ABSTRACT
Colwyn Trevarthen Department of Psychology, The University of Edinburgh, UK
David Lee’s highly original contribution to psychology is the following. He has
proved, by elegant experiments and accurate measurement of movements, that if
we want to make sense of seeing, or any other form of awareness, we must
understand not just the information to be picked up, but the time of the moving
that needs the information. For him, “perception” has its original, active, Latin
meaning intact – “through seizing hold of experience”. Experience meaning “by
trying or seeking”, is a function, not the things it picks up. It is rhythmically
experimental, in time-space made by the brain. It means living by the prospects
of mobile existence, not just a rationally categorized stock of data from past
sensory input. Seeing inquisitively frames and supports moves of a coordinated
body. Awareness is useful for an animal only if it can be walked on, swum
through, landed on, caught, carried, eaten, communicated with, made love to,
and so on – it is to be acted in.
