April 1974
Note On the Act of Orienting and the State of Being Oriented
James J. Gibson, with David DeVilliers, Cornell University
The World Wide Web distribution of James Gibson’s “Purple Perils” is for scholarly use with the understanding that Gibson did not intend them for publication. References to these essays must cite them explicitly as unpublished manuscripts. Copies may be circulated if this statement is included on each copy.
The study of orientation considered as a type of behavior is full of vague concepts and loose thinking. Efforts to present a systematic account of the facts such as the book by Fraenkel and Gunn on animal behavior (1940) and the book by Howard and Templeton on human spatial orientation (1966) have failed to do so. Perhaps this is because the facts are not comprehended under behavior as ordinarily understood. They require some consideration of perception. But the orthodox theories of perception based on fixed channels of sense and physical stimuli to correspond do not help matters. Perhaps the ecological approach to perception and behavior will provide a basis for the understanding of orientation. It implies that what organisms orient to is their environment, not to “stimuli,” and that what they live in is an environment, not “space.”
According to the theory of perceptual systems all the perceptual organs have to be oriented in order to function. But so do the various performatory systems also have to be oriented in order to function. What I called the “basic orienting system” underlies both. It is not a sense but a multi-sensory system. There has to be a circular adjustment process in order to perceive the world and also in order to behave in the world. I suggested that there were different levels but these levels were not elaborated in chapter 4 of the Perceptual Systems. The emphasis was on the activity of the vestibular subsystems and the maintaining of postural equilibrium. Nothing was said about the phenomenal accompaniments of orientation, especially at the higher levels. What follows is an extension of that chapter.
1. Orientation to up-and-down. All organisms seem to be capable of orienting to gravity, even plants. They also orient to another invariant of nature, the fact that light comes from above. (This is not light as energy but the earth-sky contrast in ambient light.) Animals also orient to the surface of support. All three constitute information, not just stimulation, i.e. multiple information for what might be called the up-down direction. Normally all three are coincident and redundant. The vestibular system, the ocular system, and the skin-pressure system work together to yield the maintaining of postural equilibrium. A stable posture of the body is necessary for both the perceiving organs and the performing organs, e.g. for both looking at objects and reaching for objects.
Along with this orienting of the body to the up-down direction there is an awareness of the posture of the body, and of the head as the main “member” of the body. This is an awareness of the self relative to the direction of gravity, the earth-sky contrast, and the surface of support. Note that the gravitational pull, the visual horizon, and the pressure of the substratum have to be given in perception (exteroception) if the posture of the body is to be given in proprioception. These environmental constants are what posture is relative to. Awareness of the body and of the world are complementary. Note incidentally that a whole set of laboratory anomalies in the perception of these constants arises when a discrepancy is caused between the vestibular and the visual information. But this research over the years has led to nothing but confusion. (Another source of confusion arises when experimenters assume that the perception of the upright, tilted, or inverted state of an object in the environment is included within the problem of orientationñand this is even worse confounded when they further include the form of an object within a picture. Only organisms orient themselves, not objects or forms).
2. Orientation to the Near Surroundings. The closest surface to a terrestrial animal is the surface of support, or the surfaces that touch the skin. A little farther away are those that can be reached for. Still farther are the surface and objects that can only be approached by locomotion. The observer is both tactually and visually oriented to the nearest surfaces, and he is visually oriented to the farther surfaces. They are all, near or far, projected in the ambient array of light at his point of observation, that is the array that is specific to it. Thus the observer can look at it, reach for it or go to it. The going-to is controlled by the principle of optical magnification (and the going-away, of course, by the principle of optical minification). The reaching-for is controlled by a similar principle, the magnification of the projection of the hand as it moves out.
Orientation at this level is to what might be called the unhidden environment, the set of surfaces that are all directly visible, and that can all be seen from “here” merely by turning the head. The observer is aware of the layout of the surfaces of his surroundings, together with their composition and thus of their affordances, and at the same time he is aware of his body in the surroundings. He sees where everything is relative to everything else. The supposed puzzle of the perceiving of a different direction-from-here for each different object does not arise; it is as much a false puzzle in ecological optics as is the puzzle of depth perception.
The above is the level of orientation that one has in a room or enclosure. In what can be called an “open” terrain the surfaces projected to the observer may be far away instead of near. But this kind of unhidden environment is a limiting case.
3. Orientation to the Hidden Environment. At third and higher level, a man or animal can be oriented to places, objects, and beings that are out of sight, that is, to the unprojected surfaces at the point of observation. I do not refer so much to the far sides of near objects (which are temporarily unprojected) as to the places and objects on the other side of the walls or beyond the trees. This is a kind of orientation that permits homing in animals and, of course, in men. It is what the rat learns in a maze. In a familiar habitat, one “knows where to go” to get to work, to get something to eat, or to meet one’s date. It consists of learning the linkages between “vistas” during locomotion, of what places lead to what other places by virtue of the revealing (and concealing) of surfaces at the occluding edges of the street-corners and doorways that separate the places. It does not consist of learning a sequence of motor acts like “turn right, turn left, turn right.” It begins to be what we call geographical orientation, as described by Ryan and Ryan (1940). Some cognitive psychologists (e.g. Tolman) have suggested that the ability to find one’s way about in a maze-like-environment consists of having an internal “cognitive map” of it. But this theory seems to me a regression back to mentalism. Who looks at the mental map? It is true that an oriented observer can draw a map of his habitat but this does not prove that he uses the mental map in finding his way. One who uses a map made by another person is not oriented; he finds the way by applying a set of intellectual rules to his locomotion and only later does he “know” the way after perceiving how the vistas open up. Similarly one who has to follow verbal directions is disoriented, and when he “knows” the way, the words are not used.
I describe the phenomenal experience of being oriented to the hidden environment by asserting that one can perceive the goal through the opaque surfaces that conceal it, or at least that one apprehends where it is in the sense that one can point to it. Although locomotion has to be “round-about” until the goal comes into sight one perceives that particular occluding edge which hides the correct path as distinguished from the others which do not. I am presupposing the principle that to perceive occlusion entails the perceiving of the occluded surface.
What about the animal or man who is disoriented to he hidden environment? He is, as we say, “lost.” He is perfectly well oriented to the projected surfaces of his near surroundings and to the openings between occluding edges; he can perceive backgrounds and the far sides of objects. But he cannot perceive what is beyond the present vista, beyond the glade, valley, room, or street where he stands. There are various human technologies like paths, blazes, cairns, arrows, and symbolic devices like signposts with names, street signs, and numbered routes referring to a map, all of which provide crutches for geographical orientation, but they are more or less intellectual, not perceptual. The average dog can find his way about a town or countryside without any need whatever for such devices.
4. Orientation to the Earth as a Whole. Finally, fourth, there is a kind of orientation to distant lands beyond the horizon. It is involved in migration by animals and navigation by men. The original historical meaning of the term Orient was the lands East of the Mediterranean, that is, in the direction of the sunrise. Birds and bees and early men before the invention of the magnetic compass needed to be aware of the direction of the sunrise all through the day, and presumably they were aware of it, for they could see the sun-path. That is to say, being aware of the day as an event, they could perceive the sunrise-sunset axis. Sunrise-sunset is the same as morning-evening. Such natural perceivers do not have to consult a clock to know the time of day.” The high-point of the sun-path is always and everywhere to the South; it is an invariant of terrestrial life. One does not have to know the word for this direction, or to conceive that the earth has two poles, in order to understand its meaning. For a bird who needs to migrate when the days become short it is where the warmth is. (The rule is reversed in the Southern Hemisphere, but it is still an invariant). I have discussed this in the memo of November 1971 on Terrestrial Orientation.
Animals and men who live outdoors, on whom the sun shines, who see the invariants of the sky as well as the landscape, are aware of the “wheeling” of the sun and the “movement” of the seasons. They are always oriented, that is, oriented to the terrestrial earth as a whole. They know the realities that underlie the compass directions without bothering with the names. The mathematical recipes for navigation that come from conceiving that the earth is round, and from inferences based on compasses and chronometers and charts, are not necessary.
Those of us who are over civilized and who try to live by symbols instead of by direct perception are mostly disoriented at this whole earth level since we seldom pay attention to the sky. Moreover, since many of us do not consult maps and compasses either, we are not oriented to the abstract directions of North, South, East, and West. If we live in a gridwork city, we can memorize the street plan but, if we do not, few of us know where North is. We cannot point to the North or perceive the North side of the room.
The wheeling of the stars around Polaris, in the night sky, is another invariant of the world on which geographical orientation can be based. It can be formalized in astronomy but it does not have to be formalized in order to be used. The ancient mariners used it at night, and it seemed that even birds who migrate at night use it.
I do not say anything about a possible fifth level of orientation even higher than the fourth, orientation to the universe, for it is so intellectual as to have little to do with ordinary perception and behavior, even in men. The universe is too far away to be an environment. The environment is first below the feet, second within the room, third behind the walls, and fourth beyond the horizon. No doubt there is space outside the planet earth, and we can now begin even to perceive at second hand the surface of the moon, but let us not forget what we can touch and see.