Sense - Think - Act

200 exercises about basic human ability

NB New colour paper edition! See new ISBN 978-1-870736-12-1  eBook still available as listed here.

This practical core of this book is a collection of about 200 exercises to experience basic human ability.

The senses pick up information in various media from outside and inside the body. They monitor what is happening. This sensory information then travels along nerve pathways to the brain where it is compared with past experience, analysed and evaluated. The result of this processing is a decision to do or not do. Doing something inevitably requires movement and muscle action; whether it be writing a poem, taking evasive action in the face of attack or chewing the top of your pencil.

This sequence provides a model for the organisation of the book. The first half is a detailed description of each sense, each mental faulty and a set of basic muscle actions. The second part is a collection of about 200 exercises to allow the reader to experience our most elemental human abilities.

The author has an idea of cultural renewal starting from basic human abilities. This book will also find wide appeal as a retro-styled exercise book, illustrated with pages from the authors research notebooks. There is much to surprise and delight readers.

The idea of collecting exercises to explore our basic abilities arose from previous research into basic human life supports published by Unicorn Bookshop in Brighton, and Schocken Books New York, as the trilogy 'Survival Scrapbooks: Shelter, Food and Energy'. Whilst researching 'Survival Scrapbook Energy' I came across a detailed description of standing in Iyengar's classic book ‘Light on Yoga’. I then thought of Francis Bacon's 'Idols of the Mind' as similarly describing an elemental ability. I wondered if a collection could be made which covered all the basic human abilities. I was doing body work with the X6 Dance Group near Tower Bridge in London, who were rethinking the relation of dance to the human being. This fed me with many ideas and experiences, especially in the area of muscle action.

The information was made into a Wikimedia website in 2005 with help from webmaster Gordon Joly. Since that time ‘Sense-think-act’ has become a prime paradigm of the Ai and robotics industry; and ‘Brain Training’ and physical exercise routines have become big business. 

I think my own version of Sense-Think-Act works better as an book than a wiki. It is retro in appearance but in a way that suggests that the reader makes their own selection of exercises to know their abilities. Its radical arguments hark back to Whole Earth Catalogue and John Cage’s ideas of 'starting from scratch' but there’s a new generation of smartphone book readers that are rediscovering that kind of utopian and anti-corporate thinking.

There will be a POD paperback version as well for those who’d like to see this project materialise on their bookshelves