We often speak as if the world is simply there — a collection of objects with fixed properties, waiting to be perceived.
But lived experience, science, and art tell a different story.
What we encounter is not a neutral world, but a perceptual field: a structured space in which certain things stand out, certain actions become possible, and others remain invisible.
Change the perceptual field, and the world reorganises itself.
Perceptual fields
A perceptual field is not just what we see or hear.
It is the total configuration through which the world shows up for a particular nervous system — shaped by embodiment, history, sensitivity, training, and context.
This is why different people can inhabit the same room yet live in different realities:
one notices tone, tension, and emotional atmosphere
another notices task flow, efficiency, or hierarchy
another notices pattern, symmetry, or disruption
None of these perceptions are “wrong.”
They disclose different worlds of relevance.
Affordances
Within any perceptual field, the environment offers affordances (James J. Gibson) — real possibilities for action that arise between an organism and its surroundings.
A chair affords sitting.
A path affords walking.
A flower affords landing for a bee.
Affordances are not intrinsic properties of objects, nor are they private interpretations.
They are relational facts: what this environment makes possible for this kind of body, with this kind of perception, right now.
Because affordances depend on relation, many of them remain hidden.
What a bee can act upon may not exist for a human at all.
What a climber sees in a rock face may be invisible to a passer-by.
What a highly sensitive person perceives in a conversation may not register for someone tuned primarily to speed or outcome.
The absence of recognition does not make an affordance unreal.
It only means the relation is unavailable.
Possibility
Affordances define the landscape of possibility.
What we call “ability,” “difficulty,” or even “talent” is often nothing more than the degree of fit between a perceptual field and the affordances an environment provides.
When environments are designed for a narrow range of perceptual fields, many possibilities remain unrealised — not because people lack capacity, but because the world does not meet them halfway.
Seen this way, difference is not deficit.
It is ecological variation.
A quieter conclusion
To recognise different perceptual fields is not to abandon truth.
It is to acknowledge that truth has many doors of access.
And care — whether in science, education, therapy, or culture — begins when we ask not only what is there, but for whom it becomes possible.