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orientation can be eventually regained. One of those who had lived on the station explained, “It is as though your mind won’t recognize the situation you are in until it sees it pretty close to the right orientation and then all of a sudden you get these transformations made in your mind that tell you ex- actly where you are.”17

Earlier examples have made clear what these “transformations” are. In this case, they can tell us where we are not absolutely but relatively, in reference to a specific situation. The visible orientation gained by layering the meaning of the remembered space and its coherence is a fragile but plausible substitute for the natural structure of space developed in refer- ence to the earth. In this context it is interesting to learn that the occupa- tion found most satisfying by all members of the team was to observe the earth from the sole window in the living quarters.

It is quite clear that the artificial situation in zero gravity has im- portant links with the natural situation on earth. Take the relation between the physiognomy and the deep structure of space; such links depend not only on continuity of reference to some ground but also on the possibility of simulating natural conditions in space, based on embodied memory. The continuity of reference, as discussed so far, should be seen as a critical link between the natural and artificial structure of space, and more broadly as a link between natural and simulated reality. This brings us close to the essence of representation and also to the nature of architectural space— which is always to some extent artificially created and dependent on the possibilities of representation.

The problem can perhaps be better formulated as a manifestation of the reciprocity of the actual and possible reality of space, where the possible stands for everything that can be achieved creatively in the sphere of human freedom. It is in the tension between the actual and possible reality of space that very urgent questions are currently being raised. For instance, can the possible space be substituted for the actual space, or can it itself become ac- tual? Is there a level of artificiality that can make a living situation unin- habitable? How is it possible to judge when such a limit has been reached?

Under normal circumstances, the relationship between the actual and the possible is a dialogue of reciprocities that are hidden in the depths of our everyday life. It is only under abnormal conditions, when the reci- procity is disturbed, that we become aware of the limits of the possible and

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its dependence on the actual. The environment in which most of us live is still relatively traditional, despite the enthusiasm of some for creating sim- ulated and virtual realities. So far, the excesses of artificiality evident in such phenomena as alienation, disorientation, and cultural deprivation are largely absorbed in our ability to adapt, and in our disagreements about their possible source and effect. However, there are areas of our life where symptoms similar in their nature, but more radical in their manifestation, seem to point to the same limits in how the possible relates to and depends on the actual. These symptoms arguably include autism, certain types of psychosis, schizophrenia, and a large sphere of disturbances referred to as mental blindness.18_{The cases of mental blindness, particularly as displayed}

in apraxia and aphasia, are most illuminating for any attempt to better un- derstand the problem of representation and space, and the limits of their artificiality.

In apraxia, the most obvious symptom is the inability to perform pur- posive acts—dancing, for instance—though the sensory and motor abilities are intact. Those affected can form an idea of action correctly, but they cannot translate it into performance. They cannot situate themselves in an imaginary space and act on what they imagine. For the same reasons they are unable to approach objects that are out of their physical reach. They are fully aware of the aim of a given task, which they can describe verbally; they can sometimes also accomplish it successfully, even using tools as long as the situation is familiar and the tools at hand.

Such disturbances of movement are usually closely linked with dis- turbances of perception, language, and thought. The inability to grasp an object that is out of reach does not have its source in the movement itself, but results from a more general inability to experience the unity of a situa- tion to which a particular object belongs. The apraxic person is paralyzed be- cause movement is no longer grounded in the unity of situation, and as a consequence it has also lost its physiognomy and meaning. The loss of phys- iognomy, which is the main characteristic of apraxia, perhaps most clearly manifests the gap between the actual and the possible level of reality in the life of those experiencing it. We can see here a close analogy with the prob- lems suffered in zero gravity, where the lack of orientation was directly linked with the loss of physiognomy of all objects in the surrounding space. As we saw, the residents of the space station learned to reorient themselves

and could do so because of the residuum of movement preserved in the mem- ory of space established and cultivated on earth. The residuum of movement in the life of those with apraxia positively affects the whole domain of their possible life. However, the character of their language and thought is changed much as is the nature of their movement. It becomes “akin to the highly technical univocal language of science which having been disen- gaged from its original hold on life-world structures, can now be employed only mechanically according to the rules of the game like cards or chess.”19

The ideas of the apraxics are linked together, like their words, only by actual and explicit meanings. In a way, their world as a whole is para- lyzed by the unbridgeable gap between the actual and possible levels of their life. The actual takes on an unnatural and strange concreteness, without clear physiognomy and plasticity of experience; the possible becomes a quasi-cybernetic manipulation and decoding of ideas and concepts. The main source of the discontinuity in apraxia is, it appears, the loss of exis- tential (situational) orientation that normally is rooted in the unity of the lived human context. That necessary orientation was described by Merleau- Ponty as an “intelligent arc” that “projects round about us our past and fu- ture, our human setting, our physical and moral situation which results in our being situated in all these respects.”20

THE PRINCIPLE OF CONTINUITY AND THE STRUCTURE OF SPACE

Insight into the discontinuity between the actual and possible levels of re- ality in the lives of those who are so explicitly disoriented is an invaluable foundation for better understanding certain disturbing tendencies in mod- ern culture, such as ethical disorientation, alienation, loss of meaning, and nihilism. There may be a close analogy between these tendencies and men- tal blindness, and they may have a common ground in the discontinuity of situational orientation; but such hypotheses are only preliminary and need further elaboration.

What is most interesting in the cases of mental blindness is the sim- ilarity of the symptoms, which points to the same source of discontinuity in human existence, differentiated as a result into rather predictable domains of actual and possible behavior. The terminology employed is not yet suf- ficiently precise, because the phenomena are not themselves sufficiently

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understood, but some authors—Kurt Goldstein and Merleau-Ponty, for in- stance—speak of “concrete” and “abstract” or categorial attitudes.21

The symptoms of mental blindness cannot be altogether explained physiologically as phenomena immanent to the human body. Too many of them display characteristics beyond the corporeal or physiological. Mental blindness can be partly cured, and the cure has much to do with a change in environment. In his last reflections on the problem of mental blindness, Goldstein, who contributed more to its understanding than has anyone else, observes:

The mentioned behavior forms have usually been considered as the effect of the use of the mental capacity of a subject. I came to the conclusion that I am not determined by consciousness and that it would be meaningless to call them memories. They represent living events and are not the result of intellectual activity. I could no longer accept the assumption that experience is a product of mind or brain functions alone, especially after it became my conviction that the external world is always connected with it. Pathology has shown how important the world is for understanding at all. Man cannot live without the world and the world does not exist without man. The study of the world of the brain-injured proves to be no less important to our knowledge than the study of the disturbance of the performance. Indeed, though the patient’s behavior is certainly determined by the brain defect, it can only be understood as a phenomenon going on in the totality of his modified personality in relation to the world.22

The situational character of the symptoms can be illustrated by a well-known case of temporary apraxia. The neurologist Oliver Sacks was re- covering from a serious inability to coordinate the movement of his leg with the rest of his body, and therapy was progressing slowly; but he was even- tually exposed to the sound of music, which enabled him to regain the abil- ity to walk normally in a very short time.23 _{What is surprising is not that}

music, generated itself by movement, could contribute to the coordination of movement but that the source of movement and change was in the situa- tion and not in the brain or in the body of the patient. The connections of

mental blindness to the external environment appear even stronger in cases of aphasia, in which language and thought are more directly involved.24

There are a number of things that we can learn from the examples discussed. First, the world as it is given to us in our experience is structured as an articulated series of mediations between the given conditions of our existence and the possibilities of freely developing these conditions through our imagination, language, and thought (figure 2.4). Second, the mediated unity of the result—a coherent world—is rather fragile and more vulnera- ble than we are usually prepared to accept. And finally, the unity and co- herence of our world are neither given, as ready, nor constituted in our experience only. The discovery of the situational structure of the world may help us to distance ourselves from the fictitious, artificially constructed representations of the world as external and only loosely related to the in- teriority of our existence.

The duality of “man and the world,” most often discussed as the du- ality of “man and the environment,” is an old trope. It is cultivated still, even though it obscures rather than clarifies the true nature of environmental conditions. Its origins coincide with the foundation of modern science and with the Cartesian representation of reality as res cogitansopposed to the

res extensa. It is only in this idealized and mathematically constructed model of reality that duality of the internal and external world (environ- ment) makes any sense (as is discussed in more detail in chapter 6).

We have seen that the environment has the character of a world in which the given conditions and our experience belong together in a relation of reciprocity, understood as the reciprocity of the actual and the possible. In a broader sense, the environment can be taken as manifesting the reci- procity of necessity and freedom, where “necessity” represents a given re- ality—the inevitable, necessary condition of our freedom and creativity. This may suffice as a point of departure, but we may go further and express more precisely the intricate nature of the environment and particularly the depths of our involvement in the surrounding world viewed as apparently neutral and objective—a belief characteristic of most contemporary envi- ronmental studies, which rely almost without exception on the methods of natural science.

Most environmental research is focused on biological problems; even human ecology is studied as an extension of biologically oriented disci-

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plines.25_{In a situational understanding the environment appears as the em-}

bodiment of our life, very much like a body, which sustains our common ex- istence. Given such an understanding—once we have left behind the distinction between external and internal reality—it becomes very difficult to decide what is and what is not “environment.” Are we, as corporeal be- ings, in the environment, or are we an indivisible part of it? Is it not true that our own bodies are in fact the environment of our feelings, imagina- tions, and thoughts? These critical but important questions can be partly answered by a careful reading of a simple scenario.

When we are involved in the process of drawing, the table in front of us is no doubt part of our environment. The drawing, not as a sign on a piece of paper but as an event leaving traces behind, is also an environment. It would be too simplistic to describe the act of drawing, which is an extension