“All humans by nature desire to know. An indication of this is our liking for the perceptual capacities. For even apart from their utility, these are liked because of themselves — and most of all the one because of the eyes. For it is not only in order to do an action, but even when we are not going to do anything whatsoever, that we choose sight over (one might almost say) all others. That cause is that of all the perceptual capacities it enables us to know most fully and makes clear many differences.”

Book Alpha — The Metaphysics by Aristotle (C.D.C. Reeve translation)

It seems unexpected — even a bizarre connection to make — between Aristotle’s profundity and a model railroad chugging through a make-believe town. The image almost ended its life in a digital trash bin. It survived I think because it contains an obscurity, which quietly and persistently demanded clarification.

The subject here consists not in an amusing attraction at a touristy stop along a scenic road — that would be the travelog interpretation. Centrally, it portrays six persons confronting an imaginary world. Each inhabitant of our photo intensely uses their perceptual capacities, and if our philosopher is right, they are exercising their desire to know, which is basic, which all humans experience; and not by chance do we feel this, but according to our Nature.

One interpreter of ancient Greek philosophers (Jonathan Lear) makes a statement touching our inquiry: “Leisure was of the utmost importance to Aristotle.”  This speaks to our photograph. Our group-subject consists of human travelers at their leisure, sightseeing, employing our species-preferred mode of being, that is: combining vision and discernment (perception) with inquisitiveness to make clear many differences in the world.