Thinking in Transit - by Edward S Casey & Megan Craig

About the Book

"Thinking in Transit: Explorations of Bodies in Motion is a venture into new territory that explores an area rarely discussed in philosophy or in any other field: the experience of thinking (and sometImes writing) while moving or being moved from one place to another. Whether walking or being transported by a car or a plane--or in a myriad of other ways--a certain freedom of thought emerges that much more rarely happens when confined to a fixed place such as a library, office, or study room, where the isolation of austere spaces can lead to unimaginative or repetitive ideas. The book examines instances of such liberated thinking from William James, John Dewey, Julia Kristeva, Audre Lorde, Gary Snyder, Annie Dillard, Oliver Sacks, Iris Marion Young, Frank Gehry, and many other philosophers, literary figures, social theorists, and the authors themselves in an effort to illuminate just how and why such thinking occurs in extraordinary ways"--

Book Synopsis

Does being in motion change how we think? Tracing the connections between thinking and transit--including walking, being transported by a vehicle, and many other modes--this innovative book shows how embodiment and movement deepen, expand, and transform creative thought.

Megan Craig and Edward S. Casey provide a collaborative phenomenological exploration of thought in motion, interspersing lively first-person accounts with broader philosophical inquiry. Their investigation, structured around the four ancient elements--water, air, earth, and fire--ranges across swimming, boats, balloons, planes, cars, trains, and other modes of transport. Craig and Casey invite readers to recall their own experiences of travel and how thinking changes in tandem with shifting environments and whatever conveys a person from place to place. They also consider how changing climates and evolving technologies, with new rhythms and materialities, have shaped human thinking in its many varieties.

Thinking in Transit celebrates forms of movement and motion that carry the body and mind out of their habituated routines. This book urges a change in how philosophers have traditionally framed the setting for serious thought: from the austere, solitary space of a study to populated places of interaction and passage.

Review Quotes

Thinking in Transit is a deeply meditative book. Megan Craig and Edward Casey's voices--sometimes blended, sometimes separate--eloquently evoke the wonder and significance of everyday movement: swimming, falling, skating, and flying, just to name a few. I'll never think of taking the ferry the same way again!--Shannon Sullivan, author of Thinking the US South: Contemporary Philosophy from Southern Perspectives

About the Author

Megan Craig is associate professor of philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook as well as an artist and essayist. She is the author of Levinas and James: Toward a Pragmatic Phenomenology (2009).

Edward S. Casey is distinguished professor emeritus of philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and past president of the American Philosophical Association. His many books include Plants in Place: A Phenomenology of the Vegetal (Columbia, 2023), with Michael Marder.