Language serves to describe reality, then to visualize, conceive, and ultimately conceptualize it. Our ways of describing and conceiving reality—of dividing it and relating its fragments to one another—become both our perception of reality and our reality itself, as we can only experience it through our perception and interpretation. No one can truly claim to step outside their own body—although even that might be considered possible—but who would claim to step outside their own mind? That would be far more extraordinary than merely leaving the body.

The mind, then, can be seen as the irreducible dimension of perception as we know it. It functions in many ways, starting within and from the body, and then within itself. While the body-mind split was, for a long time—from Antiquity through Descartes—a dominant vision of this pair, it is now somewhat outdated, if not widely criticized. In The Soul and the Body (1912), Bergson describes the body as an instrument of action and the mind as a force expressed through it. (I will not examine here the existence or extent of differences between the mind and the soul, as that is not the topic.) Nonetheless, the mind and the body form an indivisible continuity in experience, where one is the extension of the other. Paul McCartney illustrates this in his song Every Night: « Every night I lay on a pillow, I’m resting my mind. »

« If you were to ask me to express it in a simple formula, necessarily crude, I would say that the brain is an organ of pantomime, and pantomime only. Its role is to mimic the life of the mind, to mimic also the external situations to which the mind must adapt. Brain activity is to mental activity what the movements of a conductor are to the symphony. The symphony surpasses in every way the movements that mark its rhythm; in the same way, the life of the mind overflows the life of the brain. »
—Bergson, The Soul and the Body (1912)

Our linguistic reality operates significantly through pairs of opposites: hot-cold, big-small, full-empty. These pairs function because the presence of one signifies the absence of the other. Like binary language, this dichotomous way of perceiving reality suggests that not just two states exist, but rather two extremes between which everything else lies.

The absence of movement is inertia. Between inertia and movement lies the potential for movement. The potential for movement is an undefined path, which may be taken in one direction, the other, or not at all. It is what grants a combinatory characteristic to an element or a set of elements. It is an articulation. It is not the movement itself; it is the point where movement can occur. This leads us, of course, to define movement: it is the change in position of an element relative to that of another element. The wrist is the point where the hand can rotate. The elbow is the joint where the forearm can align or form an angle with the arm. In short, articulation is a special kind of link: one that does not bind so tightly as to immobilize but instead is a mobile link that enables movement.