ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explains about embodiment within a hierarchy which is both conceptual and value-based, with mind and rationality at the top, as "higher functions", descending through capacities like feeling and intuition to the lowly body at the bottom of the pile. John Heron has taken a useful and clarifying step in coining the term "up-hierarchy" for a series like this in which the lower elements sequentially shape and determine the upper ones. The book illustrates the up-hierarchy is plainly oversimplified; many levels in many dimensions, and many interpenetrating hierarchies, would be required to come anywhere near an adequate depiction. It also presents that the Katherine Hayles makes essentially the same distinction between "body" and "embodiment", and brings out some of its deeper, political implications. The book takes a preparatory detour-actually, two detours, one about the pyramid of rationality and one about mutual causation.
