Why is touch the most fundamental sense and yet the least understood? Haptics researcher Vincent Hayward argues that the field lacks the theoretical foundations that vision achieved decades ago , and that the key to unlocking touch lies in recognizing that mechanical sensing is inherently non-local, dynamic, and distributed far beyond the skin. Subscribe for more from the Convergent Science Network podcast series. Vincent Hayward joins Paul Verschure and Tony Prescott for a provocative assessment of the state of haptic science. Starting from the observation that touch may be the evolutionarily oldest modality , present in paramecia and arguably implicit in molecular shape interactions , Hayward explains why the principles governing touch cannot simply be borrowed from vision. The mechanical reality of being a viscoelastic solid means that any con ...