We often assume that seeing is a straightforward mechanical process, much like a camera capturing an image. In this conventional view, light bounces off objects, enters our eyes, and impacts the retina; this data is then transmitted to the brain, which processes the signals and reconstructs a picture of the world. It suggests that we are passive recipients of sensory data, spectators located behind the window of our eyes, watching a world that is fundamentally separate from us. However, when we pay close attention to our actual lived experience - when we engage in a phenomenology of perception - this passive model begins to crumble. Perception is not something that happens to us; it is something we do. It is an active, skilled, and bodily engagement with reality.

To explore this deeper understanding, we turn to two significant thinkers of the twentieth century: the French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty and the Hungarian-British polymath Michael Polanyi. Although they worked in different traditions, their insights converge to reveal that perception is an act of indwelling, a way of inhabiting the world that dissolves the rigid boundary between subject and object.

The Body as Our Anchor

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, in his landmark work Phenomenology of Perception, radically shifts the focus of philosophy back to the body. For centuries, Western thought had been dominated by the Cartesian dualism that separated the thinking mind (res cogitans) from the extended body (res extensa). Merleau-Ponty argues that this is a fundamental error. We do not inhabit our bodies like a pilot in a ship or a ghost in a machine. Rather, we are our bodies. The body is our general medium for having a world.

When we perceive, we do so not as a disembodied intellect but as an embodied subject. Our perception is inextricably measured by our bodily possibilities. A mountain is “tall” not in absolute geometric terms, but relative to our ability to climb it. A cup is “graspable” because we have hands that can hold it. Merleau-Ponty famously stated, “Consciousness is in the first place not a matter of ‘I think’ that but of ‘I can’.” Before we conceptualise the world, we are already moving through it, coping with it, and responding to its solicitations.

Consider how we experience a staircase. We do not first measure the height of each step and then calculate the muscular effort required. Instead, the staircase presents itself to us as “climbable” or “steep” or “gentle.” Our legs already know what to do. The body schema, that pre-conscious map of our bodily capabilities and limits, is constantly in dialogue with the affordances of the environment. A child sees the same staircase differently than an adult, and an elderly person with limited mobility perceives it differently still. The staircase is not a fixed, objective thing; it is a relational phenomenon that emerges in the encounter between body and world.

This pre-reflective engagement is what Merleau-Ponty calls the “intentional arc.” It projects round about us our past, our future, our human setting, our physical, ideological, and moral situation. It ensures that we are situated in meaning. When we walk into a room, we do not consciously calculate the distance to the chair or the height of the table. Our body “knows” these things directly. We navigate the space effortlessly because our body has incorporated the logic of the environment. The doorway invites us through, the chair solicits sitting, the light switch calls to our hand. These are not projections of our subjective desires onto neutral objects; they are genuine features of how things show up for an embodied perceiver.

Moreover, our bodily habits sediment over time, creating a kind of corporeal memory. The pianist’s fingers find the keys without conscious direction. The dancer’s body responds to the music with movements that have become second nature. Even the simple act of walking, which we take utterly for granted, is an extraordinarily complex achievement of bodily intelligence that we had to learn as infants. Perception, then, is a communion with the world, a dialogue where the sensing body and the sensible world are woven together.

The Tacit Dimension

While Merleau-Ponty focused on the body’s role in grounding experience, Michael Polanyi approached perception from the perspective of scientific practice and the nature of knowing. In his magnum opus Personal Knowledge, Polanyi introduced the concept of “tacit knowledge,” famously asserting, “We can know more than we can tell.”

Polanyi argued that all explicit knowledge relies on a vast root system of tacit knowledge that cannot be fully articulated. Consider the act of recognising a face in a crowd. We can instantly identify a friend, yet we would be hard-pressed to describe exactly how we do it. We cannot list the precise measurements of their features or the subtle configuration of shadows that constitutes their likeness. We simply know. This knowing is not a failure of articulation but a fundamental structure of human intelligence.

The same principle applies to riding a bicycle. We can ride a bicycle, yet if asked to explain precisely how we maintain balance, how we coordinate the subtle shifts of weight and the minute adjustments of the handlebars, we would struggle. The knowledge is in our bodies, in the tacit integration of countless subsidiary clues. Polanyi notes that “the aim of a skilful performance is achieved by the observance of a set of rules which are not known as such to the person following them.” We follow rules we cannot articulate.

For Polanyi, perception relies on a “from-to” structure. We attend from a set of subsidiary particulars to a focal target. When we recognise a face, we are attending from the individual features—the curve of the nose, the texture of the skin, the sparkle in the eye—to the face as a whole. We are aware of the particulars only in how they contribute to the whole. If we were to shift our focus and look directly at the features, effectively turning them into focal objects, the face would dissolve. The meaning of the whole depends on our subsidiary awareness of the parts.

This structure is not limited to perception but extends to all forms of understanding. When we read a sentence, we attend from the individual words to the meaning. If we focus too intently on the words themselves, the meaning slips away. When we use a tool, we attend from the sensations in our hand to the task at hand. The hammer becomes transparent; we see through it to the nail. This is the genius of tacit knowing: it allows us to integrate particulars into wholes without losing ourselves in the details.

Indwelling and the Blind Man’s Cane

Both Merleau-Ponty and Polanyi utilise the example of a blind man using a cane to illustrate the extension of perception, and comparing their treatments of this image is illuminating.

For Merleau-Ponty, the cane ceases to be an object for the blind man. It is no longer perceived for itself; its point has become an area of sensitivity, extending the scope and active radius of touch and providing a parallel to sight. The cane has become incorporated into the user’s “body schema.” The blind man does not feel the cane pressing against his palm; he feels the pavement at the end of the cane. The boundary of his body has effectively shifted. The cane is no longer an object in the world but the medium through which the world is perceived.

This incorporation is not instantaneous. When the blind person first picks up the cane, it is awkward, obtrusive, a thing to be managed. But with practice and familiarity, it becomes an extension of the body itself. The same phenomenon occurs with many tools and technologies. The experienced driver does not feel the pedals beneath their feet; they feel the road. The surgeon does not feel the scalpel in their hand; they feel the tissue. The violinist does not feel the bow; they feel the music. In each case, the tool has been taken up into the body schema, becoming a transparent medium of engagement with the world.

Polanyi uses the same example to demonstrate the from-to structure of tacit knowing. He points out that the blind man attends from the sensations in his palm (the subsidiary particulars) to the pavement (the focal target). He dwells in the sensation of the stick to perceive the world outside. This process of “indwelling” is crucial. To perceive anything outside ourselves, we must pour ourselves into the subsidiary clues; we must make them part of our own body. In this sense, all perception involves a form of self-transcendence. We extend ourselves into the world to make sense of it.

Indwelling, for Polanyi, is the key to all comprehension. When we understand a theory, we indwell its concepts. When we appreciate a work of art, we indwell its form. When we empathise with another person, we indwell their perspective. This is not a mystical merging but a disciplined act of integration, where we allow the subsidiary particulars to shape our focal awareness. It requires effort, practice, and commitment. We cannot indwell something we have not studied, practised with, or opened ourselves to.

Perception as a Skilled Achievement

If perception involves this complex interplay of subsidiary and focal awareness, and if it relies on the body’s sedimentation of habits and capabilities, then perception is a skill. It is something we learn and refine. The radiologist looking at an X-ray sees patterns and meanings that looking at the same image, we would miss entirely. To us, it is a blur of greys and blacks; to the expert, it reveals a fracture or a tumour. The expert has learned to dwell in the image, attending from the visual clues to the medical reality.

Consider also the wine taster, who can detect subtle notes of blackcurrant, oak, and tobacco in a wine that tastes simply “red” to the novice. Or the birdwatcher, who can identify a species from a fleeting glimpse of movement in the canopy. Or the mechanic, who can diagnose an engine problem from the quality of a sound. These are not superhuman abilities but cultivated skills. They represent years of training the perceptual system to discriminate, to attend, to integrate. The expert has not simply accumulated facts; they have transformed their way of seeing.

This realisation has profound implications for how we understand our relationship with reality. If perception is a skill, it is also a commitment. It is not a neutral recording of facts but a personal achievement that involves risk. As Polanyi argues, all knowledge claims are made with universal intent but are grounded in personal commitment. We cannot step outside our own skins to view the world from a “God’s eye view.” We must perceive from where we are, with the tools and the body we have.

To claim to see something, to assert that we know, is to stake ourselves. We might be wrong. The radiologist might miss a tumour or see one that is not there. The wine taster might be fooled. But this fallibility does not undermine the validity of skilled perception; it reveals its human character. Knowledge is not the passive reception of data but an active, risky, personal engagement with reality. We must trust our perception, even as we remain open to correction.

Merleau-Ponty reinforces this by insisting on the “primacy of perception.” Scientific knowledge, which claims to be objective and detached, is always a second-order expression derived from the primary, lived experience of the world. Science explains the world, but phenomenology reminds us that we possess the world before we explain it. The abstract formulas of physics are powerful tools, but they are built upon the bedrock of our embodied, perceptual faith in the reality of the world. The scientist in the laboratory still sees the equipment, still feels the bench, still hears the hum of the instruments. All scientific abstraction is rooted in this primordial perceptual contact.

The Flesh of the World

Ultimately, a phenomenology of perception reveals that the dichotomy between subjective inner world and objective outer world is false. We are part of the world, and the world is part of us. Merleau-Ponty in his unfinished final work spoke of “the flesh” (la chair)—an elemental fabric that encompasses both the seer and the seen. Because our body is made of the same “stuff” as the world, we can perceive it. We are “of” the world.

The flesh is not matter in the scientific sense, nor is it mind in the idealist sense. It is the primordial element from which both subject and object emerge. When we touch our own hand with our other hand, we experience a strange reversibility. The touching hand is also touched; the seeing eye can be seen. This reversibility, this intertwining, is the structure of the flesh. We are both sentient and sensible, both perceivers and perceived. The world touches us as we touch it.

This means that perception is not a one-way street where the subject receives information from the object. It is a reciprocal, dynamic exchange. The world solicits our attention, calls out to us, invites our engagement. The red of the apple is not a subjective projection, nor is it a mere wavelength of light. It is a quality that emerges in the encounter between the apple and the perceiver, a quality that belongs to the flesh of the world.

Polanyi’s concept of indwelling suggests a similar unity. By attending from our bodies to the world, we participate in the objects we know. We are not alienated spectators but involved participants. Understanding is not a passive mirroring but an active shaping. When we understand a poem, a piece of music, or another person, we do so by indwelling them, by recreating their internal coherence within ourselves.

This participation is not a loss of objectivity but its true foundation. We can only know what we are willing to indwell, what we are willing to let shape us. The astronomer must indwell the mathematics, the telescope, the night sky. The historian must indwell the archive, the language, the culture of the past. The therapist must indwell the experience of the client. In each case, knowledge arises not from detachment but from committed, disciplined involvement. We know the world by being in it, by letting it into us, by extending ourselves into it.

Conclusion

Reclaiming a phenomenology of perception is vital in an age dominated by data and algorithms. We are increasingly encouraged to view ourselves as information processing machines and the world as a database of facts. Merleau-Ponty and Polanyi remind us that this is a reductionist fantasy. Our contact with reality is richer, deeper, and more mysterious than any algorithm can capture.

Perception is the ground of our existence. It is the silent dialogue we hold with things, the way we inhabit our environment, and the skill by which we make sense of our surroundings. It transforms the world from a cold collection of objects into a landscape of meaning. By acknowledging the tacit, embodied, and personal nature of our vision, we do not lose objectivity; rather, we recover the human foundation of all knowledge. We see that to know the world is to be intimately involved with it, to extend our being into it, and to let it resonate within us. We are not strangers in the universe; through the miracle of perception, we are at home.