- Morris’s concern in this book is what he shall call “lived space,” which demands a study of perception in association with the moving body, in other words, needs to put the body at the center. This book shows “how the moving body is inherently open to the world, how the schema and meaning of perception are not possessions of a closed body-subject, but are rooted in an inherently developmental body, a body that contracts perceptual meaning through learning that is both social and constrained by the body’s own topology and relation to place.” Hence, the experience of body is insufficient to his philosophy, one has to think of the body in terms of our sense of depth and orientation (both are “lived” and may can be replaced by one term “situation” or “circumstance”, because the sense of situation and circumstance is made possible by our perception of depth and orientation to the world) emerge from such topology in relation to place (not space), and how this sense is rooted in movement and development in a social place. Morris analysis was based on Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy and at the same time Edward Casey’s interpretation and development.
LIYANG DING 