All Perception Engages the Tensegrity-Based Haptic Medium

Abstract

Structurally, bodies of organisms can be described as tensegrity systems, fractally self-similar from whole-body to cellular levels. Sensory receptors embedded within such somatic tensegrity systems comprise haptic perceptual systems. Because the elements of the organismic tensegrity system are all interconnected, that system becomes the medium for haptic perception. Forces acting on any element of a somatic tensegrity system radiate throughout the entire system and thereby affect the entire haptic medium. All perception, in the ecological view, requires active sampling of stimulus arrays. Such active perception always involves overt body movements, orienting responses, and sensory organ adjustments (e.g., eye movements). Any and all movements occasioned in active perception affect the organismic tensegrity system, and therefore the haptic medium. A surprising consequence is that all active perception necessarily entails tensegrity-based haptic medium involvement, with implications for perceptual research.

Notes

1 I use the word “perturbation” here and elsewhere in the mathematical sense of “a change (usually slight) in the values of some of the underlying parameters, made to obtain [a] desired solution, or to study the stability of a given solution” (Borowski & Borwein, 1991, p. 448).