How do we know?

How best to speak of how humans touch the world and know it? Given that we are most fully human when we are engaged in those relationships which initiate and perpetuate the human race and, thus, perhaps, 'create' the world, it may be that we should look at how we touch and know our partners. In these relationships we know each other primarily and most pleasurably through our senses.

A lover sees, touches, tastes, smells and hears his or her beloved. At times this can culminate in an ecstasy of the senses. We also know each other, body to body, by interpreting the language of the body and the face. And then, in addition to this, we know each other’s heart which we can read in that same body and face. Thus, a world of feeling is available and added to our knowledge. And finally we have recourse to words and reason which ply their way between lovers and play back and forth with all of the physical evidence I have already evoked.