Surface Phenomena and Aesthetic
Experience
Yi-Fu Tuan
Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706
Abstract. Appreciation for nature or land-
scape i s a principal reason for becoming a
geographer. The aesthetic impulse and ex-
perience are not, however, confined to any
class of individuals. They are a universal hu-
man trait, and we find evidence of it in all
areas of human life. Satisfaction with life con-
sists largely of taking pleasure in form and ex-
pressiveness-in sensory impressions, modi-
fied by the mind, at all scales from the smile
of a child to the built environment and polit-
ical theater. So much of life occurs at the sur-
face that, as students of the human scene, we
are obliged to pay far more attention to i t s
character (subtlety, variety, and density) than
we have done. The scholars neglect and sus-
picion of surface phenomena i s a conse-
quence of a dichotomy in Western thought
between surface and depth, sensory appre-
ciation and intellectual understanding, with
bias against the first of the t w o terms. Variant
meanings of these terms and their impact on
our attitude toward surface phenomena, aes-
thetic experience, and mere description
are explored.
Key Words: aesthetic, appearance, beauty, depth,
description, surface, ugly.
13 EOCRAPHERS study the surface of the
earth, where nearly all forms of life
congregate. Delight in the wealth and
variation of terrestrial phenomena, including
perhaps their sounds and smells, i s a strong
reason for taking up geography as a discipline
(Ohlson 1976; Lewis 1985; Porteus 1985). Ceog-
raphers like to know not only where things and
places are, but also how it feels to be in a place.
Traditionally, they have enjoyed accounts of
travelers and explorers, and have sought to
provide good descriptions of their own
(Younghusband1920; Stoddart 1986). Of course,
in order to understand surface phenomena, one
has to seek underlying causes. Knowing the
underlying cause or the hidden reason for things
is at the heart of serious research. Contem-
porary geographers are therefore inclined to
apologize for mere description. Anthropol-
ogists, like geographers, are torn between eth-
nography and explanatory science, between
surface and depth. However, unlike geog-
raphers, an influential school of anthropology
recognizes the value of thick description
(Geertz 1973); perhaps again unlike geogra-
phers, anthropologists know the danger of
moving too quickly from the rich texture of
surface life to highly abstract theories, all of
which they tend to view as culturally flavored.
I can try t o argue why geographers need not
feel that they have become superficial or friv-
olous when they seek to describe and interpret,
as carefully as they are able but without the
formal apparatus of hypothesis-testing, the parts
of the world to which they are drawn. T o un-
derstand why such a defense is necessary-why
surface phenomena have the lowly standing
they do in scholarship-calls for the awareness
of a much broader context of thought. It is a
purpose of this paper to provide a sketch of
this broader context. At base are certain ques-
tions, addressed by philosophers since antiq-
uity, concerning the relationship between sur-
face and that which lies beyond or behind it,
between appearance and underlying reality,
between sensory appreciation and intellectual
understanding. In deliberating these questions,
the greater prestige of depth is assumed.
Scholars and scientists speak of digging out
the truth. I do not question the necessity for
digging to arrive at fundamental knowledge. I
do, however, believe that too quick a focusing
on depth-on the second of the paired terms
given above-tends to the neglect of directly
apprehensible phenomena, which have the
Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 79(2), 1989, pp. 233-241
0 Copyright 1989 by Association of American Geographers
234
greatest importance t o human life. In this pa-
per, l shall present t h e view that appearance
and sensory impressions, especially those that
have a certain aesthetic appeal, merit our clos-
est attention. M o r e generally, I shall offer a case
for t h e pervasiveness, and hence importance,
of t h e aesthetic experience in human life.
Nature of Aesthetic Experience
The aesthetic experience is largely a matter
of t h e pleasure of t h e senses, varyingly in-
formed by t h e mind. At o n e extreme, it can b e
a shudder of delight that is predominantly
physical in character; at t h e other extreme, it
is a mediated response, cool yet intense, of
intellectual appreciation. I have used t h e words
surface, sensory impression, and directly
apprehensible, but these words have c o m e
into existence and have meaning only in rela-
tion t o depth, abstract understanding, and
mediated apprehension. Pleasures may well
exist that are direct and naive: for instance, t h e
taste of cool water when thirsty or t h e feel of
young human skin. But pleasure d e e m e d aes-
thetic suggests greater distancing, t h e effect of
a more circuitous psychological path. W e d o
not naturally have but develop a taste for wine,
sunset, architecture, and t h e elegance of math-
ematics. The aesthetic response d e p e n d s on,
and can perhaps b e endlessly extended by, as-
sociation, memory, and knowledge.
Let m e give two examples of heightened aes-
thetic experience. The first draws primarily o n
association or metaphorical extension. After t h e
long siege of winter, I encounter a patch of
sunlight o n t h e ground, which I immediately
take t o b e warmly beautiful. My experience of
it is fairly uncomplicated. This aesthetic plea-
sure in sunlight is significantly enhanced, and
becomes less simple, after reading t h e follow-
ing passage: The angle of illumination has al-
tered. l imagine warmth leaning against t h e
door, and o p e n t h e door t o let it in; sunlight
falls flat at my feet like a penitent (Updike
1966, 56). The second example illustrates how
knowledge of t h e past can greatly affect ones
aesthetic response. The pattern of folded bed-
rock exposed o n t h e flank of a mountain gives
m e a certain aesthetic pleasure, but that plea-
sure is intensified and transformed into an
emotion better described as sublime when I
see in t h e folded beds not just an attractive
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pattern but t h e yawning of geologic time and
t h e violence of geologic forces. In t h e stratified
and folded beds, time becomes visible and tec-
tonic violence, though long dead in fact, is viv-
idly alive as image. What can occur in t h e midst
of mountains is even more likely t o occur in
t h e midst of humanly constructed places-
neighborhoods, towns, and cities. O u r appre-
ciation of them depends in large part o n mem-
ory. Nevertheless, t h e moment of aesthetic ap-
preciation is t h e moment when we are not
actively thinking about t h e past. In a city, t h e
past is not only what w e know about in a struc-
tured or analytical way, but what w e can see.
Time, as aesthetic experience, is not a super-
numerary concept or body of knowledge added
o n t o a visual experience; it is itself a sort of
color and shade in our perceptual field, or even
a panorama, so that it seems natural to say of a
new town that it looks bleached and blocked,
and of a historic town that it offers a colorful
temporal vista (Nabokov 1966, 269).
Living at t h e Surface
Most human pleasures require prior appren-
ticeship. W e have t o work for them, and an
important part of this work is mental-an effort
of t h e imagination and an effort toward un-
derstanding. But t o have t h e pleasure itself, t h e
prior work that w e have put in must b e for-
gotten o r laid aside. O n e reason why w e expect
t o find happiness in t h e midst of nature is that
there w e are more disposed t o lay aside our
intellectual obligation to delve behind surface
phenomena-to probe for underlying causes
and psychological motivations. Surrounded by
nature, w e readily yield t o t h e sensory stimu-
lation of agreeable forms and color, quick and
graceful movement of animals, t h e sound of
water and t h e fragrance of vegetation. Indeed,
surrounded by nature, w e may o n c e more see
that it thrives even though all its communica-
tions and exchanges have occurred unaided by
any conscious awareness of reality as consisting
of surfaces and depths. Animals mate and give
birth, seek food and fight, establish social
groups, all o n t h e basis of what their senses tell
them. They respond quickly and with assurance
through their interpretation of perceptual cues.
Judging by appearance is all that they need t o
d o t o survive and prosper.
Humans are capable of making t h e analytical
 Surface Phenomena and Aesthetic Experience
distinction between surface and depth. But, like
other animals, we also live largely at the surface.
Most of the time, we too respond to things
around us and to each other because of how
they appear. It is often said that this ability to
respond appropriately to sensory impressions
is necessary to survival. Of course it is, but to
put the matter thus i s to use the language of
biological science, which neglects the experi-
ential qualities of living-including happiness
and aesthetic delight. Animals with complex
neural systems almost surely savor the sensorial
wealth of their environment at a conscious level;
we know for a fact that humans do. Humans
have access to an enormous array of pleasing
stimuli, the character of which varies with lo-
cality and culture. Americans, for example, are
able to derive aesthetic pleasure from the
tongues of parking meters that turn bright red
in the late afternoon sun (Updike 1980,43),the
fragrance of charcoal broiled hamburgers, and
the sizzling sound of tires on the scorched
highway. Other people in other cultures notice
and appreciate different things. Whatever they
are, tiansitory impressions unobtrusively nur-
ture our sense of well-being. If the utopias of
political dreamers often seem abstract and un-
livable-indeed threatening at any moment to
become dystopian-it is because they lack the
myriad agreeable images, odors, sounds, and
tactilities that we know we must have if life i s
to have any satisfaction at all.
Although a beautiful physical environment
can promote happiness, good human relations
are usually considered even more important.
They too are built almost entirely on surface
cues. Civility is public-a matter of observable
manners, but even in some of our deepest re-
lations with another, appearance is almost all.
What count, both in the short and the long
run, are facial expressions, words and tone of
voice, gestures and action. It is true that a gruff
exterior may hide a heart of gold, but that heart
of gold must a t some stage be manifest, or it
counts for naught. Appearance i s so important
that people can fall in love at first sight. Perhaps
the visual has been overemphasizedin this case,
for voice and odor may also play a vital if less
conspicuous part. But whatever the stimuli, their
impact on the senses i s direct and overwhelm-
ing; and the bond thus forged between two
individuals is intense and "deep." The love of
a parent for her child is deep. This "depth" i s
again largely the result of what the parent sees
235
and hears in normal daily contacts and during
climactic moments rather than of what she knows
of her child's anatomy and blood circulation,
deep psychological mechanisms, or intentions
that leave no surface trace; indeed it i s doubtful
that disposition or intention can remain totally
unmanifest since a single look or offhand re-
mark divulges it. Warm human relations, we
like to believe, are a characteristic quality of
one's hometown; if so, they are nurtured not
only by help given in times of need but also,
subconsciously, by the milieu's numerous re-
warding excitations, among which are friendly
smiles and voices. A place's aural environment
matters greatly to how people relate to each
other and to their sense of well-being. Its key
component is human speech: in our home-
town, we can think of ourselves as living in a
protective bubble of familiar human voices.
How do we understand what they say? For the
most part, superficially: that is, most of the time
we assume that people say what they mean and
that they speak the truth as they see it. Society
holds together on the basis of this uncritical
acceptance of that which i s being said. It will
collapse if i t s members make a habit of listening
with "the mind's ear" for subterfuges and sub-
texts.
The Beauty of the Unseen
We live in a world of fair appearances, but
something of greater value-a reality not di-
rectly accessible to the senses-lies behind
them. This i s a common way of thinking. The
ancient Greeks asked, "Why should one choose
to be born rather than not?" Anaxagoras's an-
swer was, "For the sake of viewing the heavens
and the things there, stars and moon and sun"
(reported by Aristotle 1984,1925).These beau-
tiful objects compensate for the pain and suf-
fering to which all humans are heir. Yet even
more wonderful than such appearances i s the
unseen order that sustains them. Plato, more
eloquently and persuasively than other think-
ers, has argued for the idea of successive layers
of beauty, each more abstract and splendid than
the other, that stand behind (as it were) the
sensible particulars. The language best suited
to describing the unseen order is mathematical.
This attitude toward reality, which emerged in
the quasi-mystical atmosphere of ancient times,
is still held among today's most prominent the-
236
oretical physicistsand cosmologists.They seem
to be saying that the ultimate building blocks
of the universe are not material but are rather
like mathematical equations; moreover, they
expect these equations-as a statement or em-
bodiment of the (pen)ultimately real-to show
elegance (Chandrasekhar 1987).
How curious that words like elegance and
beauty, almost taboo in the critical language of
the fine arts and humanities, are used unapol-
ogetically in such antipodal human endeavors
as high-fashion dressmaking and theoretical
physics. High fashion is, of course, devoted to
appearance-to how a dress looks, its sensual-
aesthetic appeal. By contrast, the elegance of
equations is invisible t o the naked eye. And yet
the aim of science i s not, obviously, to preserve
the numinous (dark) core of being, but rather
to bring whatever i s there to the surface-to
light. The ideal of science i s disclosure. Math-
ematics i s used only because it makes the fullest
disclosure possible. Science renders the invis-
ible visible, the secret public. Interestingly, such
a characterization is equally well suited to the
enterprise of art, which i s also an attempt to
render in i t s own way the invisible visible, the
secret public. Of the products of both science
and art, aesthetic terms of appraisal seem ap-
propriate.
Plato argues that a particular sensible beauty
can lead us to something higher. Christianity
embraces a similar view when it says that though
the creation i s good, something even better or
higher lies behind it-a supernal reality and,
ultimately, God Himself. I now present another
way of looking at surface and depth, viz., a dull
or ugly surface may hide an underlying beauty
of a spiritual or moral nature. Alcibiades makes
the point, for instance, that though Socrates i s
ugly, he has a beautiful soul (Plato 1952, 170).
Again Christianity has taken up a similar posi-
tion: it too discounts surface appearance, for
what matters is the state of the soul, which i s
hidden. Ready acceptance of this view i s sug-
gested by such popular sayings as: the frog i s
really a prince, and the common man, for all
his lack of surface polish, i s really the salt of the
earth. Lewis Mumford (1964, 97) offers an ex-
ample from the world of architecture and land-
scape. While traveling in Manchester and i t s
environs, he was struck by what he calls an
architectural paradox. The blasted environ-
ment around Manchester, he notes, has pro-
duced over the generations no small number
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of people whose moral and intellectual quali-
ties have been of a superior order. Behind the
ugly surfaces of the city, Mumford detects hu-
man strength and virtue.
The paradox raises an old philosophical ques-
tion, which is the relationship between ap-
pearance and reality, or form and content.
Thinkers interested in epistemology or ethics
have puzzled over the question for a long time.
What i s new is i t s emergence in the rather ur-
gent, applied people-environment context.
Because the paradox is unresolved and indeed
not fully recognized by us as students of place
and society, it affects the way we talk about
poor neighborhoods. How we talk predictably
lacks coherence. On the one hand, we sadly
note the impoverished or deteriorating phys-
ical condition of a neighborhood; on the other
hand, we may see merit in what goes on behind
the walls-the vitality of a culture, the strength
of a people (Gans 1962). Their way of life com-
mands respect, even though i t s distinguishing
marks cannot be treated easily as something
separate from the harsh conditions of poverty,
including the constraints placed by the envi-
ronment itself, such as the one bathroom that
has to be shared by several families.
The Ugliness of the Unseen
I have thus far presented three views: first,
we live mostly by appearance; second, though
appearances are attractive, they may hide things
of even greater beauty; third, plain or ugly sur-
faces are deceptive, for they can hide pearls
of great prize. The second and third views are
a result of reflection; both, and especially the
third, contribute to the prestige of the unseen
or of depth. I now take up the fourth posi-
tion, which is that beautiful surfaces are not
trustworthy for they can hide ugliness. Suspi-
cion of the surface culminates with this view.
It i s complex and can be stated in a variety of
ways. In the Western world, a major source of
the view is the doctrine that humans are sinful.
Handsome surfaces can mislead: if one looks
deep enough-lift the pavement as it were-
one may find crawling creatures of darkness
and evil. Martin Luther seems to have believed
that all humans carry a Satanic kernel, a root of
hell, which can never be destroyed by natural
means such as individual moral effort or the
cosmetics of civilization. Freuds id resembles
 Surface Phenomena and Aesthetic Experience
Luthers Satanic evil in that it too cannot be
domesticated by civilization (Kolakowski 1988,
85).
Civilization has created beautiful surfaces, but
at what cost? I s it right that we attend only to
the magic and beauty of the surface without
looking underneath? How do we understand
the term underneath? In a literal sense, it is
what exists below the cover or facade; it is anat-
omy or structure, and plumbing; and I have
already observed that it is unnatural to ignore,
say, the beautiful face of ones child and see
only her skull, or the soaring majesty of Mi-
chelangelos dome on top of Saint Peters to
concentrate on the rudimentary interior scaf-
folding that holds it up. There may be a time
to make such probes, but life itself, and not
only i t s civilized forms, i s impossible if this com-
pulsion becomes anything like a habit.
Another meaning of underneath is less lit-
eral and more relevant to students of the hu-
man scene. It is to look behind the manners
and products of civilization so as to understand
the forces that have produced them and that
continue to sustain them. Here we need to dis-
tinguish between individual artisans or artists
striving to make objects of importance to
themselves and artisans and laborers striving to
make objects of use and value only to their
distant employers and masters. The former ef-
fort, for all the hardship that it entails, i s ful-
fillment; the latter, even if the work is less stren-
uous, is exploitation.
Exploitation i s the ugliness that lurks beneath
the facades of culture. This is one reason why
moral thinkers since ancient times in China and
since at least the medieval period in Europe
have viewed critically the grand building proj-
ects of civilization. In China, Mencius (1966,
674-75) denounced the parks and gardens of
the princes because their construction often
meant the uprooting of peasants from their land
and crushing hardship for the conscripted la-
borers. In Menciuss view, such amenities are
permissible only if the people themselves were
occasionally allowed to enjoy them. A far more
sophisticated modern version of this suspicion
of surface derives from Karl Marx. His writings
have been influential in making many people
see almost all manifestations of high culture,
including good manners and good works (char-
ity), as a sort of froth that covers up societys
dark machinations against the poor and the
powerless. Indeed, under the influence of this
237
mode of thinking, even good writing is suspect,
for clarity can be a form of arrogance, and el-
egance a distractive device against unpleasant
truth (Geertz 1983; Gellner 1988). Perhaps for
this reason, there is a tendency among scholars
influenced by the prestige of Marxism and
Continental thought to favor a dense and
somewhat tortured writing style, as though for
truth to seem convincing, it must bear the mark
of physical effort rather than of natural ease
and beauty that are considered desirableamong
the more traditional humanists and among sci-
entists working in the upper echelons of theory
(Cuddihy 1987).
A Case for Surface and the
Aesthetic
Although surface and core can be used as
neutral terms, this seldom happens. Surface al-
most always suggests superficiality or the ad-
ventitious, whereas core denotes centrality and
depth. As scholars of a puritanical or ascetic
bent (Harpham 1988), we tend to undervalue
and distrust the senses, appearance and the
spectacles of life, and to esteem knowledge of
the underlying structure and cause. Aestheti-
cism, with i t s devotion to the surface, is not
really respectable unless it i s taken up with teu-
tonic seriousness. In the human sciences, there
is additionally a bias in favor of explanations that
jolt human sensibility and self-image: the more
distressingthey are, that is to say, the more they
expose the dark forces and motives at work,
the profounder they seem. Given this procliv-
ity, students of society appear to live on a dif-
ferent psychological plane from that of physical
scientists, for whom the hidden cause i s not
dark, but rather is of the same nature as that
which operates at the surface, only more ele-
mental and powerful, and perhaps more ca-
pable of elegant formulation.
The tendency in the human sciences to ex-
pose the hidden underside of life and to offer
ego-deflating explanations of aesthetic surfaces
is justified, if only as cautionary tales. Humans
are naturally inclined t o bury unflattering as-
pects of themselves, and it may be that these
should be brought out into the open in the
name of comprehensive truth. However, it i s
not obvious to me why life that goes on be-
neath the surface or backstage should have an
automatic claim to privileged status. In other
238
words, I do not see why a person's outward
being and behavior are a less accurate index of
who she really is-her essential nature-than
are those aspects of herself and behavior that
occur in private space. What I do in the bed-
room and in the basement workshop is no more
"me"(to use a colloquial expression)than i s my
public self or my finished product. Moreover,
the hidden side of life i s not by any means all
awkward or ugly. In the privacy of the bed-
room, an individual's movements are still gov-
erned to some degree by a sense of form; and
in the dark and messy workshop, the motions
of work-how one applies a tool-can them-
selves be beautiful. Skillful work is a perfor-
mance. The gestures and acts, the processes
that lead to the completion of a work, may
merit appreciative glances in their own right.
Economy and efficiency are ideals of rationality
but they serve equally well as terms of aesthetic
approbation.
The hidden can, of course, be ugly. Other
than infants, almost all humans feel that they
have something to hide. This i s usually a bio-
logical function or an awkward trial run; in oth-
er words, things that are not considered an
accomplishment and aesthetic in our own eyes.
The hidden can also be ugly in a moral sense,
as the history of forced labor to create mon-
umental architecture and public work shows.
Fancy gardens are one example, and we have
noted Mencius's doubt about their justifica-
tion. I offer another example from China, be-
cause we shall see in it an explicit argument in
favor of beautiful form, no matter what the hu-
man cost. An official of the Northern Wei dy-
nasty (A.D. 386-535) ordered the construction
of seventy-two Buddhist temples. Ostensibly
an act of charity that honors art at the same
time, the project was so demanding that it re-
sulted in the deaths of workers and oxen. When
a monk rebuked the official, he replied that
posterity would see and be impressed by the
temples and would know nothing of the lives
that had perished (Wright 1978, 50).
What are we to make of this answer? Most
of us in the Western world, in our role as mor-
alist, will probably grant an individual artist the
right to sacrifice his or her own life for art, but
deny that anybody has the right to make such
a demand of others. In the past, however, po-
tentates have frequently used and abused
workers in their eagerness to raise monumental
buildings and cities. We, the inheritors of these
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grandeurs, are a little unsure as to how to take
them. Alternately, we are overcome by horror
or admiration, depending on whether we dwell
on the harshness of the past or on the out-
come-on the living beauty of the works them-
selves. Socialist and communist governments,
in particular, have had to confront their im-
perial heritage, and almost always they have
chosen to preserve the monuments and see
them as expressing not so much the vanity of
a prince as the power and the artistry of a peo-
ple.
To dwell only on the injustice of the social
system or on the actual physical suffering of the
workers would have deprived them of all dig-
nity as agents: their labor and suffering would
have left no trace if the buildings were torn
down in revenge, and would have left no proud
memorial if they were allowed to stand but only
as witnesses to a depraved and decadent past.
It is not mere sentiment to see great gardens
and palaces as expressing the genius of a peo-
ple. Numerous skills possessed and exercised
by an untold number of artisans have gone into
their making. Even the most humble workers
have contributed, and not only with their mus-
cle power, for the efficient placement of blocks,
one on top of another, is a skill, worth watching.
An Aesthetic Manifesto
"The pure taste of the apple is as much a
contact with the beauty of the universe as the
contemplation of a picture by CCzanne," says
Simone Weil (1965, 189). The question of
whether life i s worth living i s answered, if not
in the last analysis then most simply, by these
sensuous contacts with the fruits of nature, so-
ciety, and art. The fruits need not be exotic or
unusual: an apple, a comely figure, and simple
human gestures have their place. To Walt Whit-
man, a man sawing a plank was a great man and
well worth watching. The poet James Dickey
(1971, 53) says that we can be deeply touched
by something from anywhere, anytime. That
thing may reach us from immortal literature or
art, or "it can be the way a high jumper takes
off his warm-up pants." At a more personal
level of experience, we all need, and many of
us are fortunate enough to have, sprinkles of
good will-word, smile, or nod-casually dis-
pensed by the people around us. These ges-
tures and appearances will in most instances
 Surface Phenomena and Aesthetic Experience
lack grace unless preceded by a period of
thought and practice: the sawyer of wood was
not always worth watching. And as watchers
we are likely to miss all but the most eye-catch-
ing shows of life unless we have learned, during
retreats into the shaded havens of mind and
place, how to attend. The preparation is im-
portant. There has to be a hidden area-a back-
stage, which in the theater i s much larger than
the acting area. But it would be strange if, after
all the preparation, there i s no product or per-
formance.
I have stressed the commonness as well as
the importance of the aesthetic response. The
more prominent beauties of nature, of human
action, and of human works set standards against
which we can appraise ordinary experience-
what we routinely take notice of and do. Aes-
thetic experience i s distinguished by contain-
ing an element of life-enhancing surprise. True,
to appreciate a wine or a landscape calls for
prior education in attentiveness. We are thus
prepared for an aesthetic experience; yet when
it comes, it must still be able to catch us un-
awares-with the freshness of a first time, with
the mild shock of something beyond our con-
trol. Surprise impresses upon us the priority of
the object over the subject. A great work of
art differs from lesser embodiments of beauty
in that it has the greater and more enduring
power to, on the one hand, disturb the som-
nabulism of routine and, on the other hand,
negate subjectivity-that is, the daydreams and
ideologies of individuals and groups. There i s
something gritty and indigestible about genu-
ine art, once it i s clearly seen. Art can be ig-
nored; it can be burnt or put into a bank vault
as collateral for investment. Nevertheless, so
long as it exists, it poses a potential threat to
the smooth machinery of the administered
world. Genuine art may thus be seen as a radical
political act; it postulates a utopia that sits in
judgment over present sociopolitical realities
as well as mere blueprints for the future (Ador-
no 1974, 57-58; Jay 1984, 154-55).
lessons for Cultural-Humanist
Geography
It has often been said-and it is worth re-
peating-that many inquisitive youngsters have
found their way into geography through an ini-
239
tial fascination with the beautiful map or globe.
At least as powerful a lure is the landscape itself.
If an early aesthetic bent has enticed many of
us into geography, in maturer years this bent
continues to influence our choice of a partic-
ular area to study (which is seldom dictated by
a purely intellectual problem), our insistence
on maps and diagrams that meet a standard of
excellence reaching beyond mere accuracy, our
search for the elegant mathematical equation,
the right words (Meinig 1983)-perhaps even
the right typeface and the right page margin.
A central theme of this paper, however, is
that aesthetic experiences and impulses are not
confined to any specialized temperament, oc-
cupation or culture; they are a human universal.
The aesthetic impulse informs and directs-to
varying degree-almost every feeling, thought,
and action. We see it in gestures of greeting,
body posture, communal activities and festiv-
ities, pride of workmanship in a child making
a whistle or in an adult designing a city, a farm
laborers insistence on the straight furrow that
i s perhaps his sole visible signature on earth
(Blythe 1969, 68), the seemingly inherent ap-
peal of a political order such as democracy or
monarchy (Santayana 1936, 84-85), the desir-
ability of home of a certain ambience, shopping
malls that promise security and yet sparkle,
skyscrapers that project aspiration and ele-
gance, gardens of fragrance and intimacy, wil-
derness that signifies the sublime. Further-
more, we see the aesthetic impulse, negatively
expressed, in all the dislikes and avoidances that
are so much a part of our day-to-day emotion
and behavior.
If human reality i s what we are trying to de-
pict and understand, then we must not only
construct hypotheses that explain facts but we
must also continue to expand the universe of
facts we are ready to confront. One category
in the universe that has yet to be seriously con-
fronted by geographers and social scientists i s
the aesthetic. In the most general terms, the
aesthetic i s the human effort to create apleasing
world. Although the nature of this world varies
from culture to culture, all people want one.
The aesthetic impulse i s thus also this construc-
tive impulse. A pleasing world, rather than iso-
lated sensations and impressions, is the desired
gain. Creation occurs at all scales and levels: as
we have noted, a patch of sunlight on the
ground may produce a happy sensation, but it
gains greatly in beauty and significance when
240
it i s seen in the light of a figure drawn from
quite another area of discourse.
Finally, I cannot altogether evade the ques-
tion, What i s this world like and how do we
describe it? M y answer goes, briefly, as follows.
We need t o (1)open ourselves up to the rninu-
tiae as well as t o the grand scaffoldings of a
peoples world, and see that world as the prod-
uct of an effort t o build something fair and right
(in both the aesthetic and moral sense), not
merely necessitous; (2) understand why certain
steps are taken, toward what fine-grained de-
siderata of daily life as well as larger goals, and
how; (3) know, if we can, t o what degree the
people are conscious of their societys hier-
archy of values and how these are maintained;
(4) ponder, i n ones capacity as an outsider able
t o observe impersonally, to what extent a peo-
ples aesthetic-moral edifices are contradictory
to, in conflict with, or evasive of forces and facts
they d o not understand, or understand but do
not wish t o confront; (5) consider how cultures
vary in their degree of expressivity, and explore
whether this expressivity, by definition an ef-
fort t o reveal-to bring the inchoate and hid-
den t o the surface, i s also motivated by an un-
conscious desire t o hide, for brilliance i n one
area can make i t s environs seem all the darker.
The technique of a cultural-humanist (de-
scriptive) geographer i s basically that of a sto-
ryteller, someone who knows well the people
whose story he or she tells but who, in the very
act of telling it, becomes an outsider for the
duration. As the narrator recalls the details, ar-
ranges them into an intelligible and significant
pattern, he or she stands above or outside the
material. A storyteller i s necessarily a theorist
(Greek for spectator). His or her description i s
inexpungibly mixed with exegesis and inter-
pretation, for ordinary language not only con-
tains interpretative conjunctions that invite use
(since, for, because, therefore, etc.), but i s also
very rich in words that reverberate-that hint
at relationships-beyond their literal meanings.
The explanatory schemata of a storyteller ad-
here closely t o the dense-textured facts of ex-
perience; or, t o use our surface-depth figure
of speech, we may say that they lie immediately
below such facts. They also have an ad hoc
nature; that is, they claim t o explain phenom-
ena only as they exist in a specific region of
space and time. For these reasons, the story-
teller or cultural geographers explanatory
schemata do not reduce and dominate the
Tuan
complex, unstable character of human reality-
including feelings and emotions and the aes-
thetic impulse that are so much a part of that
reality-to the degree that hypothesis-posing
social science does.
Scientists strive t o stand far above their ma-
terial, for a view from nowhere (Nagel 1986),
with the hope that they will thereby be able t o
plunge well below the surfaces of reality. By
contrast, cultural geographers-cum-storytellers
stand only a little above their material and move
only a little below the surfaces of reality in the
hope of not losing sight of such surfaces, where
nearly all human joys and sorrows unfold.
Acknowledgments
I wish to thank Donald W. Crawford, J. Nicholas
Entrikin, and Robert D. Sack for reading and corn-
menting on earlier drafts of this paper, and to the
Madison Literary Club for the opportunity t o expose
some of the ideas contained herein to a multidisci-
plinary audience.
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