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Yi-Fu
Tuan can truly be considered the 'Little Prince' of geography.
Tuan,
Y. F. (2014).The Last Launch: Messages in the Bottle.George
F Thompson Publishing.
Sources:https://www.amazon.com/Last-Launch-Messages-Thompson-Paperback/dp/B011W99Z0S
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/18708592-the-last-launch
https://archive.org/details/lastlaunchmessag0000tuanRecently,
I have noticed that the website "Internet Archive" funded the
digitization of Yi-Fu Tuan's final book, The Last Launch: Messages in the
Bottle (full book can be downloaded:
https://archive.org/details/lastlaunchmessag0000tuan). I felt as if I had
stumbled upon a treasure, and today I finally took the time to read it.The
Last Launch, like Yi-Fu Tuan's other books, covers a wide range of topics,
drawing from both ancient and modern, Eastern and Western sources with ease and
erudition. This book includes parts of Tuan's life experiences as well as his
profound insights into space, place, society, and life. For example, he writes:
"Whereas our attachment to home—whether baile, casa,chia
hsiang,heimat, hogan,maison,or zuhause—rests
on good memories, our attachment to a nation (and a homeland)rests not only on
good memories, but also on bad ones of defeat and decline and humiliation.
Hatred plays a part in our love of country that it does not play in our love of
home." Tuan is candid with his readers, not shying away from discussing
his religious beliefs and sexual orientation, creating a sense of what Yiyun Li
describes as "from My Life I Write to You in Your Life."When
writing this book, Tuan was in his 80s, and he believed he was still immature,
which initially frustrated him. Later, he realized that immaturity is one of
the defining characteristics of being human. Tuan disliked the image of a
master sitting cross-legged on a mountain ridge or a professorcorseted
in thick layers of arcane knowledge. Why? Because both postures seem to boast
of having lassoed the roaming mind long before bodily death. Tuan remained like
a child, curious and open to the world. The dedication at the beginning of the
book reads: "To the forever young." Like the curious child on the
beach, Tuan places the messages he wants to convey to readers into bottles and
throws them into the sea, waiting for readers to discover and open them.This
book includes previously unpublished essays by Tuan, featuring a prologue
titled Closing the Circle, and a main text divided into six parts and 18
chapters: Revisiting the Personal and the Geographical; Understanding Social
Reality; Seeking Goodness and Good; God, Christianity, and Religious Faith;
Messages to the Young; and Reflections of the Self.In
the first part, Tuan recalls childhood episodes that deeply influenced him,
mentioning significant historical figures and events he witnessed as a child,
and reflects on his views of space, place, and nature. The second part
discusses his understanding of social reality, including human values,
equality, conversation, shamelessness and trust, and human tools and products.
The third and fourth parts shift to a more philosophical tone, with the third
part contemplating goodness and good, and the fourth part presenting his
personal understanding of God, Christianity, and religious faith. Tuan shares
how he was drawn to Christian thought and tells a mathematician's version of
the Genesis story. The fifth part includes two speeches Tuan gave to university
students. The first, particularly aimed at minority and LGBT students at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison, candidly discusses his identity as a triple
minority and the significance and value of minorities in society. The second,
Advice to Graduates, is a commencement speech he delivered at the University of
Guelph in Canada. The sixth part, added at the editor's suggestion, includes a
detailed list of Tuan's favorite books, artworks, and places. "You are
what you read"—the act of listing books reveals Tuan's own character. He sheds all
defenses, hoping to engage in sincere communication with readers, seeking
intellectual communication and emotional resonance. The second addition
discusses his worldly success. Humble as Tuan is, he does not boast. He defines
success“is not so much public acclaim as the
realization that one has made—mirabile dictu— a genuine contact."Yi-Fu
Tuan was born in Tianjin, China, in 1930. Due to Japan's invasion of China, Tuan
moved to the temporary capital, Chongqing, at a young age. Later, he followed
his diplomat father, Duan Mao-lan, across continents. Duan Mao-lan was fluent
in English, French, and German. At the age of 10, Tuan moved with his family to
Australia via Hong Kong. In 1946, the family relocated to the Philippines and
then to London. After two years of schooling in London, Tuan briefly studied at
University College London before transferring to University College, Oxford, to
study geography. In 1951, he pursued graduate studies at the University of
California, Berkeley, earning his Ph.D. in 1957. He held his first academic
position at Indiana University, followed by a postdoctoral position in
statistics at the University of Chicago. In 1959, he moved to the University of
New Mexico and later taught at the University of Toronto, the University of
Minnesota, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he retired.During
his childhood, Tuan encountered many prominent figures due to his father's
profession. For example, while in Chongqing, Zhou Enlai frequently visited the
Duan household, always bringing toys, which made him very popular with young
Tuan. On another occasion, the Soviet ambassador and his entourage refused to
be carried in sedan chairs, insisting on walking instead, which impressed Duan
Mao-lan so much that he began learning Russian and had his children do the
same.Tuan
recounts how he was drawn to Christianity in his teenage years. At the time,
his father served as the Chinese Consul General in Sydney and often hosted
distinguished guests from various countries. Tuan noticed that his father
prepared different gifts for guests based on their status. When he asked why,
his father explained Confucian values of respect for authority, power
relations, and hierarchy. Tuan was shocked to learn that the adult world
operated this way. However, the education he received at school presented a
contrasting set of values. His headmaster explained the meaning of Christianity
to him: Who will enter the Kingdom of God? Not the powerful or the learned, but
children! Who is great? Not the one who demands to be served, but the one who serves.
Thus, the young Tuan was captivated by Christian radicalism.In
the book, Tuan retells a mathematician's version of the Genesis story, as
narrated by Richard Preston. Among all random numbers, the most famous is π. In
1650 BCE, the Egyptian scribe Ahmes first mentioned π.
Around 200 BCE, Archimedes of Syracuse discovered that π equals 3.14. In 1991, mathematicians Gregory and David Chudnovsky
calculated π to over 2 billion digits, while Japanese
mathematician Shigeru Kondo extended the calculation to over 1 trillion digits.
The digits of π are random, yet ordered sequences
appear within them. For example, around the 300 millionth decimal place, the
sequence 88888888 appears, and around the 500 millionth mark, the sequence
123456789 emerges.These
digits symbolize chaos, but within chaos, islands of order exist. The thing
that generates these trillions of random digits is π,
which is simply the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. Tuan
found this realization liberating. When he sees seemingly meaningless
randomness, he asks, "Is it
nonetheless derived from something of the utmost simplicity and elegance?"In
Tuan's version of the Genesis story, in the beginning, there was only God. To
create life, especially humans, God generated immense chaos, from which—like
whirlpools in turbulent flow—islands of complex order
emerged. These islands of complex order eventually became living organisms,
which, following the laws of biological evolution, ultimately became humans.The Significance of MinorityYi-Fu
Tuan candidly acknowledges his triple minority identity in the United States: a
Chinese descendant in a predominantly white society, a Christian in a highly
secularized and radicalized university environment, and a homosexual in a
mainstream heterosexual society. As a result, Tuan does not consider himself
part of the mainstream. However, he also states that he does not think or feel
like a minority. Why?Firstly,
Tuan’s background as the son of a diplomat gave him confidence, but more importantly,
it was psychological. From a young age, he harbored a deep yearning for truth,
goodness, and beauty, striving to seek the best aspects of the world. Due to
war and his father’s diplomatic career, Tuan moved
across different continents and countries, receiving education in various
systems. He was, in a sense, a global citizen, with a mind that was a cultural
melting pot. Thus, he did not feel like a minority; instead, he found many
mainstream Americans to be quite narrow-minded. Another reason is that Tuan
often uses the first-person "I," seeing himself as an individual
facing the world alone. Though vulnerable, he did not feel insignificant or
marginalized.However,
Tuan admits that homosexuality does indeed belong to a minority group, situated
at the tail end of the bell curve, unlike the heterosexual majority at the
center. Yet, being a minority does not mean being unnatural. So, how can
minority groups, not positioned at the center, practice "goodness"?
One way to escape the hostility of mainstream society is to retreat into a
subculture of one’s own kind, but Tuan believes this can only be temporarily
uplifting.Tuan
uses the metaphor of players on a football field and spectators in the stands
to illustrate the meaning of center and periphery. The players at the center
may not truly understand what is happening as well as the spectators on the
periphery, who have a more comprehensive view. Tuan argues that this peripheral
position is actually a privilege—the privilege of an observer.
The homosexual community can serve as observers of mainstream society, not so
much being observed as observing.Tuan
believes that although nature made him homosexual and unable to propagate, the
benefit lies in being able to devote time and energy to his students. Caring
for strangers is an ancient and universal ideal, as well as a contribution to
society. Regarding minority groups, Tuan writes: "We are all unique, which means that each of us,
in fact, is a minority person—a
minority of one .It is when we don't think of ourselves as bound to a
particular ethnicity or culture, it is when we see ourselves in all our
irreplaceable individuality, that, paradoxically, we regain a sense of the
centrality of our being and our duty as such a being to our kin, neighbor, and
humankind."In
his speech to graduates, one of Tuan’s pieces of advice is to do
good deeds. On this topic, Tuan offers a brilliant metaphor:“What about the power to do good? It is when we try to do good that
weare likely to feel ineffective--a feeling that may, however, also be a mistake. Let me put the point across figuratively. A large stone thrown into the lake sends waves propagating
to its distant shore. A small pebble also sends waves, but they are faint and unlikely
to go far. We are the small pebbles. Our good deeds can at best have only local effect. The analogy then breaks down, for, in the human world, the faint
waves we make when we do a good deed may be picked up by someone else, who, in
turn, does a good deed, propagating waves, and so on: one good deed after
another, until the waves so generated, notwithstanding their origin in a single
person's effort, also reach the farthest shore.”Finally,
let me end with the closing remarks from the 2012 Vautrin Lud Prize (the
highest honor in geography, often regarded as the Nobel Prize of the field)
award speech delivered by Professor Anne Buttimer of University College Dublin
in honor of Yi-Fu Tuan:"Yi-Fu Tuan can truly be considered the 'Little Prince' of geography.
His carefully chosen words sought to 'tame' a generation of colleagues
infatuated with logical positivism and quantitative spatial analysis. Yi-Fu
Tuan captivates both minds and hearts beyond claims of objectivity, revealing a
multifaceted subjectivity in the analysis of conventional models in the social
sciences. He reminds us of the challenging existence of critical reflection on
biases and other prejudices that often shape our ways of life and thought."
1."The
philosopher whose ideas are not reflected in his life is merelyplaying games."-John Wild, requoted from
The Last Launch: Messages in the Bottle2."The
reward for good consists in the fact that one is good and the punishment for evil in the fact that one is evil; and
the reward and the punishment are automatic."-Simone Weil, requoted from The Last Launch: Messages in
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