Science and love, music, art, etc. (The limitations of science)

by dhw, Friday, February 20, 2009, 08:22 (5754 days ago) @ George Jelliss

George has been following up my references to Gestalten. - The excellent webspace article tells you all you need to know, but I think you've slightly misunderstood the implications. "Gestalt" = shape, form, structure,pattern, but in the context of perception the emphasis is on the active role of the perceiver. If you look at the illustrations in the webspace article, you will see how we supply what is missing. As the author says, "a set of dots outlining a star is likely to be perceived as a star, not as a set of dots." But it is a set of dots. Rubin's famous figure-ground vase is particularly interesting for us, since it presents two entirely different images (like theism and atheism). Rather than "pattern recognition", in a wider context it's more like pattern imposition. We create a unified whole out of segments for which we (the subjectivity is all-important) provide the links. In terms of figure and ground, we are the ones who promote x (figure) and relegate y (ground). That is why no two people will give you an identical interpretation of scenes, events, literary texts ... because we all bring our own personal linking mechanisms into the way we join up the segments. - You've illustrated the point very neatly with the following statement: "The examples DHW gives of people who believe in the genesis stories or in the paranormal it seems to me are of people who have preconceived ideas and accordingly try to deny any evidence to the contrary." You have foregrounded some of my examples in accordance with your own pattern, and have backgrounded others (i.e. people who believe that everything can be explained in material terms and accordingly try to deny any evidence to the contrary). It's a natural process which we're not normally aware of in ourselves but are quick to recognize in others who disagree with us. You're right that patterns should be based on the evidence, and "forcing the evidence into that mould" is contrary to the scientific method. But the concept demonstrates what happens, not what ought to happen, and even the scientific mind frequently conforms to it, because that too is full of what you call "preconceived ideas". There are theist scientists and atheist scientists, all studying the same realities and forming their different Gestalten by supplying their different links. - How all the ideas and patterns emerge from what Susan Greenfield calls "the bump and grind of the neurons" remains, of course, a mystery for those of us who do not have preconceived ideas about how ideas and patterns emerge.