ABSTRACT
PEOPLE NATURALLY GIVE OBJECTS in the environment an orientation. This is a simple idea but has profound effect on how we interpret our environment. We give things an orientation because we, ourselves, have an orientation – we think in terms of things having tops and bottoms, fronts and backs, lefts and rights. Why? The basis of our understanding of our environment is formed from the experience of our bodies with gravity and fixed locations for our senses and appendages. We have heads at the top and feet at the bottom, we have a face on one side which creates a direction of front (see Front ), we have symmetrical arms at our sides and stand upright. Since we can only, and have only, experienced the world from the point of view of our bodies, our bodies naturally shape the way we think and how we interpret our environment. Orientation is one of the most basic spatial ideas that originates from our bodies; we then use this knowledge to interpret other things in the environment because we tend to interpret other things as being like us. This means that when we consider things in our environment, we also give them tops and bottoms, fronts and backs, faces, heads and feet as well as lefts and rights – even if they do not really have them. The mapping of human values onto nonhuman things helps us know how to interact with those things. This might seem obvious, but it is so obvious that we never talk about it and rarely acknowledge the importance of it.
