Touch vs sight
Unpacking my things after months in storage, I rediscovered a book I bought just before the move: Sculpture by Johann Gottfried von Herder. I only made it partway through before it went into a box, so I picked up where I left off and, I gotta say, it was a nice read.
A takeaway from Herder's book revolves around how we perceive art. He contrasts paintings, which are flat canvases you just look at, with sculpture, which are 3D forms you can look at but you should touch. His reason is when we look at something we only see a flat shape reflected from a single surface. That's fine for a flat painting, but because touch alone reveals bodies and sculpture is three dimensional, just looking at it is woefully insufficient.
As Herder is often paraphrased: sight gives us dreams, touch gives us truth.
In my daily life I walk around touching everything I can reach. I look, too, but I always thought seeing was the teaser while touching was experiencing. This became obvious when I started learning to sculpt in stone. You look at your work in progress from all angles and all light sources to see how it's taking shape. But each glance is only a snapshot from a single angle. You can see that "extra" stone you want to remove, but to remove it, you have to think in three dimensions. Translating flat looks to strikes of the chisel, which can be oriented in any direction in space, is a challenge, but it's one that touch was designed to overcome. Feel that lump of stone, map its shape in your head, and tap the chisel with that in mind.
I'm still wondering and reading about sight. There's a lot to dig into, especially with early modern philosophers like Berkeley, Reid, and Locke. I'm interested in why we've come to favor it over every other sense. In some ways it's the easy sense, isn't it? Easy to use, easy to delight, even easy to trick (AI imagery, optical illusions, magic eye puzzles). It's a bit harder to fool the other senses, and I'd wager nearly impossible to fool touch.
There's also a sort of aristocratic distance sight imparts. The Civilized Man™ is satisfied to learn by looking. No need to sully himself by kneeling in the weeds or stooping to feel the river's cool waters. Just look and pretend you know it all; leave touching to the beasts and barbarians. We like to think that's us in modern times, above and separate from nature.
Another thought: touch is the only sense that isn't mediated. Sight requires light, and the way something appears changes depending on the light. Smell, taste, and hearing are mediated, as well. But touch, with touch we interact directly. There is nothing between a hand and the waxen leaf, or a fingertip and gravel on the road.
None of this is to say there aren't beautiful things to look at or that I would want to be without my sense of sight. It's only that touching adds something sight alone cannot satisfy. We've forgotten that, and Herder wants us to remember.
I hate that all of this reminds me of the cringe meme of "go touch grass." But..."go look at grass" doesn't mean the same thing at all.