Kinaesthesia and Touching Reality

This article outlines the philosophical and historical background to nineteenth-century belief that the touch sense, specifically including kinaesthesia, gives special, or uniquely deep, access to the world. The argument associates touch with life itself. Victorian writers also tied the sense of movement and touch to an understanding of causation and the world as a system of forces. The conclusion points to the possible significance of the arguments for the modernist arts, especially dance.