Thoughts on perception 2, our environment

Recently, a friend of mine gave me a copy of Wendell Berry’s Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community. Thus far it is an excellent read. This same friend took this picture (i think) somewhere along Oregon’s scenic coastline.

I want to quote Berry here, ‘[...] the love of nature that limits itself to the love of places that are ’scenic’ is implicitly dangerous. It is dangerous because it tends to exclude unscenic places from nature and from the respect that we sometimes accord to nature’ (28).

This is highway 84 in southern Idaho. It is arid and profitless lanf.  And yet, this barren stretch where seldom is seen a valley dwelling deer or low lying hawk, hoping for prey to fall victim along this asphalt wonderland, is quite captivating. But despite this captivation, and according to our modern understanding of our general use of the word, scenic it is not.

A thought on perception, 1

I think Maurice Merleau-Ponty conveys the intelligibility of history perfectly in his short but sweet The World of Perception as such:

The physics of relativity confirms that absolute and final objectivity is a mere dream by showing how each particular observation is strictly linked to the location of the observer and cannot be abstracted from this particular situation; it also rejects the notion of an absolute observer. We can no longer flatter ourselves with the idea that, in science, the exercise of a pure and unsituated intellect can allow us to gain access to an object free of all human traces, just as God would see it.

He goes on, however, to suggest that this doesn’t weaken the veracity of science or even the need for scientific research as much as curtail the dogmatism associated with the notion that only science can obtain ‘absolute and complete knowledge.’