The Senses of Touch: Haptics, Affects and Technologies

How can we think about touch? Problems of touch and tactility run as a continuous thread in philosophy, psychology, medical writing and representations in art, from Ancient Greece to the present day. Picking through some of these threads, the book ‘feels’ its way towards writing and thinking about touch as both sensory and affective experience.

Taking a broadly phenomenological framework that traces tactility from Aristotle through the Enlightenment to the present day, the book examines the role of touch across a range of experiences including aesthetics, digital design, visual impairment and touch therapies. The Senses of Touch thereby demonstrates the varieties of sensory experience, and explores the diverse range of our ‘senses’ of touch.