"Sight is valued above all other senses. True, we can be persuaded that
touch and hearing are more basic─the one to survival, the other to the
acquisition of language. Nevertheless, sight enjoys primacy. It
immediately gives us a world "out there." Self, without a world, is
reduced to mere body. All senses give us a world, but the visual one has
the greatest definition and scope. This expansive visual world is both
sensual and intellectual. It is sensual, not only because of its colors
and shapes, but also because of its tactile quality: we can almost feel what we
see─smile with pleasure as we look at a fluffy blanket. It is intellectual
because somehow to see is to think and to understand: sight is coupled with
insight, and to exercise the mind is to see with "the mind's eye." Perhaps
most important of all, the primacy of sight rests on a simple experience.
Open our eyes, and the world spreads before us in all its vividness and color;
close them, and it is instantly wiped out and we are plunged in darkness.
One moment, the world is an enticing space inviting us to enter; the next, it
collapses to the limit of our body and we are helplessly disoriented."
- Yi-Fu Tuan, Passing Strange and Wonderful: Aesthetics, Nature, and Culture, 1995, p. 96.
- Yi-Fu Tuan, Passing Strange and Wonderful: Aesthetics, Nature, and Culture, 1995, p. 96.
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