I just finished reading the book, but I only understood about 20% of it. I’m not just interested in studying movement itself; I want to understand the inner drive—why do we move, whether it’s in front of a mirror, a camera, or an audience? I’m curious about how this impulse has shown up throughout history, from folk dances to Greek Dionysian Mysteries, and even in modern, sometimes controversial, dance movements. What triggers this desire to move? Where does it come from?
Roger Smith’s The Sense of Movement explores how our understanding of movement has changed over time. He takes us from the early days of modern science to today’s neuroscience, showing that movement is more than just something physical—it’s a sensory experience deeply connected to how we experience the world.
Smith ties together the philosophical debates of the 17th century with modern ideas about movement. He looks at how the belief that movement is linked to the sense of touch has evolved and been questioned over time. In the 19th century, people started to recognize muscular motion as its own sense, which changed how we think about the body and its interactions.
The book also discusses ideas like kinaesthesia and proprioception—our conscious and unconscious awareness of movement. Smith challenges the idea that the mind and body are separate, suggesting that our sensory experiences are deeply connected. He shows that the sense of movement isn’t just about muscles; it involves many different senses, like vision, touch, and even what’s happening inside our bodies.
Notes from book:
Language dances with metaphors of touch and movement: the unmoved mover of the world; the
healing touch and the King’s touch; ‘the earth moved’; a lack of tact; to make contact; tangible
evidence; an idea to hand; a palpable hit; he’s under her thumb; a cunning move; take your
daughter in hand; she held onto the memory; he’s immovable; hands off; touché; the caste of
untouchables; she gave a moving speech; a radical political movement; the movers and shakers
of opinion; to rub each other the wrong way; to grasp — ‘the grasping Ego’.
To be alive is to move, or, in other words, the sense of life is a sense of movement.
The dictionary now defines kinaesthesia in this way: ‘The faculty of being aware of the position
and movement of parts of the body, by means of sensory nerves (proprioceptors) within the
muscles, joints, etc.: the sensation producing such awareness.’
Also, early in the twentieth century, Edmund Husserl initiated ‘the movement’ in philosophy he
called phenomenology.
Children seem to find their greatest happiness in movement. Their falls do not discourage them.
He said of Zarathustra: ‘Does he not go along like a dancer?’ In a vivid evocation of life-force, he
declared: ‘And let that day be lost to us on which we did not dance once!
Since dance is ‘the art of the muscle sense’, as the psychologist of art Rudolf Arnheim long ago
observed, it must have a central place in the history of the sense of movement.
The new dance, also later called ‘free’ dance, objectified bodily awareness and kinaesthetic
sensibility. Unlike classical ballet, its vocabulary was not the emotional expressivity of a story but
the expressivity of being, of life, taking forms directed by the character of the medium, that is,
directed by the character of body and motion.
Next. The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Goddess: 20th Anniversary by Starhawk.