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Geography, Phenomenology, and The Study Human Nature: Yi-Fu Tuan
Geography, Phenomenology, and The Study Human Nature: Yi-Fu Tuan
YI-FU TUAN
University of Minnesota
GEOGRAPHY, as one popular textbook puts it, is “organized knowledge of the earth
as the world of man.”* Phenomenology is the description and clarifying of pheno-
mena. Human nature is the object of perennial curiosity, scientific and narcissistic.
The theme of the paper is “geography as the mirror for man.” The approach is
phenomenological; for my purpose I take this term to mean a philosophical perspec-
tive, one which suspends, in so far as this is possible, the presuppositions and method
of official science in order to describe the world as the world of intentionality and
meaning.? Phenomenology is concerned with essences : what, for example, is the
essence of man, space, or experience?
Geography reveals man. At one level this is a commonplace fact: a wheat field
“says” something about economic man. But the evidence can be read more deeply.
Geography reveals deeper levels of human nature. A phenomenologist may say that
the essence of human nature is not a thing that can be uncovered by objective science
- or by pure introspection. Consider introspection: if we draw the blinds and turn
out the world so as to contemplate our inner nature, it is likely that we shall be
rewarded with mere oblivion - that is, fall asleep. Consciousness has only a ghostly
existence apart from the world, which is never entirely private. Even the fantasies of
a madman are made of elements some of which, at least, others can also perceive: to
that degree they are public and “objective.” Moreover, the structure of fantasy (the
way the elements are put together) can often be intuitively understood by another.
Geography, to repeat the definition, is “organized knowledge of the earth as the
world of man.” It needs only a slight recasting and expansion to cover my own
position: knowledge of the earth elucidates the world of man; the root meaning of
“world” ( w e r ) is in fact man; to know the world is to know oneself.
A specific example may clarify the position further. Consider the house as man’s
environment and his world. The structure of the house obeys physical laws. The walls
have to be of a certain strength in order to rise to a certain height and bear the roof
of a certain weight. Economic constraints place limits on some aspects of the house:
for example, its size, the kinds of materials used, its site and location, Within these
physical and economic constraints the owner of the house has the freedom to establish
his world, his scale of values and meaning. He may want to do this by painting the
walls an unusual colour, by arranging the furniture geometrically and leaving the front
door always unlocked. It is of course stretching the metaphor to say that “the house
is the man” since a man’s world is far more than his house; but we readily accept the
idea that a careful reading of the house can tell us much about the occupant -beyond
his biological and economic needs to his intentions and aspirations.
Geography mirrors man. My aim here is to develop the theme so that it is more
than a summary assertion, but not to the point where one takes up a specific house or
181
CANADIAN xv, 3, 1971
GEOGRAPHER,
182 THE CANADIAN GEOGRAPHER
landscape for the purpose of exemplifying a particular human state. What I attempt
in this paper at the general level may provide clues as to how one can approach and
organize the data of detailed studies: it is the bridge between the bare statement
and detailed exemplification. I shall consider five topics which are different perspec-
tives on the theme that geography mirrors man. They differ somewhat in the degree
of abstraction, and I shall proceed from the less to the more tangible compacts be-
tween man and his world. The topics can be stated briefly as follows.
First, geographical concerns reff ect fundamental human concerns and thought
patterns. The geographer’s ways of establishing contact with the world are au fond
of two types - two approaches to meaning that are common to humanity. Second,
and at a lower level of abstraction, I wish to consider two types of mental space,
ethnocentric and egocentric. Both strive for symmetry but in this the individual is
far less successful than the group. The individual’s perception of space is strongly
influenced by the structure of his body, which is asymmetrical. This leads to the third
topic which shows how the asymmetry of the body and of egocentric space has
implications €or the organization of geographic space, giving the example of “back
region” and “front region.” The fourth topic is still more specific: it illustrates how
human response to the world tends to be binary and dialectical, giving the example
of “home” and “journey.” Finally, attention is drawn to a topic of great importance
to existentialists, the question of “authenticity.” Clearly the experience of nature can
be examined as to “authenticity” no less than the relationship between man and man.
implies two things. One is order or harmony. We find meaning when we can discern
order or harmony in the chaotic world of facts and remove the irritation and insecurity
that chaos generates. Meaning also implies significance: a phenomenon has meaning
because it is a sign to something beyond itself, to its own past and future, and to other
objects. The significant object or event has the seeming capacity to condense the
diverse strains of the universe into a thing within human reach. It is this attribute
which enables anyone who beholds, or participates in, a thing or event to respond to
it personally and meaningfully.
The search for a type of objective order of intellectual and aesthetic beauty and
the search for something with which we can respond personally appear to be universal
aspirations. According to L6vi-Strauss, “primitive” people do not seek merely an
“I-thou” relationship with the world that is emotionally satisfying but also knowledge
in itself - that is, the satisfaction of marshalling facts, as many as their minds
can retain without the aid of writing, into taxonomic systems. It is well known that
“primitive” people must have a precise knowledge of their country in order to sur-
vive; it is less well known that this knowledge extends far beyond that which is
required for mere survival.5 Again, many of us associate totemism with the mystical
and emotional bond between natural objects (animal, plant, or mineral) and kinship
units, but are less aware that totemism can also be a taxonomic device enabling the
native thinker to comprehend the natural and social universe as an organized whole.6
The totem is from one perspective a numinous object that bears close physical and
psychological affinity with a person; from another it is a unit in the natural order which
corresponds formally with a human group. Modern man responds to his world in
analogous ways. A zoologist, for example, treats his pet porpoise almost as if it were
human; yet he recognizes it also as a member of the genus Phocaena and as a mammal
related to the whale.
The geographer’s concerns can now be restated. Under “environmentalism” he
seeks meaning in order - and finds a largely determined, timeless and tidy world;
under “existentialism” he seeks meaning in the landscape, as he would in literature,
because it is a repository of human striving.
I have broached the topic of man’s need to discern order. The urge for symmetry has
promoted the myth of the southern continent, a myth that was not entirely dispelled
even by the voyages of Captain Cook; and the proven existence of Magellan’s Strait
has led navigators to postulate its counterpart, the Northwest Passage, in the Arctic.
Symmetry is also an expression of ethnocentrism. All people display the tendency to
organize the world around themselves. Ethnocentrism seems to be a common, if not
universal, trait. Its spatial manifestation is symbolized in cosmographic diagrams and
maps of peoples all over the world. Small non-literate communities like the Yurok
of northern California and the Ostiak of the Yenisei basin, complex civilizations like
Egypt and Greece, Persia and China, all envisaged worlds, mostly circular and in-
variably symmetrical, in which they put themselves at the centre. The archetypal
world consists of the centre, the circular land, and beyond it the unknown as repre-
GEOGRAPHY, PHENOMENOLOGY, AND HUMAN NATURE 185
sented by the circumambient waters. Such a diagram reflects the human need for
symmetry and self-aggrandizement. The ethnocentric world-view is a delusion but,
up to a point, it is supported by facts. The Ostiak fishermen and hunters believed not
only that they were located at the geometrical centre of the cosmos but also at its
population centre: their experience told them that fewer and fewer people could
be seen away from their own settlements. Greenland Eskimos, when they first
encountered European explorers, thought - like the Chinese emperor receiving the
British emissaries - that they had come to learn from a superior culture. A com-
munity can be more or less self-sufficient; it is therefore possible for the community
to build a world around itself without being subjected to frequent disillusioning
confrontations with reality.
Egocentrism bears obvious resemblances to ethnocentrism: the cosmographic
diagrams are, after all, conceived in the minds of individuals and are drawn by
individuals. But the differences are important, especially from the standpoint of
spatial behaviour and organization. One difference is that, however much a person
may wish to put himself at the centre of his world, he is constantly reminded of his
dependence on others. Unlike the community, no individual person can be self-
sufficient for long in all his biological, cultural, and psychological needs. Often he is
compelled to acknowledge that he stands at the periphery of another’s world. Some-
times, as in an encounter with another person, all his perspectives may be turned
inside-out. Gabriel Marcel, the French existentialist philosopher, considers these
points in his “Metaphysical Diary”: his reflections are worth quoting at some length.
Each of us ... becomes the center of a sort of mental space, arranged in concentric zones
of decreasing interest and decreasing adherence, and to this decreasing adherence there
corresponds an increasing non-disposability. This is something so natural that we forget
to give it any thought or any representation at all. Some of us may have happened upon an
encounter which in some fashion broke up the lines of this personal egocentric topography
... From a stranger, casually met, may come a call too strong to be resisted: suddenly all
our perspectives are turned inside-out; what seemed inseparably near is suddenly at an
infinite distance, and the distant near. Such experiences are fleeting ... yet they have this
inestimable benefit; they force us to become sharply aware of the accidental character of
what I have called our mental space. [They deprive] the distinction between the far and
the near of its qualitative value.7
Symmetrical space cannot be persistently maintained about the individual for another
reason. Space is perceived through the senses: the eyes can discern objects and the
mind postulates space as their matrix and frame. At a deeper level the notion of space
is derived from the experience, beginning with infanthood, that we are free to move
the body and parts of the body. These motions give us the “feel” of direction, dis-
tance, and space long before we are capable of analysing them abstractly. The
instrument for perceiving the world is the body, but the body is not symmetrical. Or
rather the organs of the body visible to the naked eye have essential “left-right’’
symmetry but not “back-front” symmetry. The left-right symmetry of the internal
organs is very rough: the heart is on the left side and the anatomy of the left half of
186 THE CANADIAN GEOGRAPHER
the brain is perceptibly different from that of the right half. Kinaesthetically, left and
right are nearly identical, and most people have to pause before they can follow
directions given in these terms, Symbolically, they are opposed: the root meaning of
“left” is “weak” and “worthless,” whereas that of “right” is “straight,” “upright,” and
“regal.” The right side is the side of honour. There exists a rich and esoteric litera-
ture that interprets the symbolism of right and left in different cultures.
The front-back asymmetry is so obvious that we hardly pause to consider its
implications. “Follow your nose” is the clearest direction we can give to the lost.
Going forward is easy; going backward is not. Walking backward is physiologically
difficult, but the idea of “turning back” is psychologically unpleasant, suggestive as
it is of error and defeat. “Front” and “back” have different values. In most cultures it
is unseemly to turn one’s back on another person, particularly if the other person is
superior in dignity. Given this asymmetry of “back” and “front,” what impact does
it have on human spatial behaviour and organization? I have already pointed to the
contrasting experiences of ‘‘going forward” and “turning back.” The route A to B is a
different route depending on whether one is “going forward” or “turning back” on it.
Somatic and psychological asymmetry is projected into space, which acquires the
meaning and value of “back” and “front.” The asymmetrical designation of space
occurs at different scales. Most rooms have a front entrance and the furniture is
arranged with respect to it. The typical lecture hall is sharply regionalized. The lectern
or blackboard is in the front: it is the focus of the room and lecturers know well how
audiences have a way of receding from this focus into the back rows. Regions within
space may be defined by external relationships rather than by internal arrangement.
Thus a bedroom may be symmetrical but if one door opens out to the sitting room
and another closes on the bathroom it is not experienced as undifferentiated space.
Most spaces, however, are differentiated by perceptible signs. Ervin Goffman has
noted how public buildings and private houses have clearly demarcated front and
back regions. People may live in the same city, even work in the same building, and
yet experience different worlds because their unequal status propels them into
separate circulatory routes and work areas. The distinction between “back” and
“front” is sharpest in a middle-class house. “The front tends to be relatively well
decorated, well repaired, and tidy; the rear tends to be relatively unprepossessing.
Correspondingly, social adults enter through the front, and often the socially incom-
plete - domestics, delivery men, and children - enter through the rear.”s
The spatial organization of sacred structures presents a special problem in meaning
and experience for the pilgrim. On the one hand the sacred structure symbolizes the
navel or centre of the world; to fulfil this function its shape should be circular or
square or some other isometric figure. On the other hand, man is asymmetrical and
it is confusing for him to enter a space that has neither front-back nor length-breadth.
Sacred and symbolic structures that cannot be entered may be perfectly symmetrical
without causing undue confusion. Indian shrines (stupas), for example, are solid
and isometric - including the magnificent stupa of Barabudur in Java. But temples and
churches not only stand in space but enclose space. Greek temples are rectangular;
Christian churches frequently take the form of a cross - the anisometric Latin cross
rather than the equi-dimensional Greek cross. All roads lead to Rome. St Peter’s is
GEOGRAPHY, PHENOMENOLOGY, AND HUMAN NATURE 187
the navel of the world. Ideally, its plan should be a circle or perfect polygon topped
by a soaring dome. Early plans of the basilica were in fact isometric, but subsequent
changes - involving the lengthening of the nave - turned it into the shape of the Latin
cross. Bernini‘s colonnade further dramatized the “frontality” of St Peter’s; and the
final step in the elevation of the front came with the recent removal of buildings before
the colonnade so that the pilgrim, approaching the basilica from the Tiber, could rest
assured that he was on the royal path.
Can a city be said to have a front entrance and therefore, by implication, a rear
door or side gates? Old cities very probably had front entrances. Only one route was
the royal route and a magnificent gate stood over it. During Antiquity and the Middle
Ages the main portal served as the natural ideogram for the entire city; its monu-
mentality symbolized the divine power invested in the ruler of the State. In the
traditional city of China we have perhaps the most striking illustration of how a large
space, symmetrically organized, shows clearly front and back regions. The south is
the front, the north the rear. The palace compound is at the centre; the principal
avenue leads to it from the south through a series of imposing gates, as in the case of
Peking. The area north of the palace compound is the rear of the city; no ceremonial
gateways or avenue appear there. An ancient canon of city building even required the
profane activities of commerce to be located in the back, although it is improbable
that this rule was ever followed.” Does the idea of “front” and “back” apply to the
modern, economic city? The answer would seem to be “no” at the conscious level:
the modern city has no processional routes, no ceremonial gates, and its boundary is
often arbitrary, marked by an inconspicuous signpost giving, as in the United States,
the name and population of the borough. Yet the sense of “front” and “back” is
perhaps not entirely absent. The width of the highway and the volume of traffic are
indicators of whether one is entering the city from the front or from the rear. “Front”
and “back,” then, are no longer clearly demarcated static spaces: they are related to
the direction and volume of traffic flow. One wonders whether the “front” or main
entrance of a modern town is not simply the side that is linked to the largest city - or
would it be the side that is linked to the political centre?
Although most cities in America have only a vaguely defined sense of “front” and
“back,” certain cities have deliberately assumed the sense and status of “front” by
designating themselves as “gateways.” Thus, St Louis is the Gateway to the West,
San Francisco is the Gateway to the Far East, and Grand Portage in Minnesota is the
Gateway to Isle Royal National Park. In a book on the nicknames of American cities,
I count no less than 183 urban places that claim to be at the front of something - that
boast the title of “Gate” or “Gateway.”lo
Finally, it is tempting to raise the question as to whether an entire nation may be
said to have a front and a rear. In the United States, most people probably view the
northeastern seaboard as the nation’s front. This is where history began; from the
east coast population spread westward into the backwoods. New York, in particular,
has come to mean the front portal. Among the city’s dozens of nicknames it is known
as the Front Office of American Business. But more important than New York‘s size
and business power is the symbolic role that it has played, particularly from the end
of the nineteenth century, as the main port for immigrants to enter the Land of
188 LE GBOGRAPHE CANADIEN
Promise. The Southwest is the locus of the Spanish entrada: but it remains the back-
waters for most Americans, and even a foreign country to some. California is
America’s biggest state in population. Yet, apart from Californians, it seems im-
probable that Americans now view the west coast as the nation’s front to the world.
In myth, if not in history, the Golden Gate Bridge is the last stop in the westward
movement across the continent: it symbolizes departure as much as it does entry.
adult can retreat into the hedonistic and pampered world of an infant. The image of
home weakens as the image of the freeway, with its regularly paced oases of rest, gains
force. Even to an Englishman and a man of letters, F. L. Lucas, the symbol for
happiness is not the sound of kettle boiling in a cottage, but “the contented hum of a
car engine on a country road.”lj
AUTHENTICITY
Words like “home,” “neighbourhood,” “journey,” and “wilderness” are very far from
being signs with one-to-one correspondences to aspects of reality; what they mean
echoes the accumulation of past experiences. They have also become sentimental
clichCs which people use because society approves of them, and because they fore-
stall the need to examine present experiences for content and value in the stream of
life-projects that are authentic.lBThe dictionary meaning of authentic is “really pro-
ceeding from its reputed source or author” and “the real actual (as opposed to the
pretended) .,’I7 Reality is rarely experienced direct. We perceive and act upon it
through the intermediary of words and ready-made conventions. In fact, to most
people most of the time words themselves are little more than a conventional mode
of behaviour. Words are simultaneously a means of establishing contact with the
world and of putting it at a distance, like a gesture - a wave of the hand - with which
we recognize an acquaintance and dismiss him. It is because words bear so little of
the weight of actuality that politicians can act, whether this is to bulldoze slums for
urban renewal or to partition a continent into spheres of influence. For the same
reason, but in a context that sensitive people can approve, nature-advocates push for
programs based on, at best, hazily examined relations between man and nature, health
and organic food, quality of life and wilderness-experiences.
Words substitute for the pungency of experience, and when attempts are made to
describe an actuality - quality of life, for example - it is seldom done in other than
tired words and fresh, but not always relevant, statistics. Few park rangers now
believe that body-counts in their domain are a meaningful measure of interest in
nature. Tourists are known to drive hundreds of miles to a National Park and yet not
explore it beyond what can be seen, and captured in a snapshot, a half mile from the
road. In contemporary American society, going to the “wilderness” is largely a social
convention; and we may well ask whether a person is any more likely to make
authentic encounters with nature in a National Park than with people in a cocktail
party. What is the nature of experience? To what extent is experience related to
exposure to a setting? Bodily presence may be necessary but it is clearly not sufficient
to guarantee experience. Urban-perception studies have shown that the commuter
may drive through a part of the city regularly and yet his image of it is no clearer than
that of the occasional visitor.ls
Bureaus and agencies are accumulating data on the demand made for certain types
of natural amenity, and some information is also available as to what people say they
want and expect of nature. Such data are necessary to planning. Plans are made and
actions are taken in answer to social demand; likewise, manufacturers produce sedans
of a certain size to meet the people’s choice. What constitutes the experience of
driving a high-powered car in the city and on the freeway? What are the rewards
GEOGRAPHY7 PHENOMENOLOGY, AND HUMAN NATURE 191
of this type of experience? We have little information. But then we hardly know more
what constitutes “nature experience.” The phenomenon “man-in-nature,” what it
really means, is lost in the statistical thicket, in the unreflective acceptance of society’s
conventions, including reflex responses to words.
Phenomenology and existentialism are two prominent and related schools of Euro-
pean thought that have made practically no impact on geography. This is not
surprising. In the first place the framework of objective science seems fully satisfac-
tory to geography’s modern practitioners, because space is the one dimension of
reality that the analytical tools of science can most readily manipulate: time is the
real problem unless it is conceived as reversible like distance. Geographers have
latched on to a good thing in “space” for it is strictly measurable: the further one
departs from the elementary concepts of space the more difficult it is to relate the
measure to what is measured. Secondly, much of European Continental philosophy
is written in difficult German and in not-much-clearer French. Moreover, Husserl at
one time characterized phenomenology as “psychological description”; and fami-
liarity with the works of the French phenomenologist Merleau-Ponty suggests that
this type of thinking has little to say to physical science; it is directly relevant to
psychology and literature in so far as these fields are concerned primarily with the
nature of experience and with the meaning of being human. Such interests seem rather
remote from the workaday concerns of the geographer: yet it ought not to be, for
the phenomenologist studies neither “man” in the abstract nor the “world” in the
abstract but “man-in-the-world.’’ The approach is clearly of importance to anthro-
pology, and in fact anthropologists have made substantial use of the phenomenologi-
cal perspective in studying the nature of cultural experience.l9 The perspective is no
less important to the geographer for his quest - broadly conceived - is also the
understanding of “man-in-the-world.’’