It’s a hot day; sweat is beading on your brow, you’re half-walking, half-running down a busy sidewalk, weaving in between pedestrians to try and catch the next bus. Pulling up to the stop you see the bus turn the corner at the end of the street, fading out of sight. You stop in the cool shade of a tree, a bird chirps, you take a breath, a breeze cools your forehead and you think about when you played with a sprinkler as a child. Clear repose.

***

We often live as if we are in complete control of the world around us. Yet, when we stop for a moment and take a chance to observe the situation properly we can be met with experiences that we would never have otherwise found.

These are experiences that we cannot adequately describe but have a profound impact on our lives. They occur when we stand in the glory of a cathedral, enjoy a fine wine while dining with a lover, or sit alone, perfectly relaxed, by a fish pond. These moments are incredibly meaningful. Yet, even when we feel we have done them justice in poetry or art, it is not clear how we perceive such meaning in them. Can we form a hypothesis for how, and why, meaning appears to us at these times?

To start, we must understand what it means to see something meaningful at all. To successfully navigate the environment, we must perceive certain facts. We must be able to tell that the area between two posts and a lintel constitutes a space that we can walk through. We must be able to judge whether a surface suspended from the floor with four legs will support our weight if we sit down on it. We need to know that stepping off the edge of a cliff would result in a nasty fall.

However, the question of how these basic meanings appear to us is not easy to answer.

In the last few centuries, one route we have taken to get an answer has been a mechanistic description of the process. We have made great progress in detailing the biological apparatus of the eye and mapping the structures of the brain that correspond to visual processing. However, there is no clear consensus around how meaning is generated by this system. Worse, even if there were such a consensus, it is not obvious that such a description would offer a satisfying solution.

When we see a stove and know it could burn our hand, the understanding most people have is that the meaning of the stove for us is that we could get burned and that we are observing this fact. If we intend to locate the mechanism for generating this meaning in the brain, however, we run into the problem that the brain could only ever be responsible for our experience of meaning, not the meaning itself.

Even if we could say precisely how the energy of the stove activates the nerve cells in our hand, in turn triggering a reflex via the spinal cord, and then how this mechanism leads to effects in the brain, this would not answer how the meaning of the world—the fact that it has certain relevance for us—comes to exist. Such a description reduces the “meaning” of the experience to an epiphenomenon at best.

Even more problematically for the scientific endeavour, descriptions of this kind fall prey to being homunculus arguments. In the case of sight, when we say that light is picked up by specialised nerves in the eye and sent to the brain for processing, we haven’t got any closer to explaining the source of the perception. We have essentially said that light is picked up by the eye and transmitted to the brain, where perception then occurs. Instead of clarifying the original phenomenon, we have explained it in terms of itself. This is an infinite regress.

Fundamentally, both these issues are symptomatic of a subject-object dichotomy implicit in how the problem is approached. Modern science, including psychology, has developed a framing of the world where physical properties "out there" are opposed to things like meaning that are private experiences "in here." In this framing, only the physical properties can be rigorously studied. Beyond the just raised issues this creates for analysis; this perspective leaves us bereft of the most basic meanings that make life livable. In our saner moments, the idea that the meaning of burning ourselves on a stove is merely an epiphenomenon is absurd to most people.

One attempt to resolve these issues is James J. Gibson's idea of affordances. An affordance is a reframing of the perceived world in terms of what it offers the creature perceiving it. In terms of affordances, we can say that a chair is not identified via certain qualities like its “shape,” and then given a meaning as a secondary step. Instead, it is a surface which is directly identified as sit-on-able. Qualities like “colour” or “shape,” along with the concept of a “chair,” are secondary.

The key breakthrough in the concept of affordances is the recognition of complementarity between creature and world. In ecology there is complementarity between a species and a niche. Neither the species nor the niche could be described without reference to the other. In the same way, the world that can be perceived—the world of affordances—cannot exist without both a physical world and a creature that can interact with it. A sidewalk is walk-on-able because of the fit between a flat, uncluttered, rigid surface and a creature with two legs that can move one after the other to locomote.

This means that affordances exist in neither the creature nor in the world alone. They are an emergent property of the whole.¹ Although, relative to the creature perceiving them, affordances are not merely private experiences. When we reframe perception this way, we avoid the divide between the world of physics and the world of mental phenomenon. In addition, we gain a way to make use of readily available intuitions about what we see. ²

Most importantly for our inquiry, the concept of affordances resolves the issue of how we can see something meaningful. When navigating the world, the information we are presented with can now have direct relevance for us. The light that shows a surface that ends abruptly with no additional surface below it signifies, directly, a falling-off-place.

Yet, this still only explains basic objects and their relationships to our body. The most important things that we are interested in are less straightforward to identify. How, for instance, do I perceive the meaning that unfurls on stage, as two actors explore the depths of a human relationship?

Can we find a way to understand what is happening in these cases? To start with, let's try to define the quality that is meaningful in these instances. In the case of the stove, we can provide a physical description of energy rapidly transferring to our hand as the material occurrence behind the meaning. When we see more ineffable moments of value, such as moving dramas, what exactly is it that we are seeing?

To answer, we can borrow the work of Christopher Alexander.³ Alexander calls this quality life. As Alexander describes it, life is a property expressed by all places to a varying degree. It is the harmony of forces expressed by a whole resulting from the interaction of all of the entities—that Alexander calls centres—that it contains.⁴

For example, we can describe the centres in a room. To start, imagine a completely bare square space. Even here, although relatively plain, there are clear centres. The space closest to the door. The area in the middle of the room. The ceiling. If you add a table, these centres change. The table itself is a centre, but so are the rectangular cuboids cut on each side of the table and the ring of space surrounding the table.

Alternatively, imagine a couple on a date. At first the two sit across from each other in a restaurant. There are many centres at work: The space between the two potential lovers. The area to their backs. The halos around their hands on the table. One of them leans in. Suddenly the centres change. The space between them reduces, there is forward momentum, an open space appears behind one, and the two are out of sync, creating a dynamic tension of intersecting lines.

As the delicate ritual unfurls, the space is filled with life, each whole expressing rich, almost innumerable, meanings for the relationship between the two people.

Centres and the wholes that generate them have a geometric reality. The way they shape a space is real, and the actions they elicit in the environment are real. Centres determine what will occur, in much the same way that the trade winds influence the shape of global commerce. It is not a precise correspondence, but it is a substantial motive force.

***

If we accept that we see affordances, not physical properties, it follows that our capabilities largely define what we see. As our possible actions in the world change, the environment that could fit those actions likewise changes. Again, this aligns with our intuitive experiences. Most people have experienced cultivating skill at a particular art and seeing more of the world as a result.

The first time you go on a date the whole affair is quite awkward and unnecessarily complicated. You can’t tell if you’re getting the signals you desire, and each time you speak you feel like you might have fallen into a crevasse of embarrassment. However, as your skills in the romantic arena improve you, quite literally, learn to see the signs of success and failure. One day as a potential partner leans across the table you see an arm that has become touch-able.

With this lens, when we see the life of a place it must be because we are in some sense capable of it.  We have some ability with regards to the whole and its centres that lets us interact with them.

The difference between these situations and the basic meanings of navigation is that our relationship is not one of complete control. In the case of the stove, we can orient our bodies in almost infinite ways in relation to it. In the case of the life of a place, our abilities are not so total. For the generation of life, we may be able to act in some way with regards to the centres and their determination, but the scope of our capabilities is not at all obvious.

More concretely, when we are in a room with a cup, no matter how we choose to act—how we choose to hold our body, the kind of thoughts we have, the approach we take to the room—as long as we do not move behind an occluding surface, we can still see the cup. In all these orientations we still have the capability of handling this object.

When we walk into a church, however, we are constrained. To see the life of the space, to really be affected by it, we must hold our bodies with some tension, we must be careful of how we speak, and we must take care with our thoughts to not get lost in frivolous fancies. We must maintain a certain reverence.

Likewise, if we begin a job interview for a position that we really want, our option space is sparse. We must present ourselves just right, poised between brutal realism and abundant enthusiasm. We need to know how to manage our body, modulate our speech, and keep our thinking focused. Without the correct respect for the position, and for ourselves, the experience of neither the dialogue nor the outcome will be filled with life.

My hypothesis then is that when we see life, it leaves us with a sense of profound meaning because in these cases, we are another centre acting upon the whole. We are a part of creating life, just like the table that has been placed in the room. If we have lined ourselves up physically and mentally just so, then along with all the other forces acting at that time, we participate in the life of a place. By participating, we harmonise with forces quite literally beyond our description but massively influential for our lives.

These meaningful but ineffable experiences of life remain elusive. In general, we see the fit between our bodies and the world. When we navigate the most basic physical meaning of the environment—such as the sidewalk in front of our feet—our capabilities meet the world, and our capabilities are largely enough to handle the task at hand. When we experience life in Alexander’s sense, the world meets our capabilities where they are, and our capabilities are far from covering the scope of the world. In the former we are managing; in the latter we are dancing.

***

To summarise, when we navigate the world things appear to us as immediately meaningful, but the origin of this meaning is not clear. This lack of clarity becomes even more of an issue when we try to understand the meaning of the most impactful moments of our lives.

The mechanistic, scientific approach to uncovering the source of meaning has several methodological flaws and at best reduces the meaning to an epiphenomenon. James J. Gibson’s concept of affordances offers a more satisfying description of meaning as a relative property arising from the interplay of subject and object. With affordances, meaning becomes a reality that emerges out of the interplay of our capabilities and the world around us.

However, in the frame that Gibson worked on, affordances are only easily understood with regards to the basic physical meanings of the world. To extend this idea into our more impactful moments we can borrow Christopher Alexander’s definition of life as the harmonization of forces acting upon a space.

A corollary of the affordances idea is that we can see meaning where we can interact with the world. For everyday objects we can interact in essentially any way we wish. Life however only occurs when all the forces that are part of the whole are harmonized in some very particular ways. Whenever life occurs it is always a property of the whole and so will include us as the observer. In the case of life, we can see it when we can generate it and we can only generate it if we act just so.

We perceive meaning when our capabilities meet the world. In the most mundane cases we are entirely capable of acting in space to achieve any outcome we desire. In the more profound, and ethereal moments that we experience our capabilities and the world meet just so, we walk the tightrope between control and powerlessness.

We live our lives with a sense of complete understanding for the world we navigate. We may at times be buffeted by forces that appear beyond our control, but generally assume that we can figure them out and bend the world as we need. Occasionally, though, we are stopped in our tracks by a sense that the world is unfurling just as it should, a choreographed whole in perfect harmony, and not just something for our use. In these moments we can be the perfect dance partner, participating freely in the emergence of life.

Embrace the fact that your capabilities and understanding will always be incomplete. This is not symptomatic of weakness—in fact, it is the very source of meaning in life.

Notes

1. Emergent properties exist wherever we can say that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. In other words emergence occurs when there are properties of a system that are not present in the multiple smaller subsystems that make it up. Note that emergent properties are always coherent with the operation of the subsystems; they are simply not reducible to them. All of the neuroscience behind visual processing is still true, it is just not adequate to explain how perception occurs.
2. It has also proved a useful concept in the world of design. Many designers praise Donald Norman’s 1988 The Design of Everyday Things (DOET) as a seminal text (now in a revised edition, New York: Basic Books, 2016). One of DOETs core arguments is that by making affordances explicit when creating objects, we can in turn make them more transparent and more useful for their users.
3. One way of interpreting the career of Christopher Alexander is that he has been obsessed with answering the question of what this quality is and where it comes from so that he could learn how to generate it in his own architecture. He has given it various names, including in The Timeless Way of Building, “The Quality without a Name” (Oxford University Press: New York, 1979). In The Nature of Order he describes it in terms of “life” generated by a “whole” that is in turn composed of “centres” (Berkeley, CA: Center for Environmental Structure, 2002-2005).
4. It is important here to be clear that the centres proceed from the whole. As a situation changes each new whole is composed of new centres. The centres never operate independently. In the example that follows with the table if we were then to add a vase of flowers the whole is now composed of a new set of centres altogether. The centres that had formed with the table no longer operate, though there may be some likenesses among them (cf. Joe Norman’s 2019 essay in The Side View: “Generating Wholes” [https://thesideview.co/journal/generating-wholes/].)