ABSTRACT
A certain English-speaking tradition, later revived by the Gestalt psychologists, speaks of “tertiary qualities”. Tertiary qualities range from the low sexual arousal engendered by effective pornography to Morgenstein’s airy verse: “Seagulls by their looks suggest that Emma is their name”. The tertiary qualities of the human figure, of the face, of the gesture, stand out very clearly, in terms of intensity and complexity, from all the other observables in the environment. J. J. Gibson says in very certain terms that information contained in reflected light, which is to say in the beam of luminous rays that reaches the eyes of viewers brings with it tertiary qualities, which he prefers to call “affordances”. Gibson created outrage asserting that, given a certain animal in a certain environment, affordances are not in its head but in the various bits that make up its environment. The affordances are in the experienced objects just like colour, shape, motion and sound.
