Dec
2008
“Common Senses: Water, Sensory Experience and the Generation of Meaning.”
In search of an article/study to write my psych paper on, I stumbled across a couple articles that seemed very interesting but too long (they had to be 10 or less pages) to base my paper on. I read one of them, “Common Senses: Water, Sensory Experience and the Generation of Meaning”, and thought I’d post some excerpts here–
“The thesis proposed is that the formal qualities and characteristics of the object – whatever it is – are crucial in that they provide a common basis for the construction of meaning. Equally critical to this discussion is an acknowledgement that (while acknowledging minor evolutionary adaptations) in general terms humans share common sensory and perceptual processes, although their experiences are, as noted previously, also composed of culturally specific beliefs and expectations, learned behaviours and embodied predispositions.”
“The article attempts to show that, although meaning is a human product, the environment is not a tabula rasa, but instead provides elements whose consistent characteristics are the basis for meanings that flow cross-culturally, creating common undercurrents in culturally specific engagements and interpretations.”
“Water’s diversity is, in some respects, a key to its meanings. Here is an object that is endlessly transmutable, moving readily from one shape to another: from ice to stream, from vapour to rain, from fluid to steam. It has an equally broad range of scales of existence: from droplet to ocean, trickle to flood, cup to lake…This process of transformation never ceases: water is always undergoing change, movement and progress. Captured in a cup or pond or lake, it evaporates or escapes and runs away: it is always physically flowing from one place to another in streams, torrents, waves and currents.”
“The overarching theme, which in many ways contains all of the other meanings encoded in water, is that water is the literally ‘essential’ matter of life and death.”
“The imposition of Christianity that subsumed Pagan cosmological beliefs reframed the ‘water of life’ considerably. Biblical descriptions demonstrate a shift from ancient visions of water as a source or personification of god-ness (primarily female) to a more ‘rational’ and abstract vision of ‘living water’ as the product of a single male God…However, even with the ascendance of the patriarchal Christian God, homologous Biblical imagery retained a vision of water as the essence of life.”
“With the Enlightenment, water became a ‘fountainhead’ of spiritual knowledge and wisdom, and eventually, under the weight of Rationalism, the ‘living water’ of the Bible was overtaken by a more Cartesian vision of water as H2O. However, the flow of ideas and images linking water and the spirit has not evaporated (Figure 4), and even in a primarily secular cosmos, water is still presented as the ‘essence’ of a living, functioning ecology of existence.”
“…a reality that water always contains the potential to be benign or harmful, and that the safety of interactions with it depends upon sufficient human control of the engagement.”
Source
Strang, Veronica. “Common Senses: Water, Sensory Experience and the Generation of Meaning.” Journal of Material Culture 10.1 (2005): 92-120.
Available for download (if you have a subscription) here. Or, e-mail me and I will send it to you.
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Twenty-one years old as of May 22nd. Attends the University of California, Berkeley. Works hard. Sometimes takes life way too seriously but is beginning to accept life as it is. Thinks too much. Loves music. The color yellow. Enjoys political discussion and involvement in world issues. Liberal. Interested in sustainability, green business, social business & entrepreneurship, and Web 2.0.