ABSTRACT
Touch has a particular affinity with the hand, and the touch that occurs by means of the hand is often marked by agency or action. Modern treatments, such as Mark Paterson's The Senses of Touch, diffuse the sense further by situating touch within the broader compass of the "haptic system" popularized by the work of James Gibson in the 1960s. David Linden's bestselling Touch includes a humourous diagram of the human body where hands, mouth, tongue, genitalia and feet are grossly enlarged to denote "each body part scaled to the size of its representation in touch map". Touch is often classified as a "low" sense, best fit for the farmyard, bedroom or nursery, because it is the most proximal and immediate of the several and because it is common to all creatures. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
