Perceiving



= CHAPTER 2 • PERCEIVING = The cognitive tool of perception is critical to both the arts and the sciences. We envisage it as a two-layered process, requiring both observing and imaging. Observing is the first step to understanding anything and is a finely tuned skill based on intent focus on, attention to, and curiosity about information gathered through the five senses. For example, bacteriologists use their sense of smell to observe bacteria, or an ornithologist might identify bird species by sound. Inventors and mechanics cultivate hands-on experience with tools and machines - relying on a sense of “feel” to know how tightly a knob or mechanical part is screwed on. A higher level of observation calls for imaging, or the ability to evoke or bring to mind the impressions/sensations we observe, without the presence of external stimuli. Artists, scientists, mathematicians and engineers all have well-developed imaging skills and find them essential for the work they do.

= **TABLE OF CONTENTS** = Observing • Imaging Observing Experts • Imaging Experts Observing Skills • Imaging Skills Conclusion

= OBSERVING = Observing is making sense of sensation, involving examination and visualization in order to decribe something.

All knowledge begins in observation. We must be able to perceive our world accurately to be able to discern patterns of action, abstract their principles, make analogies between properties of things, create models of behaviors, and innovate fruitfully.



**EXAMINATION **
Simply looking, even patiently, is not sufficient. Part of seeing … is knowing what to look at or for.



VISUALIZATION
Discovering the sublimity of the mundane is not limited to scientific observers. Much of modern art has focused on rethinking the value of everyday phenomena. “The true creator,” Stravinsky wrote, “may be recognized by his [sic] ability always to find about him, in the commonest and humblest thing, items worthy of note.”



Tea Bag by @Claes Oldenburg, 1996. "I often drop the bags I use when drinking tea, and the effect is that of a 'print'.... I always try to establish a corresponding effect outside of art for what I do in art."

**DESCRIPTION **
I mages may be perceived and communicated not just as pictures, but in many other, nonvisual ways. We not only see with the mind’s eye, we hear with the mind’s ear, imagine smells and tastes and body feelings—and any or all of these sensation pictures may be involved in the imagination and communication of images. To put it another way, if we observe with our eyes, we form a visual image. If we observe with our hands, we form a tactile as well as a hand-position, hand-movement image. If we observe with our nose, we form a smell image that may play a major role in scientific or artistic invention. What we can observe, we can imagine; what we imagine, we image.



There is, however, one downside to becoming a dexterous imager: the better one’s skill, the more frustrated one may become in trying to present images directly to people. The need to translate through another medium can be painful… We remain in that “primitive” state in which all mental images must still be translated through other mediums, be they words, music, movements, models, paintings, diagrams, films, sculptures, or mathematical treatises. Julian Beever is an [|English] [|chalk] [|artist][|[1]] who has been creating [|trompe-l'œil] chalk drawings on [|pavement] surfaces since the mid-1990s. He uses a projection technique called [|anamorphosis] to create the illusion of three dimensions when viewed from the correct angle.

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 = IMAGING =

Imaging draws on expereince and is largely a private and personal shorthand of sights, sounds, and other sensations, ranging from realistic representations of phenomena to idiosyncratic abstractions and sensory associations.

Everyone benefits from the development of imaging technique that comes with hands-on experience in arts and crafts, or with simple mental practice. Point to remember: the visual image is only a sign, not nature itself.





Imagery plays a central role in invention in general…Indeed, imaging benefits people in all professions.

**VISUAL THINKING**
Art does not render the visible, it makes visible.



**IMAGINATION**
The mind must be trained to observe just as much as we train the eyes, the ears, the nose, or the hands.



**POLYSENSUAL**
Most imaging is actually polysensual.



The keenest observers make use of every kind of sensory information. In fact, the greatest insights often come to individuals who are able to appreciate the “sublimity of the mundane,” the deeply surprising and meaningful beauty in everyday things.

Being deprived of one sense can indeed sharpen our reliance on others, though not on their actual acuity. We learn to use sensory stimuli that we usually ignore, and sometimes such heightened attention results in original insights.



Individual imaging preferences have important implications for the way we teach mathematics and other scientific subjects. For example, teaching children music patterns and memory with hand bells.... media type="youtube" key="qXOCg_sgT7c?fs=1" height="385" width="480" align="center"

 = OPTIMUS PRIME: OBSERVING AND IMAGINING EXPERTS =

This section may be most useful for teachers within particular disciplines (or perhaps across disciplines) as you can find information about the observers and imagers discussed by Robert and Michèle Root-Bernstein in Chapters 3 & 4 of Sparks of Genius. In most cases, clicking on a person's name or accompanying image will take you to information about them on Wikipedia. Beneath the accompanying images, links can be found to some of their works and other resouces through which deeper discoveries can be made.  = OBSERVING EXPERTS =
 * == **SCIENCE & MATHEMATICS﻿ ** == ||
 * = [|Archimedes]

||= Henry Bates ||= [|John Cairns] ||= [|Santiago Ramón y Cajal] ||= [|Charles Darwin] || ||= [|Thomas Eisner] ||= [|Karl von Frisch] ||= [|Primo Levi] ||=  || [|The Dance Language and Orientation of Bees] || Dialogo ||   || ||= [|Fritz Muller] ||= [|Pythagoras] ||= [|Edward Rickets] ||= [|Nathaniel Shaler] || ||= **[|Albert Szent-Györgyi]** ||= **[|Gerald Thayer]**
 * = //[|The Works of Archimedes]// || [|Contributions to an insect fauna of the Amazon Valley : Lepidoptera : Heliconidae (1861)] || See [|Passionate Minds: The Inner World of Scientists by Alison Richards, Lewis Wolpert] || Comparative study of the sensory areas of the human cortex ||  ||
 * = [|Jared Diamond]
 * See [|Passionate Minds: The Inner World of Scientists by Alison Richards, Lewis Wolpert] || [|Bibliography of Eisner's Work] || [|Decoding the Language of the Bee]
 * = [|Konrad Lorenz]
 * [|King Solomon's Ring] || [|Butterfly Hunting in Many Lands] || Works are not known to have survived || [|The Log from the Sea of Cortez] || [|The Autobiography of Nathaniel Southgate Shaler] ||
 * = **[|Elwyn Simons]**

||= **[|John Tyndall]** ||= **[|Geerat Vermeij]** || ||=  ||= [|**Sir Francis Seymour Haden**]
 * = [|Elwyn Simons: A Search for Origins] See Passionate Minds: The Inner World of Scientists by Alison Richards, Lewis Wolpert || [|Bioenergetics] || [|Concealing-coloration in the animal kingdom: an exposition of the laws of disguise through color and pattern: being a summary of Abbott H. Thayer's discoveries] || [|Links to Works by Tyndall] || [|Touching Evolution: A History of Shells] ||
 * =  ||= **[|Alfred Russel Walace]**

||=  ||
 * =  ||= //Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection// //Darwinism// ||=   ||= The relative claims of etching and engraving to rank as fine arts, and to be represented as such in the Royal Academy of Arts ||=   ||

|| [|Daphne Du Maurier] ||= [|Dr. Joseph Bell] ||= [|W. Somerset Maugham] ||= [|Marianne Moore] || [|e. e. cummings poems] ||< [|Myself When Young: The shaping of a writer] ||< A Manual of the Operations of Surgery [|The Joseph Bell Centre for Forensic Statistics & Legal Reasoning] ||< See [|Writer to Writer: Readings on the Craft of Writing] ||< [|Interview with Donald Hall] || ||= [|Herbert Read] ||=  ||= [|John Steinbeck] ||= [|Wyndham Lewis] ||
 * == **HUMANITIES ** == ||
 * = [|e. e. cummings]
 * < [|The Paintings of e. e. cummings]
 * = [|Vladimir Nabokov]
 * < [|Speak, Memory] ||< [|Education Through Art] ||<  ||< [|The Log from the Sea of Cortez] ||< The Wyndham Lewis Collection ||

||= [|Marcel Duchamp] ||= [|Jasper Johns] ||= [|Paul Klee] ||= [|René Magritte] || ||= [|Georgia O’Keeffe] ||= [|Claes Oldenburg] ||= [|Beverly Pepper] ||= [|Pablo Picasso] || ||= [|Julian Beever]
 * == **VISUAL ARTS ** == ||
 * = [|Eugène Delacroix]
 * = [|Henri Matisse]
 * = [|Henri Matisse]
 * =  ||= [|Vincent Van Gogh]
 * =  ||= [|Vincent Van Gogh]

||= [|Oskar Schlemmer] ||=  ||

||= [|Merce Cunningham] ||= [|Anna Halprin] ||= [|Georg Philipp Telemann] ||= [|Olivier Messiaen] || [|Changes: Notes on Choreography] ||< [|Anna Halprin's Website] ||< See [|Composers on music: an anthology of composers' writings from Palestrina to Copland] ||< [|Musique et Couleur] [|Birdsong in Messiaen] || ||= [|Alwin Nikolais] ||= [|Robert Schumann] ||= [|Konstantin Stanislavsky] ||= [|Igor Stravinsky] || [|Tensile Involvement] || [|Rules and Maxims for Young Musicians] [|Composers on Music: an anthology of composers' writings from Palestrina to Copland] || [|An Actor Prepares] || [|Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons] ||
 * == **PERFORMING ARTS ** == ||
 * = [|Richard Boleslavsky]
 * < Acting: The First Six Lessons ||< [|Mondays With Merce]
 * = [|Mark Morris]
 * [|The Mark Morris Dance Group Website] || See [|The Vision of Modern Dance: In the words of its creators]

 = <span style="color: #008000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">IMAGING EXPERTS =

||= [|Peter Carruthers] ||= [|Peter Debye] ||= [|Richard Feynman] ||= [|Robert Fulton] || ||= [|Sofya Kovalevskaya] ||= [|Sophus Lie] ||= [|James Lovelock] || ||= [|Samuel Morse] ||= [|Henri Poincaré] ||= [|Georg Riemann] ||= [|Ann Roe] || ||= [|George Gaylord Simpson] ||= [|Charles Steinmetz] ||= [|Nikola Tesla] ||= [|Karl Weierstrass] || ||=  ||=   ||
 * = <span style="color: #008000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">SCIENCE & MATHEM<span style="color: #008000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">﻿ ATICS = ||
 * = [|Sir James Black]
 * = [|Margaret Geller] [[image:https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/%7Emjg/IMG_8208.gif width="143" height="156" align="center"]] ||= [|François Jacob]
 * = [|Margaret Geller] [[image:https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/%7Emjg/IMG_8208.gif width="143" height="156" align="center"]] ||= [|François Jacob]
 * = [|Peter Mitchell]
 * = [|Peter Mitchell]
 * = [|Elmer Sperry]
 * = [|Elmer Sperry]
 * =  ||=   ||= [|Norbert Wiener]
 * =  ||=   ||= [|Norbert Wiener]

|| ||= [|Henry Miller] ||= [|Donald Murray] ||= [|Johann Pestalozzi] ||= [|Siegfried Sassoon] || ||= [|William Thackeray] ||= [|Charlie Trotter] ||= [|Tennessee Williams] ||=  ||
 * = = **<span style="color: #008000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">HUMANITIES ** = ||
 * [|G.K.Chesterton] [[image:http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/Gilbert_Keith_Chesterton2.jpg width="135" height="148" align="center"]] || [|Samuel Coleridge] [[image:http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/91/SamuelTaylorColeridge.jpg width="126" height="168" align="center"]] || [|Charles Dickens] [[image:http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/Dickens_Gurney_head.jpg width="145" height="186" align="center"]] || [|Margaret Drabble] [[image:http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01005/Margaret-Drabble_1005037c.jpg width="181" height="139"]] || [|Pierre Hermé]
 * ||  ||   ||   || [|Pierre Herme Official Website] ||
 * = [|Amy Lowell]
 * = [|Stephen Spender]
 * = [|Stephen Spender]

||= [|Max Bill] ||= [|Edvard Munch] ||= [|Paul Strand] ||=  ||
 * = = <span style="color: #008000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">VISUAL ARTS = ||
 * = [|Ansel Adams]

||= [|David Bar-Illan] ||= [|Ludwig van Beethoven] ||= [|Henry Cowell] ||= [|Martha Graham] || ||= [|Charles Ives] ||= [|Alicia de Larrocha] ||= [|Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart] ||= [|Luciano Pavoratti] || ||=  ||=   ||
 * =<span style="color: #008000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; text-align: center;">PERFORMING ARTS = ||
 * = [|George Antheil]
 * = [|Arthur Honegger]
 * = [|Arthur Honegger]
 * =  ||=   ||= [|Anna Sokolow]
 * =  ||=   ||= [|Anna Sokolow]

 = <span style="color: #008000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">OBSERVING AND IMAGING SKILLS = This section is devoted to building your perception skills.  = <span style="color: #008000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">OBSERVING SKILLS =


 * Practice observing by being blindfolded. What do you feel? Smell?
 * Close your eyes and attempt to construct what is going on nearby through sound.
 * Select an object, notice its form, it's lines, its colors, its sounds, its tactile characteristics, its smell, perhaps even its taste. Then remove the object and recall one by one as many details as possible. Write about what you perceived or draw it. Go back and observe it again.

<span style="color: #008000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">ACTIVITY 1:


Activity: Step 1-- Look at the image above close up. Who do you see? (Albert Einsten)

Step 2--Now take a few steps back and look at it again, do you see someone else? (Marilyn Monroe!)

<span style="color: #008000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">ACTIVITY 2:
For all these reasons we advocate explicit observational exercises in classes in every subject. All students need to develop sensory acuity.



 = <span style="color: #008000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">IMAGING SKILLS =


 * What do you image while listening to [|Mozart] ? Could you explain what you heard in words, draw a visual representation, or nonverbally communicate the rhythm, meaning, and intent of the piece? What emotions does the piece invoke?
 * Make up excuses to use your inner eye, your inner ear, your inner nose, your inner sense of touch and of body.
 * Think concretely about abstract concepts.
 * Pay attention to visual, aural, proprioceptive, and other sensations daily.
 * Don't just learn, do!

You can try more complicated imaging problems, such as those proposed by Max Wertheimer in his 1959 book Productive Thinking.



<span style="color: #008000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">ACTIVITY 1:
Observe an ordinary item and try to reimage it into another form.



What does the color show you? Could you perceive the season because of the color? Did color arouse other senses? Does the distortion or lack of color add anything to the picture?




=<span style="color: #008000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;"> PERCEIVING CONCLUSION = Drawing conclusions -- from both sides of the brain, a summary of sorts.

= <span style="color: #008000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">OBSERVING & IMAGING =


 * Szent-Gyorgyi argued, “Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.”
 * Because the “mind’s sense” that control the “senses of the body” skew and filter what we experience, objective observation is not possible.
 * Observing is a form of thinking, and thinking is a form of observing. In consequence, the purpose in practicing observation is to link sensory experience and mental awareness as closely as possible.
 * Although some people have a greater proclivity for visual imaging than others, everyone benefits from practice. So even if you need to draw images or model them at first, working with these problems will train your visualizing ability. The more your practice, the more you will be able to partake of and understand the visual thinking process of countless inventors, mathematicians, physicists, artists, writers, and dancers.
 * If one of the objects of education is to produce lifelong learners, what better recommendation for practicing the skill of observation and imaging could one want?



= <span style="color: #008000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">MIND'S EYE = Additional resources to assist you in extending your perception journey.

<span style="color: #008000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">VISUAL & AUDIO
Helen Keller in Her Story//. American Foundation for the Blind, 11 Penn Plaza, Suite 300, New York, NY 10001. Original Film interviews with Keller, revealing her incredible intelligence.//

<span style="color: #008000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">INTERNET
The Exploratorium in San Francisco is one of the world's best hands-on museums specializing in science but exploring the arts as well. See their exhibits and other educational materials at []

**<span style="color: #008000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">MISCELLANEOUS **
// Bang, Molly. 1991. //Picture This//. Boston: Bullfinch Press. An introduction to principles of visual design and visual thinking.