Spatiality (and its thinking)

As a mechanical engineer, I have often felt spatial thinking as second nature – so intuitive that I rarely acknowledged it. It functioned as a form of tacit knowing: an intuitive ability to recognise, visualise and mentally manipulate spatial objects and movements with ease (Maresch & Sorby, 2022). Take computer-aided design (CAD) as an example, where this cognitive skill operates almost unconsciously for me. From a mental blueprint of the final object or system, I instinctively apply 3D modelling functions, such as extruding or dimensioning, to construct each singular body part. Mating, in the assembly stage, then brings all the individual components together by aligning surfaces and defining motion limits, transforming the mental blueprint into a cohesive digital 3D model. Figure 1 showcases an end product of this process – a priming station I constructed during an internship.

Although I know of spatial thinking as a technical skill, exploring it through a humanities perspective helped me become more sensitised to its role in conceptual understanding even within mechanical engineering, where I had taken it for granted. It also reframed spatial thinking as a broader cognitive tool, refining how I visualise and process spatial relationships more consciously and meaningfully.

Spatial thinking was revealed to me in UHB2207 Language, Cognition, and Culture as something we use in even more instinctive ways than I initially thought – in our everyday language. In this course, I was introduced to the significance of spatial metaphors in language and their impact on cognitive habits. For example, time, an abstract concept which is not perceivable by our senses, is specified in language through spatial terms (Boroditsky, 2001). The universally understood concept of time as a one-dimensional, directional entity is reflected in the use of spatial terms like ahead/behind or up/down across languages, rather than multidimensional or symmetric terms like narrow/wide or left/right (Traugott, 1978). Even in non-observable aspects of time, such as its directional movement, spatial metaphors continue to shape how we talk about time, such as falling behind schedule or moving meetings forward. Figure 2 demonstrates how, across three studies, Boroditsky (2001) shows that talking about time in spatial terms shapes us to think about time in that particular spatial framework (eg. vertical versus horizontal), making certain spatial representations of abstract concepts more natural for speakers of a given language (eg. English vs Mandarin). This was so deeply ingrained that speakers tended to think in their native spatial schema, even when processing temporal information in another language, revealing how subtly yet powerfully spatial structures in language can shape our cognitive habits.

Temporality has been shown to incorporate properties of space, or spatiality, for language and thought to function. In other words, spatiality serves as a structured framework that enables us to navigate and construct time, an otherwise abstract concept. By engaging with the ideas and linguistic examples of spatiality in different languages, I came to see how we implicitly rely on spatial structures to interpret abstract concepts like time, often without consciously acknowledging it. This recognition made me more aware of how deeply ingrained spatiality and spatial thinking are in our cognitive habits, shaping not only how we talk about time but also how we conceptualize and process complex ideas. UHB2207 made me more attuned to the ways we unconsciously rely on spatial scaffolds and primed me to recognise their presence beyond language – including in how I approach abstract engineering problems such as the moment of inertia.

I first encountered the moment of inertia equation in ME2115 Mechanics of Machines, however, I relied on a “matching” approach, where I would match the object’s orientation in the exam question to the example in the lecture slide (Figure 3), using it as a reference to determine how to apply the equation. My focus was not on “understand[ing] the physics”, as the professor notes in the slide, but on identifying familiar visual cues to apply the formula correctly. Just as mass resists linear motion, the moment of inertia quantifies a beam’s resistance to rotational motion, playing a crucial role in assessing the strength of a structure. The equation involves multiplying the breadth (b) of the cross-section by the cube of its height (h) (Figure 4a). However, depending on the direction of the applied force, the same beam’s cross-section would have a different “breadth” and “height” (Figure 4a and 4b) – a distinction I never quite grasped intuitively.

My “aha” moment came in ME3281 Microsystems Design and Applications when Prof Zhou explained that to identify the "height" of the cross-section, one simply needs to find the edge parallel to the force direction (blue annotation in Figure 3a). This explanation changed my perspective – where I had previously relied on matching visual references, I could now mentally orient the force-beam interactions to apply the equation. Conceptually, I also gained a deeper understanding of its implications, visualising how different force directions affect the beam’s resistance to rotational motion.

As I reflected on why this spatial approach clicked so naturally and why I could finally internalise it, I realised that UHB2207 had subtly reshaped the way I appreciated abstract concepts. The course had made me more attuned to how deeply embedded spatial frameworks are in my thinking – not just in how I speak about time, but in how I navigate unfamiliar problems. While UHB2207 did not directly “solve” my struggle with the moment of inertia, it equipped me with a new sensitivity: that abstract reasoning can be scaffolded by spatial structures. When Prof Zhou later offered a more spatially-framed explanation, I was mentally primed to receive it differently. This was an exemplification of tacit knowing – an embodied familiarity with a way of thinking that I previously took for granted in my problem-solving toolkit.

The experience prompted me to draw parallels between how spatial thinking operates across different disciplines. UHB2207 demonstrated how spatiotemporal metaphors shape our understanding of time, mapping abstract temporal concepts onto spatial dimensions to make them more comprehensible. Similarly, approaching the moment of inertia equation spatially transformed what might have seemed like an abstract mathematical equation into a more tangible and intuitive mechanical concept for me. Recognising how spatial frameworks shape both mechanical design and linguistic structure has led me to see their influence not as discipline-specific, but as indicative of a more foundational mode of thinking – one that shapes how we approach and solve problems. By offering a structured framework for navigating, organising and interpreting complexity in both practical and abstract realms, spatial thinking influences our cognitive habits and allows us to frame complex problems in more accessible terms. Becoming more conscious of this mode of thinking has helped me identify relationships and interactions in both mechanical engineering and linguistics: the way time is constructed through space, or the way a beam’s orientation relates to force. These connections suggest that spatial thinking, at its core, revolves around recognising and synthesising relationships. Though often unconscious, spatiality quietly shapes our cognitive habits – and in becoming more aware of its role, I have developed a deeper appreciation of it as a powerful cognitive tool that enables insight across disciplines.

Boroditsky, L. (2001). Does language shape thought? Mandarin and English speakers’ conceptions of time. Cognitive Psychology, 43(1), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1006/cogp.2001.0748

Maresch, G., & Sorby, S. (2022). Perspectives on Spatial Thinking. Journal for Geometry and Graphics, 2021(2), 271–293.

Traugott, E. (1978). On the expression of spatiotemporal relations in language. Universals of Human Language: Word Structure, 3. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/243784051_On_the_expression_of_spatiotemporal_relations_in_language