Making sense of touch

This chapter discusses the key findings to have emerged from the scientific study of touch over the last few years. In fact, the lack of a commonly agreed 'lexicon of touch' constitutes a very real hindrance to progress in this area. Binns was particularly interested in understanding the relative reliability of vision and touch in terms of people's perception of the quality of woollen fabrics, a practical problem that is still relevant to us more than eighty years later. Interestingly, a similar dominance of touch over vision was also reported by Heller when people had to evaluate the texture of a number of different Japanese abrasive sharpening stones. Returning to that chunk of limestone provided to visitors at Tate Liverpool, Candlin goes on to note: Moreover, the provision of small pieces of limestone or the equivalent completely ignores people's capacity for pleasure through touch.