#erwin straus

[zweite-natur]

Erwin Straus, The Upright Posture

The legs support the body like columns; in the hip joint, the trunk rests upon the femur bones as upon pillars. At least, it seems to. The appearance is convincing enough for a hysterical person to use it as a model for his astasia-abasia. If one tries, however, to carry through the comparison in detail, one sees immediately the striking contrast to the architectonic principles of column and pillar. Many old temples have collapsed, leaving their columns still standing erect. The stone pillars of a bridge are constructed from the foundation upward. Each lower section really carries the upper one, which can be removed without unbalancing the lower ones. Neither the skeleton nor the legs will stand of their own power. The legs could not do it, even if the muscles could still contract and were not severed from their origin on the pelvis. The legs have to be held in suspension by the counteraction of the trunk muscles and by the counterweight of the trunk. A column, a pillar, a tower, taper off. Their bases are broader than the top. Human legs also have a conical shape, but the bulk is high. The origin of the muscles, and therefore their main volume, is on top. The muscles extend with their tendons downward from pelvis to knee and again from knee to ankle. Their contraction, however, is directed upward.

[anaxerneas]

The physiology of the brain…ignores the possessive-relationship; it replaces - generally without giving an account of it- my, your, or his [her] brain with a or with the brain…the reference to the possessive relationship may not be dismissed as a sentimental claim…the elimination of the possessive relationship distorts the phenomena, narrows down the problem area, and thus tacitly anticipates a theoretical judgment. If my, your, or his [her] brain is replaced by the brain, then the brain is generally viewed not as an organ of an experiencing being, but rather as a steering apparatus of a movable body…In every anatomical and physiological observation of the brain, two brains are involved: the brain of the observer and the observed brain. The elimination of the possessive relationship compels one to ignore this fundamental fact…The violence in the way behavior has been treated finds a necessary compensation in an anthropomorphic interpretation of the brain [e.g., the unacceptable term “the schizophrenic brain” is surely a scientific category error with consequences involving imprecise, reductionistic trends]. One grants less to behavior than is due to it, and gives the brain more than belongs to it.

Erwin Straus https://web.archive.org/web/20061118022137/http://www.isps-us.org/koehler/decade_person.htm

[anaxerneas]

Marjorie Grene, Intellectual Autobiography in The Philosophy of Marjorie Grene

[galerieillegitime]

Giovanni Anselmo, Entrare nell'opera, 1971 and Elena Radice, Untitled (Abstract Season Change), 2013

In a landscape (...) we always get to one place from another place; each location is determined only by its relation to the neighboring place within the circle of visibility.

(...)

But geographical space is closed, and is therefore in its entire structure transparent. Every place as such a space is determined by its position with respect to the whole and ultimately by its relation to the null point of the coordinate system by which this space obtains its order. Geographical space is systematized.

Erwin Straus, The primary world of senses: A vindication of sensory experience (Free Press of Glencoe, 1963)