In the past couple of days, I ran into several instances of the verb “peer” (meaning to look closely, intently, or with care).
Can’t we also hear this older verb alongside the now more common noun? (i.e., a peer is an equal) To peer, then, becomes an act of looking that brings something (or someone) into sharper peer-relationship with us. Either we encounter what we are looking at as equals, or we become aware that we have always already been equals.
(I shared this thought on Discord, and one friend cautioned against assuming a common root for the two terms. Whereas the noun “peer” has a Latin origin [pār], the verb is believed to have entered English rather late, in the late 16th century, and is possibly linked to the word appear.)
Here’s a scene from “The Imp in the Basket,” a short story in Natalie Babbitt’s The Devil’s Storybook. Here, a clergyman finds a baby demon outside his church and hesitates over whether to take him in:
“…the imp peered up at him so sweetly, smiling and smiling, that the clergyman was at a loss to know what to do.” (p. 38, emphasis added)
The moment is a turning point because of a look. The imp’s look is direct and disarming, so much so that it shakes the clergyman’s certainty. The act of peering becomes a claim. It persuades despite its gentleness (or perhaps because of it), and without words.
Here is a passage from Jack Martin (2021):
“The best humanities scholarship probes carefully and peers deeply into human lives in ways that captures their uniqueness, and yet communicates something beyond singularity.” (p. 113, emphasis added)
Martin’s sentence captures what I find significant about the verb’s meaning. Here, peering is not cold, detached scrutiny. It’s a disciplined kind of attention that honours the particular while reaching for what’s communicable.
This train of thought also brought to my mind John Berger’s meditations in About Looking (so beautiful, so enlightening, and so enlivening) on what it means to look, and what different ways of looking can achieve.
References:
Babbitt, N. (1974). The devil’s storybook. Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
Berger, J. (1980). About looking. Pantheon Books.
Martin, J. (2021). Psychology’s struggle with understanding persons. In K. L. Slaney & J. T. Lamiell (Eds.), Problematic research practices and inertia in scientific psychology (pp. 102–115). Routledge.