Sustainability, Mesology and Overcoming the gap between Eastern and Western ways of thinking
(持続性、風土学と東西思惟の越境)
I. « Mesology » (Umweltlehre in Uexküll’s sense, fûdogaku in Watsuji’s sense) contains the Greek root meso, which means « middle, between ». The question here is : what is at work between the physical (Galileo’s Earth, which moves) and the phenomenal (Husserl’s Earth, which does not move) ? Both are true, but not on the same plane : Galileo’s Earth is true as a physical reality, Husserl’s Earth is true as a phenomenon (since phenomenally, it is not the Earth, but the sun, the moon and the stars which move around).
II. Onto/logically (logically and ontologically), substance and accidents in metaphysics correspond to subject (S) and predicate (P) in logic, while the logician’s subject (S : what the matter is about) corresponds to the physicist’s object (S : what the observation is about). In principle, then, physical reality is S. Galileo’s Earth is S.
Crédits image : Felix Valloton, Pont sur le Béal, 1922.
