Continuity and Discontinuity

Yi-Fu Tuan
Geographical Review, Vol. 74, No. 3. (Jul., 1984), pp. 245-256.
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The Geographical Review

VOLUME 74

July, 1984

NUMBER 3

CONTINUITY AND DISCONTINUITY

YI-FU TUAN

AST year continuity and discontinuity were much on my mind. As has

been a habit of mine, I transposed the personal problem with its inevitable ambiguities onto the bright-lit stage of an impersonal question.
Why make another move? Why cut the roots that one has established, perhaps for the first time in one's life? One answer is that I have always felt
that being in place-being rooted-is an illusion. I have always been haunted
by the idea of departure both of the glad, self-initiated and of the wrenching,
unwilling kind. We are all more or less aware of a final departure that awaits
us, but we are less aware of it when we are in the presence of friends and
good books and are comforted by their projection of continuity and of reverberating meaning. When we glance at newspaper headlines or look about
us beyond the privileged islands of stability, we may well be overcome by
a sense of happenstance and finitude. I will return to the topic of happenstance and finitude near the end of this essay, for the main thrust here is
to explore in a general way questions of continuity and discontinuity, linkage and disjunction as instances of how we think and, subsidiarily, as aspects
of reality. I provide an academic setting for the personal question with
which I opened this essay and with which I shall end it.

Human beings show a tendency to apprehend reality as both continuous

and discrete, linked and disjunctive, for a variety of reasons. I begin by
offering four. First, human beings are equipped with the kind of eyes and
hands that enable them to perceive reality not only as interlocked patterns
but also as separate, three-dimensional objects. The relative locations of the
objects "out there" provide a sense of space. However, an abstract schema
of objects and distances is not what is normally perceived. What is perceived
is rather a "world," with all the coherence and complex linkages that the
term connotes.' In this kind of world, human beings can focus on a particMaurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962),
pp. 280-281.

DR. TUANis a professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 53706.
Copyright O 1984 by the American Geographical Society of N e w York

246

THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

ular object so that it stands out, severed from its background. Thus isolated,
the object may appeal to viewers for its usefulness and comeliness or may
repel by its gratuitous existence. More simply, the object may be picked up,
removed from its setting, and put elsewhere. By such actions, human beings
learn to examine and to appreciate objects out of context. Being out of context
and appreciating things cut off from their familiar settings are a uniquely
developed human capacity and a common human experience. For example,
consider conversations overheard in a restaurant. If the topic is food, the
diners are in context: their chitchat is appropriate to the setting. The words,
the sound of knives and forks, the smells, and the arrangement of furniture
are all somehow linked: from one event or thing a person can infer the
others. The world of the restaurant coheres. It does not contain an intrusively alien element. But suppose that the overheard talk is about the systole
and diastole of the Westerlies?
The second reason or condition that encourages human beings to see
reality as both continuous and discontinuous emerges from social life, the
fact that each human being is both an individual and a member of a group.
Human beings are able not only to see but also to find reassurance in seeing
the group to which they belong as a sort of superorganism. Comfort and
reassurance lie in the fuzziness of the boundary of the self: one self-image
merges into another, and all are linked to produce a complex, functioning
whole. However, the submergence of the self into the whole, except during
an outburst of mass hysteria, is never complete. In all cultures, an individual
finds himself occasionally out of step, an isolated being spinning loose on
its own axis. Sometimes the condition is willful; other times not. Despite all
attempts to conform and despite the success of such efforts in the eyes of
the tribe, an individual can still sense, if only fleetingly, the desolation of
standing alone.
The third reason might be taken as an extension of the second. All
human beings wish to be connected with others-to be a part of the whole.
Social life provides that connection, and beyond human society people like
to feel that they are also linked to the powers of nature. Safety lies in this
large, linked world. In it human needs and wishes find everywhere reassuring echoes. Because the world responds to human initiatives and because
other individuals are accessible, persons feel effective. Unfortunately from
an egoistic viewpoint, the traffic runs both ways. The individuals who are
accessible to us also have access to us. They can be a threat and a burden.
To protect ourselves against them, individuals erect barriers. From one point
of view, individuals want the components of the world to be open to each
other and linked; from another, they prefer confinement within recognized
boundaries. Civilization is unthinkable without a maze of fences and walls
that sharply demarcate the multitudinous modes of life.
The fourth condition that encourages human beings to apprehend reality
as both continuous and discontinuous is the experience of the accidental in

CONTINUITY AND DISCONTINUITY

247

the routines of life. Despite vigilance and the drawing of protective boundaries, accidents can occur. Even the most minor incident, easily avoidable
"if only one had known," can cause death or sharply alter the direction of
a person's life. The point was stated in a short story by John Updike:
actuality is a second-rate club.
[Farnham] had stepped on a nail in his basement; it had gone through
the sole of his sneaker and an inch of his foot with a brutal, buttery
ease. Incredible! Had he stepped a little to one way or another in the
dark, had his son not neglected to pick up the board, or had some
carpenter at a majestic remove of contingency not driven that nail
through the board at all, his foot would not have been pierced. But
pierced it had been, forcing Farnham to perceive what a second-rate
club actuality is. Membership in it is secured through a mix of mediocre
credentials and fortuitous qualifications, while a host of preferable possibilities vainly clamor outside for admission. The nail through his foot,
once admitted into actuality, brought with it a tetanus shot, a cancelled
golf game, a spat with his son; thus this event, which so easily might
have missed occurring, dubiously enriched realityS2

DISCRETE
ELEMENTSAND LINKED
PROCESSES
I have sketched four reasons why human beings by virtue of their biological equipment and common experience are prompted to see and organize
reality into polarized categories of the continuous and the discontinuous,
the linked and the discrete. Reality presents itself both ways, and human
beings show a need to type it both ways even when they pull in opposite
directions. However, for a limited purpose, people may use one category or
the other rather than both. For example, from the practical need to hunt
efficiently, Australian aborigines learn to distinguish different types of bush
country. They thus stress the discontinuous; they know where one type of
biotic community ends and another begins, and, although they do not have
maps, they can no doubt learn to draw them.3All human beings potentially
possess this skill. Segmenting space and recording the boundaries in cartographic form are known to a number of cultures. In Western culture, the
skill is developed into a fine art by geographers who show an exceptional
fondness for cutting up space. Once they recognize differences within space,
they will accent them by drawing boundaries around them to create what
they call formal regions. Why geographers should feel so impelled is not
always clear. Sometimes the partitioning serves an obviously useful purpose:
for example, it facilitates resource inventory and planning. Often it has no
practical value and satisfies an intellectual desire for order. Boundaries satisfy because they contain. In the attempt to discern pattern, people feel
John Updike, Atlantises, The New Yorker, November 13, 1978, p. 44.

' D. F. Thomson, Names and Naming in the Wik Monkan Tribes, Journal of the Royal Anthropological
Institute (London), Vol. 76, 1946, pp. 165-167.

248

THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

uncomfortable with things that have fuzzy edges. The formal regions of
geographers do not suggest linkages and interactions: that is, climate A is
shown as surrounded by climates B, C, and D, but the map gives not a
hint-in fact, discourages the idea-that interrelations exist among A, B, C,
and D.
Geographers also produce functional regions. A map showing urban
fields is an example. Boundaries are drawn around them, although geographers know full well that the influences of a city penetrate far beyond these
boundaries. Geographers wish and need to see gradients, linkages, and continuous processes. At the same time they show a desire to give shape to
what is fluid and continuous by imposing clearly demarcated limits on it.
This desire is for temporal as well as spatial order-for a method of freezing
processes and hence time.
I now turn to an important image of reality, conceived outside academe,
that rests on a spatial frame of cardinal points. Attached to such a frame are
other components of reality, including color, animals, the fundamental natural substances of air, fire, wood, and metal, and the principal offices or
activities of human beings. This idealized worldview is widely known
throughout Asia and the Americas. Its ready acceptance and persistence
suggest that the schema conforms with the disposition of the human mind
and touches base with human experience ranging from that of huntergatherers to that of sophisticated people in agricultural civilization^.^
The worldview thus sketched differs in detail from place to place and
from one time to another, but the differences among the variant forms are
overshadowed by their architectonic similarity. Besides the selection of common building blocks, for example, cardinal points, color, and animals, I call
your attention to the following shared, more abstract features. One is the
tension between locality and process, or, in the terms used here, between
the discontinuous and the continuous, the discrete and the linked. A worldview based on cardinal points stresses locality and the bounded nature of
its components. In Pueblo Indian culture, cardinal directions, clouds, winds,
and butterflies are all said to have "homes." They are all located in a spatial
schema, but they are not precisely bounded. They exert influence beyond
their physical borders. They are animate with powers that affect each other,
and they are linked to each other in a self-contained ~ y s t e m In
. ~ Chinese
tradition, superposed on the cardinal points and centers are five elements
(wu hsing): metal, wood, water, fire, and earth. What does the word hsing
mean and what is the best English translation? The word "element," which
is a commonly adopted English translation, suggests something substantive
--

Karl A. Nowotny, Beitrage zur Geschichte des Weltbildes: Farben und Weltrichtungen (Vienna:
Verlag Ferdinand Berger, 1969).
Leslie A. White, The Pueblo of Santa Ana, New Mexico, Memolr 60, Arner~cnn Anthropological
Assoclntlon, Vol. 14, 1942, pp. 80-82; and Alfonso Ortiz, Ritual Drama and the Pueblo World View,
In New Perspectives on the Pueblos (edited by Alfonso Ortiz; Albuquerque: University of New
Mexico Press, 1972), pp. 140-145.

CONTINUITY AND DISCONTINUITY

249

and discrete. The word is appropriate to the extent that fire and water are
different and discrete substances. In other contexts, a more accurate translation of hsing would be phase or process. One element can pass into another.
Put more actively, one element can generate or destroy another. Thus wood
generates fire, fire generates earth, earth destroys water, and water destroys
fire. The stress here is on continuity, linkage, and cyclical ~ h a n g e . ~
Cyclical time is another common characteristic of worldviews based on
the cardinal directions. The rotations of day and night and of the four
seasons again suggest continuity, the passing of one phase into another.
Changes occur constantly but do not lead to the emergence of anything
radically new. The world thus conceived is essentially stable, though subject
to disturbances; from the human point of view, it can malfunction. Because
the components of the world are all linked, any one of them can initiate a
disturbance that may have consequence for the most distant corners. Any
one of the components can also adjust to or extinguish a disturbance started
elsewhere.
In the type of worldview just described, the heterogeneous components
of human beings, animals, natural forces, and mythical beings may be regarded, in some sense, as persons able to address each other as I-and-Thou,
but they are all subject to control through the working of relentless causation.' When a European thinks of a fully determined system, he is likely to
envisage a clock. There is indeed a resemblance between a worldview in
which cyclical time is measured on a grid of cardinal points and the face of
a cosmic clock. In Europe, the metaphor of the universe as a clock enjoyed
popularity in both the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The metaphor
was a compliment to God, the greatest craftsman. On the other hand, it was
also a device for removing God from any active and possibly disruptive role
after the universe was set in motion. Not only the universe, but also the
economy of the eighteenth century was compared with a clock: a mechanism so delicate that it is immediately destroyed if touched with any but
the gentlest hand. The analogy meant that just as the intricately linked
universe had no room for a willful, capricious God, so the modern economy
had no room for the disruptive passions of either ancien rkgime aristocrats
or populist radical reformer^.^

The basic idea behind all these worldviews and models is the unity of
nature. Everything is connected with everything else. The conjugation of
Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University
Press, 1956), Vol. 2, p. 243; and Yu-lan Fung, A Short History of Chinese Philosophy (New York:
Macmillan, 1959), p. 131.
'Robert N. Bellah, Religious Systems, in People of Rimrock (edited by Evon 2.Vogt and Ethel M.
Albert; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966), p. 229.
Albert Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977),
pp. 86-87.

250

THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

distant stars affects the life of a single individual; conversely, the wrong
doings of a single individual can cause drought or solar e ~ l i p s e Is
. ~ this a
reassuring view of reality? It must have been, because it was widely adopted.
There is comfort in knowing that one is not alone but is part of a very large
network and dignity in believing that somehow even the stars are not
indifferent to one's fate. Yet this view can also create insecurity precisely
because of the linkage. The world can seem to be such a delicate and interlocked mechanism that breakdown anywhere, either by accident or malevolent intention, will adversely affect the most distant parts. For this reason,
the world could seem safer if it were made up of more or less discrete
subsystems so that the malfunctioning of any one would not seriously impair the rest: in other words, if the world were more amorphous and unpredictable like a cloud than sharply defined and causally connected like a
clock.1
Could modern science emerge if European thought were still gripped by
the idea of the unity of nature? Philippe Aries postulated that a rigorous
concept of the unity of nature rather than the authority of the Scriptures or
of tradition must be held responsible for the delay in scientific development.
He pointed out that people did not want to experiment with a component
of the cosmos unless they thought it could be adequately isolated. In terms
of his postulation of universal determinism, it would have seemed impossible to intervene decisively in any one part of the world without setting
off a chain reaction that threatened to upset the entire order."
Earlier I observed that a basic human capacity is to recognize an object
for what it is even when it has moved from its normal setting. To human
beings, out of place and context is not necessarily out of sight and mind.
Scientific experiment and thought take this capacity and develop it much
further. Doing a scientific experiment presupposes that an object can be
better understood when it is removed from its normal context and placed
in the totally different setting of a laboratory. Likewise, analyzing a problem
scientifically requires first that the boundaries of the problem be rigorously
defined. The high degree of success in science suggests that nature is more
loosely held together than traditional thinkers had postulated.
Can one truly understand a banana without taking into account the
entire universe? Bertrand Russell says yes, while Alfred North Whitehead
would state no. Both are correct, depending on interpretation of the idea of
"truly understand." From the viewpoint that I articulate here, it is easy to
see why these two differing positions should exist and why both have been
strongly championed. Experience of the kind that individuals have from
Arthur Waley, Life under the Han Dynasty, History Today, Vol. 3, 1953, pp. 89-98.
Karl Popper and John Eccles, The Self and Its Brain (Heidelberg and New York: Springer International, 1981), pp. 33-34.
l 1 Philippe Aries, Centuries of Childhood (New York: Vintage Paperback, 1965), pp. 19-20; and
Claude Lbvi-Strauss, Myth and Meaning (New York: Schocken Books, 1979), p. 17.
lo

CONTINUITY AND DISCONTINUITY

25 1

day-to-day life proposes that the world is both an interlocking unity and a
loosely connected congerie. Human beings wish for linkages because only
a linked system can be rationally apprehended. Sharp discontinuities are a
mystery-exciting perhaps but incomprehensible.12On the other hand, they
wish for a certain autonomy and discreteness of the parts, because otherwise
how can a thing be understood at all without understanding the whole?
The poet and divine John Donne preached that no man is an island.13
All human beings are somehow connected to each other: the loss of one is
a loss for all. When Donne wrote, "any man's death diminishes me because
I am involved in mankind," he expressed a deeply humane sentiment. But
does the loss affect areas of life other than those of sentiment and spirit?
The death of any human being will deprive the world and me of a unique
synthesis of experience, feeling, and thought, but how will the world and I
be materially affected? To put the question in its most extreme form, I may
ask, "Suppose overnight the entire Indian subcontinent sinks beneath the
ocean, what will be the effect of this event on the economic well-being of
the rest of humankind?"
In present-day popular ecological thought, the web of life is far more
extensive than the one that Donne had in mind. To an ardent environmentalist, the bell also tolls for plants and animals-if not for the death of
individual specimens, then for the extinction of communities and species.
The web of life that is spread over the earth's surface is so delicate that a
major disturbance in one area is bound to have some consequences-perhaps dire ones-elsewhere, even in the most distant places. Is this true?
Answers of a fairly objective kind can be given, if the terms are specified.
A partisan, however, lacks the patience for technical questions and answers.
For him, the interconnectedness of all things is a belief that is unqualified
by sensitivity to the varying degrees of connectedness and to the varying
lengths of the time lapse between cause and effect. As I noted earlier, the
interconnectedness of all things is a common belief, and a common element
of this belief is the fear of disaster. What is likely to spread is almost always
something bad rather than good. Diseases spread, but not health. There is
no such event as an epidemic of health. Severe soil erosion in one part of
the world may affect fisheries in a distant ocean, but the ecological enrichment of one area is not thought to bring discernible ecological benefits
elsewhere.

To what degree do natural and social phenomena on the surface of the

earth form systems in the sense that physiological processes in an organism
l2 Stephen Toulmin and June Goodfield, The Discovery of Time (Chicago: University of Chicago

Press. 1982).
,. D. 269.

l3 ~ o h n
Donne, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,

1959 [originally published 1624]), pp. 108-109.

252

THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

constitute a system? Is weather a system-a global system? Suppose we

know the distribution of water and land on the earth and suppose we have
detailed information concerning weather within the borders of the state of
Wisconsin for a year, can we use this information to predict what weather
is like at the equator? I would argue yes, because weather is really a system.
But, suppose we have observed plant communities in Wisconsin for a year,
can we predict the plant communities at the equator? I would argue no,
because the different kinds of plant life on the globe are not linked to each
other by necessity to the degree that the different systems of weather are
so linked. Words have misled us. Even on a scale far smaller than the globe,
we now realize that just as social organizations are something less than
organic, so ecosystems are less than systematic, that is, they lack the stable,
self-restoring character of physiological systems.14Social organizations and
ecosystems have a high degree of autonomy. Neither a clock nor an organism
would be a suitable metaphor.
In a true organism, the parts are mutually dependent. Anthropologists
appear to believe that an entire prehistoric hominid can be reconstructed
from a jawbone. The assumption is that the development of one component
in an organism necessitates changes in other components. Is this really the
case? Exceptions occur. The brain, in particular, shows a remarkable capacity
to assume an independent course of development. On the basis of the paleontological studies of Tilly Edinger, Susanne Langer asserted "that in more
than one class of vertebrates the growth and general form of brains advance
at rates which may differ, sometimes even extremely, from the rates of
progress of other parts shown in the fossil record."15 A paradigmatic fossil
series exists for the horse. For it Edinger contended that "in the first five
million years of its evolution the brain advanced considerably without concomitant progress in specialization or size of the other known parts of the
body."16
When one human group flourishes, other groups may also show signs
of improvement. That it happens is understandable both from the viewpoint
of personal and kinship obligations to distribute wealth and from the viewpoint of a general improvement in the levels of economic productivity. On
the other hand, one segment of a population may flourish while others
decline. This pattern can be interpreted as a consequence of exploitation. In
both cases, occurrences in one part of well-integrated systems affect the other
parts. A third possibility is that one segment of a population advances, while
other segments stay in place and appear to be totally bypassed. This pattern
is known to have occurred in civilizations which by reason of size and
Stephen Toulmin, New York Review of Books, July 18, 1974, p. 32.

Susanne K. Langer, Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University

Press, 1982), p. 96.

l6 Tilly Edinger, Paleoneurology versus Comparative Brain Anatomy, Confinia Neurolog~a,Vol. 4,

1949, p. 19, as quoted in Langer, footnote 15 above.

l4

l5

CONTINUITY AND DISCONTINUITY

253

complexity are not well-integrated systems. Within a civilization, large sectors can enjoy or suffer (depending on one's perspective) a high degree of
autonomy.
The contrast between the parts of the world hooked on the networks of
advance and the parts left in their interstices was especially vivid during
the nineteenth century when technological progress surged. A sensitive
observer would perhaps be shocked by the disparity and by the discreteness
of human worlds so that a major development in one could leave the rest
unaffected. Consider the effect of telegraphy. By the late nineteenth century,
a telegram could be sent from New York to Tokyo in a few minutes, but
"the full resources of the New York Herald could not get a letter from David
Livingstone in central Africa to that newspaper in less than eight or nine
months . . . ."I7

An important aspect of being human is that once we recognize the

disparities, discontinuities, and isolation of social life we can seek to overcome them on moral grounds. Human beings can try to establish linkages
when none had existed. Harmony and order are among the most widely
accepted values of humankind, and they imply the existence of equitable
linkages and bonds. E. M. Forster made famous the simple axiom on which
a whole ethical system can be built-"only connect." Connections are good,
an easy enough idea to grasp even without any philosophical underpinning.
Nevertheless, the idea has difficulties, one of which is: suppose there are
efficient channels of communication but little of value to communicate?
Only complexly organized individuals truly communicate. The more individualized a person is the more he or she has of interest to share with
others. However, to become such an individual one must withdraw into
isolation; sever links to others from time to time. That inward turn to the
self and silence is a precondition for all significant interpersonal exchange.
Is this not also true of human groups and cultures? For group and cultural identity to develop a measure of isolation is necessary. A group gains
a sense of self by drawing the line between "us" and "them," by refusing
to mix. A culture acquires strength through chauvinistic pride, through the
members' faith in the superiority of their own basic values. Minority groups
in a developed nation and, on a broader scale, developing countries feel
torn by the need for continuing support from former patrons, which implies
close linkage, and for independence, which implies separation. Japan is a
well-known example of a state that opted for isolation at a crucial stage in
its history (the Tokugawa period), and the self-imposed isolation possibly
has contributed to the immense Japanese self-confidence so that that country
l7

E. J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital 1848-1875 (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1975), p. 60.

254

THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

could subsequently embrace Western culture and technology without fear

of losing national identity.
When Forster urged "only connect," he had in mind the kind of intense
concern and exchange possible between a few individuals, not linkage with
humankind except at a very abstract level. The ideal of forming connections
with large numbers of people founders on human frailty. For any individual
and even group, resources of time and energy are limited and cannot be
used without exhaustion for the benefit of others, unless relationships of
support between self and others are efficiently reciprocal. Such efficient
reciprocity is likely to occur among kinsfolk, friends, and acquaintancespeople of one's own kind. When resources are directed to strangers and
outsiders, there may well be an immediate psychological reward for the
donors, the good feeling of having been generous, but their coffers are less
full.
Less full does not mean empty. More can still be dispensed, but when
should the generosity stop? On the one hand, an individual reaches out in
good will and tries to increase the number of connections; on the other
hand, from an instinct for survival, not merely greed, he is compelled to
sever links and to draw lines in order to ignore the accusatory or hungry
faces beyond. What I have just sketched is a well-known moral dilemma.
In recent years, it has been rendered more urgent under the name of "lifeboat ethics." What is lifeboat ethics except another forceful argument for
drawing firmly the outer bounds of care and concern?ls
A basic ethical assumption is that an individual should share his spiritual
and material goods with other persons. By contrast, personal disease, misery,
and anger should not be shared. Keeping evil to oneself, however, may be
difficult. Diseases, often being infectious, spread. Misery, as the saying goes,
loves company. Anger is normally directed at others and, moreover, at others weaker than we are. Good health, as I have observed, is not infectious
and does not diffuse through a population in the way that diseases do. It
would be too depressing to postulate that goodness, in general, has a lower
motility than evil. As moral beings, people can try to contain their misery
within the bounds of self. We might rejoice in those discontinuities in society that sometimes serve as effective cordon sanitaires. Freya Stark, a heroic
explorer and an eloquent writer, preferred to be away from the sympathies
and anxieties of loved ones during an illness. Her preference was for a
hospital where "gay and brisk young nurses will talk of their own affairs,
like the stream of healthy current through a ~wamp."'~
The voices of religion and personal conscience command human beings
to give what they possess, but only God can be unceasingly generous and

l s Lifeboat Ethics: The Moral Dilemmas of World Hunger (edited by George R. Lucas Jr. and Thomas
W. Ogletree; New York: Harper & Row, 1976); and Garrett Hardin, Promethean Ethics (Seattle:

University of Washington Press, 1980).

l9 Freya Stark, A Peak in Darien (London: John Murray, 1976), p. 91.

CONTINUITY AND DISCONTINUITY

255

still stay alive and well. For human beings, selfless giving ends logically in
no longer having any more self to give-in death. For all of us, death is the
ultimate discontinuity. We all know this fact, and it does not cause most of
us undue worry. Perhaps most people are already acquainted with death
through experiences of sickness, accident, and departure. In sickness there
is indeed world loss, but it is temporary, and life continues after the interruption. Accident is a more forceful reminder of human finitude because of
its sudden and unpredictable nature, but individuals learn to adjust to its
effects, which in most instances may not last. As for departure, people have
been taking leave since the day they were born, even though they may stay
in the same place. Aging means discarding old linkages and forging new
ones. Because the process is slow and because new linkages are being forged,
pangs of departure are rarely felt except perhaps in retrospection. Departing
from a place in a geographical sense does constitute a vividly experienced
break. However, the possibility of return remains. So long as there is life,
nothing that happens to a person (sickness and accident) and nothing that
he initiates (departure) seem irrevocable.
The belief that death itself is a mere caesura in life may come from such
experiences. Against this consoling idea, I prefer to entertain the harsh one
of radical discontinuity for three reasons. Available evidence overwhelmingly supports the idea of radical discontinuity. Accepting extinction for
oneself is a modern form of ascesis comparable to submitting to the dark
night of the soul in an earlier age. Ascetic practice has the paradoxical result
of intensifying one's taste for life. Knowing that all things are mortal infuses
the present moment-whether it be talking to a friend or doing the disheswith a poignant and perhaps even preternatural glow that would be absent
if time itself does not come to a stop for each individual.
From the viewpoint of rhetoric, I should stop this essay with the above
paragraph, but I should nonetheless like to add another comment. I have
touched on a number of topics of traditional interest to geographers: regions
and their boundaries, depicting continuous processes on maps, degrees of
dependence and independence in ecological systems, and moral dilemmas
in allocation of scarce resources. I have done so quite naturally under the
broad rubric of continuity and discontinuity without partisan forethought.
At a certain level of abstraction, physical and cultural geographers ask similar questions. This pattern makes for mutual sympathy, if not active cooperation. Although my immediate concerns are at the human and psychological end of the science-humanities spectrum, I derive stimulus and ideas
from the works of scholars at the other positions along the spectrum because
I see a family resemblance in the kinds of questions being posed.
Now I must forestall an obvious criticism. A reader may well ask, "Are
you not being disingenuous in putting all these disparate topics under one
ruling idea? If connections exist, are they not merely figurative or meta-

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phorical?" My reply-I object to the dismissive "mere." The linkages that I

have implied are indeed of a metaphorical nature, but creative thought is
analogical and metaphorical. Repress this capacity and we bid farewell to
scientific progress. Almost all the analogies that we conjure will be sterile
from the scientific viewpoint; however, a few can be productive. All should
provide passing delight to geographers who are also poets and fun-loving
human beings.