ABSTRACT
The crux of James J. Gibson’s theory of animal-environment reciprocity is to avoid mechanistic reductionism, as well as dualistic psychology, by functionally interrelating each member of the ecosystem. Consequently, Gibson’s starting point in his Ecological Approach is not simply the environment but the reciprocity of the animal and the environment. Though Gibson’s Ecological Approach to Visual Perception is both integrative in format and historically self-conscious, it has a definite naturalistic and descriptive flavor. The horizon provides a good example of the global reality of optical information; ecological information exists as a nesting of finer structures within more global structures. The idea of reciprocity is crucial to Gibson treatment of the environment, ecological information, and ecological psychology. Gibson in the Senses began theoretically integrating perception and proprioception and he counted his treatment of their relationship as one of the most novel aspects of his overall theory.
