Continuity and Discontinuity

Bibliographic Data

ID4490747
AuthorsYi-Fu Tuan, Yi‐fu Tuan (corresponding author)
Year1984
Volume74
Issue3
Pages245
Publication date1984-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueGeographical Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0016-7428 • E-ISSN: 1931-0846
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/214937
OpenAlexW2330564372
LanguageEN
Citations received21

LAST 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

Aesthetics · Cognitive psychology · Discontinuity (linguistics · Epistemology · Illusion · Linguistics · Meaning (existential · Media studies · Newspaper · Sociology · Contemporary Literature and Criticism · History · Philosophy · Political and Economic history of UK and US · Psychology

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