Bodies in Motion: Evolution and Experience in Motorcycling

摘要

Motorcycles provide a primary means of inexpensive transport in many poor and middle-income countries today, just as they did in Europe and Japan a few decades ago. Though automobiles are now the main type of personal transport in the industrially developed world, motorcycles have not disappeared. On the contrary, motorcycle ownership has flourished in parallel with increases in disposable incomes. Steven Thompson's Bodies in Motion provides a unique perspective on the enduring appeal of two-wheeled powered mobility.rnNot content to restate the usual cliches about the feeling of "freedom" engendered by motorcycle riding, Thompson delves into humankind's evolutionary past to uncover and explain the pleasures of motorcycling. His intriguing thesis is that our psyches still bear remnants of a prehuman arboreal past, and that the sensory experiences of motorcycle riding connect us with that ancestral memory.