The Man Who Walked Through Signs

Colin Fletcher, Robert S. Corrington, and the ‘Depth Dimension’ of Nature Naturing

Abstract

The concept of a depth dimension in nature is developed in Robert S. Corrington’s systematic extension of Peirce’s pragmatic metaphysics. To discern or experience the depth dimension of nature is to recognize the sublime power of nature naturing and of the powerful productivity of nature evidenced in its product, nature natured. The potency of nature naturing is evident, for example, in the geological formations of the Grand Canyon and in The Man Who Walked Through Time (1967), Colin Fletcher’s narration of a two-month solo trek into the depths of the Grand Canyon. In Corrington’s words, ‘A potency is an unconscious momentum within the heart of nature naturing that moves outward into the world of orders by ejecting some kind of orderly sign or system from its hidden depths’. Fletcher’s pilgrimage narrated a growing attunement to these ‘hidden depths’ and serves as an empirical, inductive account articulating the potencies of Ecstatic Naturalism.