Our species has evolved in
an intimate relation with the surface of our planet primarily through our
senses, so there is a certain benign eco-logic to their assembly. The
relationship between our bodily senses and the global ecology is clearly benign
in the sense that our ancestors have survived a million years in these
environments. Particular cultures have ascribed importance to different sense
receptors for particular advantage, but it may be reasonable to assume that an
evolutionary scale of wisdom still clings to the integrated use of the complete
set. It is on this level that we are most directly in touch with our ecological
substrate and it is from this level that our judgement in relation to that
material context must surely arise. Certain senses may be more efficient data
carriers, but in terms of our species' evolution every sense must have its
necessary part to play. A wise relation to our environment could well then
entail a cultural process that engages all our senses and all our abilities.
The normative categorisation
of art forms does not make their relation to our sense receptors clear. The
'five senses' is a phrase that is commonly used to refer to our spectrum of
senses. These five do not include the thermal sense, one of the most crucial to
our well being.[1] The
traditional five are composed of multiple sense organs.[2]
Each sense flux logically has a means of expression and an art form can be
derived from it. These art forms, and their combinations, give us the most
direct way of connecting our intuitive intelligence with the flux within which
we have evolved to live. Freedom
of expression and play in each of these art forms should be considered of
crucial importance in terms of the most elemental job culture must perform -
Its effort at total qualitative assessment.[3]
I am emphasising the centrality of non-verbal arts to our concept of culture,
as Habermas' argument will favour the written above the oral and the verbal
above the non-verbal.
Arts whose media is oral and literary languages are one
step removed from our direct experience of being in the world. These more
abstract arts are particularly good at providing an overview of the experiences
gained through our senses. And whatever non-verbal understandings are reached
by artists they must still be validated by a process that will engage in
language in one form or another.
The call and response of the combined codes of our sensory apparatus at some point in our evolution gave rise to a meta-code - speech that could capture all the important symbols from the perceptual cornucopia and reduce them to a unified shorthand system of sounds accompanied by facial expressions and gestural signs. This performative 'language', along with the use of tools, transformed the relation of Homo Sapiens to each other and the rest of nature producing a more complex and reflexive consciousness. The cultures that arise from this form of communication are known as oral cultures. [4]
[1] My main inspiration here is
Lisa Heschong, Thermal Delight in Architecture (MIT 1979)
[2] A. Iggo refers to the 'at
least 15 functionally and morphologically distinct kinds of afferent units' in
the skin. See, The Senses, eds. H.B. Barlow & J.D. Mollon (Cambridge U.P. 1982 p369)
[3] As we shall see later with
Habermas' reference to Max Weber there is also a long running critique of the
historical separation of the arts and sciences into separate subjects /
professions / disciplines. These separations lead us to lose sight of the
complete picture of an integrated social life.
[4] This is something of a
misnomer because in an important way cultures never cease to be fundamentally
oral even when their hierarchies are dominated by writing.