectators of the world. This situation is by no means as old as humanity itself. In fact, as we shall see, in Aristotle’s world, touch is the most central of the senses. Aristotle’s world is not a picture; first and foremost, it is a tactile world. Through reflection on “touch,” we will gain a deeper understanding of the major differences between Aristotle’s world and the world of modern science.
The author of The Mechanization of the World Picture, Dijksterhuis, noticed Aristotle’s “touch,” and he evaluated Aristotle in this way: “Merely on the basis of certain superficial sense experiences (especially touch), he and his predecessors rashly constructed such a general theory,” but what does “rashly” mean? Are not modern science and the philosophy of the empiricist tradition also grounded in sensory experience as the basis of the entire theory of knowledge? If “rash” means failing to reflect on certain important premises, then it seems modern people are in fact even rasher. Modern empiricists seem to undertake very little deep reflection on sensory experience itself; especially the so-called logical empiricists of our own day, who often concentrate the focus of reflection on linguistic analysis and rarely direct that focus toward sensation itself. In particular, the expulsion of touch seems to have become a matter of course, and this decisive change itself has long since been forgotten.
Just as vision is to modern natural philosophy, so in Aristotle’s natural philosophy the dominant status of touch is everywhere present—in ontology, epistemology, and physics alike, Aristotle consciously or unconsciously takes touch as the center.
We know that: “Aristotle strongly opposed the Platonic view that true being lies in a transcendent world of Forms. He maintained that the objects of philosophy in general, and science in particular, are the things perceived by our senses. All knowledge of them ultimately derives from sensory impressions, even if intelligence exercises its own active function in processing this material. This view led to a fundamentally empirical attitude toward natural phenomena.”[3] But it is not enough merely to say that Aristotle had an “empirical attitude”; rather, this empirical attitude is fundamentally some kind of “tactile attitude.” For Aristotle, the perceptible world is the touchable world. Aristotle says:
Since it is the principles of perceptible bodies that we are seeking, and since what is perceptible means what is tangible, and what is tangible is a thing of sense, it is plain that not all opposites constitute the form and principles of body, but only those related to touch; for it is by opposites, that is, by opposites in the sphere of touch, that things are distinguished. Thus white and black, sweet and bitter, and any other similar opposites of sense do not constitute elements. Vision is prior to touch, and therefore its objects are prior too; but they are not the properties of tangible bodies as tangible, but as something else, even if it happens that they are naturally prior.[4]
In other words, only opposites in the sphere of touch are qualified to serve as the principles of bodies. Through further analysis, among the tactile oppositions of “hot and cold, dry and wet, heavy and light, hard and soft, tough and brittle, rough and smooth, thick and thin,” Aristotle identified the two most primary pairs of basic qualities, namely hot and cold, dry and wet, “of which the first is active and the second passive;”[5] from these basic qualities, “thick and thin, tough and brittle, hard and soft, and the other differences” can be derived.[6] In this way, “the four elements of the material world may all be formed by pairwise combinations of the four active primary qualities that produce tactile sensations”[7].
We need not discuss Aristotle’s doctrine of the elements further; what is worth discussing here is why Aristotle had to build scientific theory on tactile qualities as principles.
Dijksterhuis says: “In constructing scientific theories, he took a path directly opposed to that of the atomists. The atomists’ main aim was to use only those principles of explanation that could determine quantity: extension in space, geometric shape, position, arrangement, motion; Aristotle, by contrast, wanted to establish a qualitative physical science. Thus the material bearer of properties became the principle of explanation.”[8]
Of course, in terms of results, things like extension, position, and motion are indeed easier to quantify, whereas the measurement of wetness and dryness is not easy to determine. But that is not what Aristotle intended. In fact, when Aristotle identified dryness and wetness as basic qualities, he by no means thought that they could not be quantified.
He mentions at one point: “All men take the first thing that is irreducible in sensation as the measure, either wet and dry or heavy and large as the measure, and they think that it is only by such a measure that the quantity of these things is known. Motion is measured by simple motion, by the swiftest speed….”[9] It is clear, then, that for Aristotle, dry and wet can of course also become, and ought to become, a basic standard of measurement.
Even so, compared with the measurement of extension and position, these tactile measures are after all far from precise enough—we naturally take that for granted. Yet for Aristotle, what he chose was precisely the most precise kind of measure for human beings! Aristotle plainly says: “… and the human sense of touch happens to be the most precise. Man is inferior to other animals in respect of the other senses, but in respect of touch he is more sensitive than any other species. That is the reason why man is the most intelligent of animals.”[10]
Aristotle’s placing of touch at the center of experience has multiple reasons. Besides the point suggested by the passage above, namely that Aristotle believed the capacity of touch corresponds to the capacity of thought[11], there are also some deeper reasons.
First, if one seeks a general kind of knowledge with universality, and if all knowledge derives from sensory experience, then should one not proceed by explaining the universality and generality of knowledge through the most universal and most basic sense? Which sense is the most universal and basic? Clearly, touch and no other.
Aristotle says: “The primary faculty of the senses is touch, which all animals possess. Just as the nutritive faculty can exist independently of all the senses, including touch, and remain what it is, so touch too can exist independently of the other senses and remain what it is.”[12] “Without touch the other senses cannot exist, but touch can exist by itself without any of the others.”[13]
Whether or not the other senses can exist apart from touch is, at best, only an abstract possibility; in fact, touch is indeed the most basic and indispensable sense. Contemporary biology has the idea that the other senses are specialized forms of touch, and embryology likewise holds that the entire nervous system is homologous with epithelial tissue; these may also be taken as confirmations of Aristotle. In any case, given the pursuit of universality and generality, there is indeed reason to take tactile experience as the starting point of epistemology.
In addition, the importance of touch is also related to Aristotle’s realism, or his conception of truth.
For Aristotle, “the perception of individual things is always true”[14]. He says: “Sensation is not false, at least not in regard to its proper objects; but the impression is different from sensation.”[15] That is to say, direct sensation as the source of knowledge does not go wrong; error arises in the process of reassembling sensation, and the most basic process of integration is the unification of multiple different sensory experiences, at which stage error can occur.
Aristotle says: “Our sensing that there is ‘white’ before us is not mistaken, but what it is that produces this white, our sense may be mistaken about.”[16] This is precisely because when you want to locate the source of whiteness, you must call upon various other senses and memory, establish relations among them, and such relations can easily involve confusion and deviation.
Thus, if one is to pursue the truth and correctness of knowledge as much as possible, then sensory experience as the foundation of knowledge should satisfy two conditions: immediacy and independence.
And only touch (as well as taste, as a variant of touch) can function “without the mediation (intervening medium) of any external thing”[17]. Other sense organs, “in order to be affected, must depend on something else as a medium; this requires an intermediary. But ‘touch’ is immediately affected by the ‘contact’ with things”[18]
At the same time, qualities in touch such as dry and wet, hot and cold, like color in vision and sound in hearing, are all qualities peculiar to specific sense organs, and need not be determined by combining multiple sense organs; only then are they “all clear and not deceptive”[19]. “But as for motion, rest, number, shape, and size (magnitude), several senses must participate together, … for example, motion is sensed both by touch and by sight.”[20]
At this point, we understand that Aristotle’s refusal to take motion, shape, size, and so on as explanatory principles, as Dijksterhuis says, is not due to a choice between constructing a quantitative or a qualitative physical science. Rather, it is because those things, as sensory experiences, are far from simple and basic enough. They are compound sensations, and compound sensations mean they are not sufficiently reliable and may go wrong. They are therefore absolutely unsuitable as the foundation of a precise and dependable system of knowledge.
The central status of touch not only governs Aristotle’s realism and empiricism, but also plays an indispensable role in his understanding of causality. We note that in the modern scientific “world picture,” “causality” can no longer be “seen.” Yet in Aristotle’s tactile world, causality has never been truly apprehended through “seeing,” but through touch. In addition, in Aristotle’s physics, why is he so fixated on “pushing” through “direct contact,” and why does he so strongly emphasize the asymmetrical relation between the pusher and the pushed? This is now easy to understand.[21]
Main references
Aristotle:
Metaphysics, trans. Miao Litian, Renmin University of China Press, 2003
Physics, trans. Zhang Zhuming, Commercial Press, 1982
On the Soul and Other Works, trans. Wu Shoubang, Commercial Press, 1999
Edited by Miao Litian: The Complete Works of Aristotle, Renmin University of China Press
Note: During reading, I consulted other Chinese translations of the relevant books, and for individual passages I compared them with an English translation found online.
[Netherlands] E. J. Dijksterhuis:
The Mechanization of the World Picture (THE MECHANIZATION OF THE WORLD PICTURE), with reference to the translation by Zhang بوتian.
Wang Zisong, Fan Mingsheng, Chen Cunfu, Yao Jiehou: History of Greek Philosophy 3 (vols. I and II), People’s Publishing House, 2003
[1] For example, E. J. DIJKSTERHUIS, THE MECHANIZATION OF THE WORLD PICTURE
[2] Heidegger, “The Age of the World Picture,” in Sun Zhongxing, ed., Selected Works of Heidegger, Shanghai Joint Publishing, 1996, p. 899
[3] The Mechanization of the World Picture (using Zhang بوتian’s translation, hereinafter the same), I-20
[4] On Coming-to-Be and Passing-Away (using Xu Kailai’s translation, hereinafter the same), 329b10~330a10
[5] On Coming-to-Be and Passing-Away, 330a10~25
[6] On Coming-to-Be and Passing-Away, 330a35
[7] The Mechanization of the World Picture, I-26
[8] The Mechanization of the World Picture, I-20
[9] Metaphysics (using Miao Litian’s translation, hereinafter the same), 1053a10
[10] On the Soul (using Wu Shoubang’s translation, hereinafter the same), 421a20
[11] On the Soul, 421a25
[12] On the Soul, 413b5; see also 435b17, etc.
[13] On the Soul, 415a5; see also 435a15, etc.
[14] On the Soul, 427b11
[15] Metaphysics 1010b
[16] On the Soul, 428b23
[17]Aristotle, *On the Soul*, 422b7
[18]Aristotle, *On the Soul*, 435a17
[19]Aristotle, *On the Soul*, 418a10
[20]Aristotle, *On the Soul*, 418a10
[21]As for the connection between the retreat of touch and the disappearance of causality, I discussed this at length in my course paper from last semester for Professor Wu, “‘Force’ and Its Mechanization.” At the time, that paper did not explicitly identify the significance of “touch”; this article may be seen as a supplement to the earlier text. That paper can be found here: http://hps.phil.pku.edu.cn/bbs/read.php?tid=861
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
Leave a Reply