The Primacy of Movement

Advances in Consciousness Research #82

by Maxine Sheets-Johnstone

Through diligent and rigorous attention to both natural history and phenomenological accounts of kinetic phenomena, particularly the phenomenon of self-movement, this richly interdisciplinary book brings to the fore the long-neglected topic of animate form and with it, a long-neglected inquiry into the significance of animation. It addresses methodological and foundational issues at length. In its detailed and extensive examinations and analyses of movement ― which range from Aristotle’s recognition of motion as the principle of nature to a critique of the common notion of movement as change of position, from critiques of present-day materialists’ trivializations of movement as mere output to kinesthetically-tethered accounts of the qualia of movement, from expositions of an evolutionary semantics and of the tactile-kinesthetic body as generative source of corporeal concepts to expositions of thinking in movement and of the pan-human phenomenon of learning to move oneself ― this book lays out in ground-breaking ways fundamental epistemological and metaphysical dimensions of animate life. (Series A)

Genres: Philosophy

620 pages, Paperback

Published May 15, 1999

Reviews

[Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

Running in at just over 600 pages, Maxine Sheets-Johnstone's The Primacy of Movement is a mammoth of a book - its size matched only by its ambition. Ranging from fields as diverse as phenomenology, developmental psychology, evolutionary biology and analytic philosophy of mind, Sheets-Johnstone’s magisterial tract works relentlessly to establish movement as nothing less than the grounding element of life, affectivity, perception, and thought. For Sheets-Johnstone, without movement – without the spark of ‘primal animation’ astir in every living thing – life itself would be impossible. Indeed, armed with the barometer that is movement, the bulk of Sheets-Johnstone’s massive tome is given over to tearing apart the many approaches to perception and thought which elide or otherwise minimize its (vital) importance. To the cutting room floor are brought both cognitivist and materialist views, each of which aim to reduce living, bodily beings to nothing more than either their brains on the one hand, or ‘matrices of cells and molecules’ on the other.

So strict is Sheets-Johnstone’s commitment to upholding the primacy of movement that even those whom one might consider intellectual allies are pillored on the altar of the animate: Evan Thompson, Francisco Varela, Alva Noë, Shaun Gallager, James Gibson, and - most prominently - Maurice Merleau-Ponty are all given short shrift for not paying enough attention to the kinesthetic dimension of bodily life. Not even vocabularies of kindred concern are granted safe harbor, with Sheets-Johnstone summarily dismissing voguish terms like ‘embodiment’, ‘enaction’, ‘lived body’ and ‘bodily schema’ as being mere ‘lexical band-aids’ which ‘compromise the semantic specificity’ of what she instead prefers to refer to as ‘animate forms’. A prospective reader can only imagine then, the treatment offered to thinkers like Daniel Dennett and Paul Churchland – affiliated with the aforementioned cognitivists and materialists – both of whom are essentially laughed off the intellectual stage (a measured laughter, it ought to be noted).

Nonetheless, coupled with these negative, ground-clearing moves (the highlights of which are Sheets-Johnstone's utter dismembering of analytic thought experiments like the ‘brain in the vat’ and ‘Mary’s room’ – each of which are upbraided for their incoherent treatment of the body), are her more constructive ventures which draw instead upon early child developmental studies, evolutionary-zoological considerations, and the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. Insofar as each of these fields recognize, in their varying manners, the singular and constitutive importance of movement in the unfolding of human – and non-human – life, each provides Sheets-Johnstone with an indispensable fund of resources which she uses to build her case. Indeed, one of the distinctive traits of The Primacy of Movement is not simply its vigilant attention to human experience, but also its deep appreciation of perspectives other than that of the adult human: from crustaceans to Howler monkeys, Neanderthals to infants, nature for Sheets-Johnstone evinces a depth of time and space which demand exploration if we are to remain true to the wonder that motivates all philosophical thought.

For all its scope and rigor however, The Primacy of Movement does seem to falter a little when it comes to conceptual development. While Sheets-Johnstone clearly delights in her various take-downs, and while she relentlessly demonstrates, in domain after domain, just how important it is to take movement into account – and the absurdities that result when we don’t - the book never quite lays down a convincing ontological base from which to develop a philosophy of movement proper. The question of just what kind of universe, what kind of cosmology is entailed by the primacy of movement is never tackled head on. This is, perhaps, a symptom of the book's organisation, which, in the end, is more a collection of overlapping essays whose ultimate theme, laid out in the conclusion of the first edition, is as simple as it is profound: "Any time we care to turn our attention to [movement], there it is."

In this sense, The Primacy of Movement is indeed a foundational book - foundational in the sense of being an indispensable resource for further investigation, one whose many avenues of inquiry demand to be followed up upon. If, "in the beginning there was movement", then the question, even after the many pages here, remains: where to next? (A few suggestions!: George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's Metaphors We Live By, David Morris's The Sense of Space, Renaud Barbaras's Desire and Distance, Carrie Nolan's Agency and Embodiment, Erin Manning's Relationscapes - would all be great follow throughs for this book).

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A monumental achievement. Repudiates aspects of Dennett, Merlau-Ponty, Nagel, Churchland, many more bear the brunt of Sheets-Johnstone's frontal stabbing of the core or at least appearances of these luminaries' virtuous observations of things not there. A must-read.