Point, Line and Counterpoint: From Environment to Fluid Space

This paper aims to understand what is meant by the environment of an animal and, more particularly, that of a human being. To avoid the contradictions entailed in assuming that human environmental relations are mediated by systems of symbolic meaning, with the absurd corollary that non-human animals inhabit meaningless worlds, I consider the sources of environmental meaning for non-humans and their possible availability to humans as well. In psychology, Gibson's theory of affordances offers one possible approach, though it is ultimately found to privilege the environment as a site of meaning vis-à-vis its inhabitants, whether human or non-human. In ethology, von Uexküll's theory of the Umwelt suggests, quite to the contrary, that meaning is bestowed by the organism on its environment. In philosophy, and following von Uexküll's lead, Heidegger drew a sharp distinction between the animal's “captivation” in its Umwelt and the way the world is disclosed, or opened up, to human beings. But the animal's captivation also implies a sense of openness, in the manner in which its life flows along lines comparable — in von Uexküll's terms — to those of polyphonic music. This sense has been taken up in the philosophy of Deleuze. The living organism, for Deleuze, is a bundle of lines, a haecceity. Critically, these lines do not connect points but pass forever amidst and between. Considering the way in which this idea has been taken up in actor-network theory, particularly associated with the work of Latour, I stress the importance of distinguishing the network as a set of interconnected points from the meshwork as an interweaving of lines. Every such line describes a flow of material substance in a space that is topologically fluid. I conclude that the organism (animal or human) should be understood not as a bounded entity surrounded by an environment but as an unbounded entanglement of lines in fluid space.