There are many different ways to consider the difference between environment and surrounding. Dick emphasizing this in his lectures, especially when discussing the third mode of design (person-environment).
He tells a story of when he was young. How he had this telescope and would look at the stars at night. He was fascinated by the constellations. In the morning, he would tell his mom about it and she couldn’t care about Orion or the Big Dipper. For Dick, the stars were part of his environment. For his mother, they were part of her surrounding.
This is the way I like to think of it:
Surrounding
- one does not have to be affected by one’s surrounding
- one should probably at least be aware of it
- ex: many people are aware that there is a war going on in Iraq, but in many ways, it doesn’t feel like we’re directly affected by it
Environment
- very similar to what architects refer to as milieu
- ex: when Ariel from the Little Mermaid sings, “Part of Your World,” she is talking about wanting to be part of Prince Eric’s environment not surrounding
On a more serious note, another example of environment is John Donne’s Meditation XVII. He writes,
All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated…As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness….No man is an island, entire of itself…any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Through an awareness of the “other,” we can choose to bring something that is in the realm of surrounding to environment. Can this be freedom, the constant expansion of our own environment? This topic must be saved for another entry.
Edit on 7/28/08.
Thanks, Imran, for finding this excerpt from Dewey’s Democracy and Education. This is Dewey’s definition of environment:
In brief, the environment consists of those conditions that promote or hinder, stimulate or inhibit, the characteristic activities of a living thing. Water is the environment of a fish because it is necessary to the fish’s activities – to its life. The north pole is a significant element in the environment of an arctic explorer, whether he succeeds in reaching it or not, because it defines his activities, makes them what they distinctively are. Just because life signifies not bare passive existence (suppose there is such a thing), but a way of acting, environment or medium signifies what enters into his activity as a sustaining or frustrating condition.