Wednesday, July 27, 2005
Monday, July 25, 2005
Perception
Since the most ancient days mankind has been intrigued by the way human beings perceive the world surrounding them. That's through our sensitive mechanisms that we feel the world and makes us aware of our own existence. Aristotle made an attempt to explain all the perceptions mechanisms (seeing, hearing, touching, smelling and tasting) in his work "De Anima". He explained all those senses rather in purely physiological terms.
According to Aristotle the objects of senses might be divided into the following groups: the special (such as color which is the special object of sight, and sound of hearing), the common, or apprehended by several senses in combination (such as motion or figure), or the incidental or inferential (from immediate sensation of white we know the object we see is white). Among the five special senses, touch is the must rudimentary, hearing the most instructive, and sight the most ennobling. The organs of those senses never act directly, but rather through some sort of medium such as air. Even touch, which seems to act by direct contact, probably involves some vehicle of communication.
Aristotle believed the head to be the central organ of all senses. It recognizes the common qualities which are involved in all particular objects of sensation. At first there is a sense which brings us a consciousness of sensation, and then, in an act before the mind, it holds up the objects of our knowledge and enables us to distinguish and gather the different information reported by different senses.
The word Perception has its origin in the Latin language, it comes from the addition of the prefix 'per' to 'conceptum'. 'Conceptum' is the Latin word for concept, what is something conceived in mind, a mental image. The addiction of the prefix 'per' brings the meaning of through or complete. That's makes perception, a complete mental image, something conceived in our mind through our sensitive organs. From this statement we may infer that only animals provided with sensitive organs or human beings are able of something like perception.
According to Aristotle the objects of senses might be divided into the following groups: the special (such as color which is the special object of sight, and sound of hearing), the common, or apprehended by several senses in combination (such as motion or figure), or the incidental or inferential (from immediate sensation of white we know the object we see is white). Among the five special senses, touch is the must rudimentary, hearing the most instructive, and sight the most ennobling. The organs of those senses never act directly, but rather through some sort of medium such as air. Even touch, which seems to act by direct contact, probably involves some vehicle of communication.
Aristotle believed the head to be the central organ of all senses. It recognizes the common qualities which are involved in all particular objects of sensation. At first there is a sense which brings us a consciousness of sensation, and then, in an act before the mind, it holds up the objects of our knowledge and enables us to distinguish and gather the different information reported by different senses.
The word Perception has its origin in the Latin language, it comes from the addition of the prefix 'per' to 'conceptum'. 'Conceptum' is the Latin word for concept, what is something conceived in mind, a mental image. The addiction of the prefix 'per' brings the meaning of through or complete. That's makes perception, a complete mental image, something conceived in our mind through our sensitive organs. From this statement we may infer that only animals provided with sensitive organs or human beings are able of something like perception.
Sunday, June 19, 2005
a little about Hans Christian Andersen
Hans Christian Andersen was born in Odense, Denmark, on April 2, 1805, so that's makes 2005 it's 200th birthday anniversary.
Still as a child Andersen showed great imagination, he built himself a little toy-theatre and sat at home making clothes for his puppets, and reading all the plays that he could borrow; among them were those of Ludvig Holberg and William Shakespeare. Andersen, throughout his childhood, had a passionate love for literature. He was known to memorize entire Shakespeare plays and recite them using his wooden dolls as the characters.
At age 14, Andersen moved to Copenhagen to look for work in show business. He had a pleasant soprano voice and succeeded in getting into the Royal Danish Theatre but had to leave when his voice changed.
King Frederick VI became interested in the strange boy after a chance meeting and sent him for some years, free of charge, to the grammar-school at Slagelse. Before he started for school, Andersen published his first volume, The Ghost at Palnatoke's Grave (1822).
Some hold that his works express the sorrow of being different. One of the most telling stories in that respect is the tale of the Little Mermaid, who takes her own life since she cannot be loved by her beautiful prince. It is thought to exemplify his love for the young Edward Collin, to whom he wrote: "I languish for you as for a pretty Calabrian wench . . . my sentiments for you are those of a woman. The femininity of my nature and our friendship must remain a mystery." Collin, who was not erotically attracted to men, wrote in his own Memoirs: "I found myself unable to respond to this love", and this caused the author much suffering. Likewise, the infatuations of the author for the Danish dancer Harlod Scharf and the young duke of Weimar probably remained on a Platonic level. Andersen's private journal records his refusal to have sexual relations with either men or women and his release through masturbation. Today he would have been considered asexual.
In the spring of 1872, Andersen fell out of bed and severely hurt himself. He was never again quite well, but he lived until the August 4, 1875, when he died very peacefully in the house called Rolighed, near Copenhagen. He is buried in the Assistens Cemetery, in Copenhagen, Denmark.
His best-known fairy tales include:
* The Angel
* The Bell
* The Emperor's New Clothes
* The Emperor's Nightingale
* The Fir Tree
* The Little Match Girl
* The Little Mermaid
* The Real Princess
* Red Shoes
* The Snow Queen
* The Steadfast Tin Soldier
* The Swineherd
* Thumbelina
* The Ugly Duckling
* The Old House
* The Happy Family
* The Story of a Mother
* The Shadow
* The Dream of Little Tuk
* Wild Swans
The Steadfast Tin Soldier
"I cannot bear it!" said the pewter soldier. "I have shed pewter tears! It is too melancholy! Rather let me go to the wars and lose arms and legs! It would at least be a change. I cannot bear it longer! Now, I know what it is to have a visit from one's old thoughts, with what they may bring with them! I have had a visit from mine, and you may be sure it is no pleasant thing in the end; I was at last about to jump down from the drawers."
--Hans Christian Andersen--
Life's Melody
Life is like a beautiful melody, only the lyrics are messed up.
--Hans Christian Andersen--
--Hans Christian Andersen--
Thursday, June 16, 2005
Wednesday, June 01, 2005
madness
I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies but not the madness of people.
-- Isaac Newton --
-- Isaac Newton --
Saturday, May 21, 2005
multitudes
Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.
-- Walt Whitman --
-- Walt Whitman --
Friday, April 29, 2005
Being With You (In Paris)
In the music Being With You (In Paris) from Steve Vai there's a poem he declaims during the show. It was in French and it was translated by a fan called John Pusztai. I could not find the poem in the internet... so I asked a friend of mine to transcribe it... and the another to translate into portuguese... and finally I did translate it into english! Bellow follow the result.
"Je n'oublierai jamais ces jours merveilleux qui sont si clairs dans mon coeur et ma mémoire. Les choses simples semblent si profondes. Puis il y a cette photo, le soleil brille au dessus de la Seine, et le ciel rempli de couleurs que des artistes ont tenté de capturer pendant des siècles. Tu es debout sur le pont, la tour Eiffel à ta gauche faisait figure d'un vieille ami parlant des amoureux avec lesquels elle a posé dans le passe. Cette ville appelle le respect. Elle a pris au fil du temps avec ses victoires. La richesse de son art et de sa culture sentit dans les huiles heureuses... Pendant que nous mémorisons les bruits et les saveurs des rues piétonnes. Et si nous ne pouvons plus nous voir et nous embrasser dans la magie de cette ville, la mélodie ne changera jamais et me rappellera toujours pareil avec toi."
"I will never forget those wonderful days which are still so bright in my heart and memory. The simplest things seems so deep... and then there is this photo. The Sun shines over the Sena and the sky, full of colors, which the artists try go catch over the centuries. You're standing on the bridge, the Eiffel tower is on your left playing an old friend character, talking about loves gone on steps. This city claims for respect. It claims time line with its victories. Its fortune held in its arts and culture laid on those happy oils... While we memorize the noise and flavor of the picturesque streets. And I can not see ourselves and embrace ourselves under the magic of this city. The melody will always sound the same, and it will always make me remember you."
"Je n'oublierai jamais ces jours merveilleux qui sont si clairs dans mon coeur et ma mémoire. Les choses simples semblent si profondes. Puis il y a cette photo, le soleil brille au dessus de la Seine, et le ciel rempli de couleurs que des artistes ont tenté de capturer pendant des siècles. Tu es debout sur le pont, la tour Eiffel à ta gauche faisait figure d'un vieille ami parlant des amoureux avec lesquels elle a posé dans le passe. Cette ville appelle le respect. Elle a pris au fil du temps avec ses victoires. La richesse de son art et de sa culture sentit dans les huiles heureuses... Pendant que nous mémorisons les bruits et les saveurs des rues piétonnes. Et si nous ne pouvons plus nous voir et nous embrasser dans la magie de cette ville, la mélodie ne changera jamais et me rappellera toujours pareil avec toi."
"I will never forget those wonderful days which are still so bright in my heart and memory. The simplest things seems so deep... and then there is this photo. The Sun shines over the Sena and the sky, full of colors, which the artists try go catch over the centuries. You're standing on the bridge, the Eiffel tower is on your left playing an old friend character, talking about loves gone on steps. This city claims for respect. It claims time line with its victories. Its fortune held in its arts and culture laid on those happy oils... While we memorize the noise and flavor of the picturesque streets. And I can not see ourselves and embrace ourselves under the magic of this city. The melody will always sound the same, and it will always make me remember you."
Sunday, April 17, 2005
Eternal Sunshine
[Mary reads to Dr. Mierzwiak out of "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations"; the lines are from Alexander Pope's poem "Eloisa to Abelard"]
Mary: How happy is the blameless Vestal's lot! / The world forgetting, by the world forgot / Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! / Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd.
Mary: How happy is the blameless Vestal's lot! / The world forgetting, by the world forgot / Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! / Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd.
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
metaphor
The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learned from others; and it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars.
-- Aristotle --
-- Aristotle --
Grouping by similarity
Grouping by similarity occurs in time as well as in space. Aristotle thought of similarity as one of the qualities creating mental associations, a condition of memory linking the past with the present.
-- Art and Visual Perception - Rudolf Arnheim --
-- Art and Visual Perception - Rudolf Arnheim --
Friday, March 04, 2005
ways of seeing
Ways of Seeing
(John Berger)
Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.
But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled. Each evening we see the sun set. We know that the earth is turning away from it. Yet the knowledge, the explanation, never quite fits the sight. The Surrealist painter Margritte commented on this always-present gap between words and seeing in a painting called The Key of Dreams.
The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe. In the Middle Ages when men believed in the physical existence of Hell the sight of fire must have meant something different from what it means today. Nevertheless their idea of Hell owed a lot to the sight of fire consuming and the ashes remaining - as well as to their experience of the pain of burns.
When in love, the sight of the beloved has a completeness which no words and no embrace can match : a completeness which only the act of making love can temporarily accommodate.
Yet this seeing which comes before words, and can never be quite covered by them, is not a question of mechanically reacting to stimuli. (It can only be thought of in this way if one isolates the small part of the process which concerns the eye's retina). We only see what we look at. To look is an act of choice. As a result of this act, what we see is brought within our reach - thought not necessarily within arm's reach. To touch something is to situate oneself in relation to it. (Close your eyes, move round the room and notice how the faculty of touch is like a static, limited form of sight.) We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves. Our vision is continually active, continually moving, continually holding things in a circle around itself, constituting what is
present to us as we are.
(John Berger)
Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.
But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled. Each evening we see the sun set. We know that the earth is turning away from it. Yet the knowledge, the explanation, never quite fits the sight. The Surrealist painter Margritte commented on this always-present gap between words and seeing in a painting called The Key of Dreams.
The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe. In the Middle Ages when men believed in the physical existence of Hell the sight of fire must have meant something different from what it means today. Nevertheless their idea of Hell owed a lot to the sight of fire consuming and the ashes remaining - as well as to their experience of the pain of burns.
When in love, the sight of the beloved has a completeness which no words and no embrace can match : a completeness which only the act of making love can temporarily accommodate.
Yet this seeing which comes before words, and can never be quite covered by them, is not a question of mechanically reacting to stimuli. (It can only be thought of in this way if one isolates the small part of the process which concerns the eye's retina). We only see what we look at. To look is an act of choice. As a result of this act, what we see is brought within our reach - thought not necessarily within arm's reach. To touch something is to situate oneself in relation to it. (Close your eyes, move round the room and notice how the faculty of touch is like a static, limited form of sight.) We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves. Our vision is continually active, continually moving, continually holding things in a circle around itself, constituting what is
present to us as we are.
Dois Animais Metafísicos
Dois Animais Metafísicos
(O Livro dos Seres Imaginários, Jorge Luis Borges)
O problema da origem das idéias acrescenta duas curiosas criaturas à zoologia fantástica. Uma foi imaginada em meados do século XVIII; a outra, um século depois.
A primeira é a "estátua sensível" de Condillac. Descartes professou a doutrina das idéias inatas; Etienne Bonmot de Condillac, para refutá-lo, imaginou uma estátua de mármore, organizada e proporcionada como o corpo de um homem e habitada por uma alma que nunca houvesse percebido ou pensado. Condillac começa por conferir um único sentido à estátua: o olfativo, talvez o menos complexo de todos. Um cheiro de jasmim é o princípio da biografia da estátua; por um instante não haverá senão esse
aroma no universo, que, um instante depois, será cheiro de rosa e, depois, de cravo. Se houver na consciência da estátua um único perfume, já teremos a atenção; se perdurar um perfume quando houver cessado o estímulo, teremos a memória; se uma impressão atual e uma do passado ocuparem a atenção da estátua, teremos a comparação; se a estátua perceber analogias e diferenças, teremos o juízo; se a comparação e o juízo voltarem a ocorrer, teremos a reflexão; se uma lembrança agradável for mais vívida que uma impressão desagradável, teremos a imaginação. Engendradas as faculdades do entendimento, as da vontade surgirão depois: amor e ódio (atração e aversão), esperança e medo. A consciência de ter atravessado muitos estados dará à estátua a noção abstrata de número; a de ser perfume de cravo e ter sido perfume de jasmim, a noção do eu.
O autor conferirá depois a seu homem hipotético a audição, a gustação, a visão e por fim o tato. Este último sentido lhe revelará que existe o espaço e que, no espaço, ele existe em um corpo; os sons, os cheiros e as cores tinham-lhe parecido, antes dessa etapa, simples variações ou modificações de sua consciência.
A alegoria que acabamos de relatar se intitula 'Traité des Sensations' e data de 1754; para esta notícia utilizamos o segundo volume de 'Histoire de la Philosophie', de Bréhier.
A outra criatura suscitada pelo problema do conhecimento é o "animal hipotético" de Lotze. Mais solitário que a estátua que cheira rosas e que, por fim, é um homem, esse animal não tem pele senão um ponto sensível e móvel, na extremidade de uma antena. Sua conformação lhe proíbe, como se vê, as percepções simultâneas. Lotze pensa que a capacidade de retrair ou projetar sua antena sensível bastará para que o quase incomunicável animal descubra o mundo exterior (sem o auxílio das categorias kantianas) e distinga um objeto estacionário de um objeto móvel. Esta ficção foi elogiada por Vaihinger; está registrada na obra 'Medizinische Psychologie', que é de 1852.
(O Livro dos Seres Imaginários, Jorge Luis Borges)
O problema da origem das idéias acrescenta duas curiosas criaturas à zoologia fantástica. Uma foi imaginada em meados do século XVIII; a outra, um século depois.
A primeira é a "estátua sensível" de Condillac. Descartes professou a doutrina das idéias inatas; Etienne Bonmot de Condillac, para refutá-lo, imaginou uma estátua de mármore, organizada e proporcionada como o corpo de um homem e habitada por uma alma que nunca houvesse percebido ou pensado. Condillac começa por conferir um único sentido à estátua: o olfativo, talvez o menos complexo de todos. Um cheiro de jasmim é o princípio da biografia da estátua; por um instante não haverá senão esse
aroma no universo, que, um instante depois, será cheiro de rosa e, depois, de cravo. Se houver na consciência da estátua um único perfume, já teremos a atenção; se perdurar um perfume quando houver cessado o estímulo, teremos a memória; se uma impressão atual e uma do passado ocuparem a atenção da estátua, teremos a comparação; se a estátua perceber analogias e diferenças, teremos o juízo; se a comparação e o juízo voltarem a ocorrer, teremos a reflexão; se uma lembrança agradável for mais vívida que uma impressão desagradável, teremos a imaginação. Engendradas as faculdades do entendimento, as da vontade surgirão depois: amor e ódio (atração e aversão), esperança e medo. A consciência de ter atravessado muitos estados dará à estátua a noção abstrata de número; a de ser perfume de cravo e ter sido perfume de jasmim, a noção do eu.
O autor conferirá depois a seu homem hipotético a audição, a gustação, a visão e por fim o tato. Este último sentido lhe revelará que existe o espaço e que, no espaço, ele existe em um corpo; os sons, os cheiros e as cores tinham-lhe parecido, antes dessa etapa, simples variações ou modificações de sua consciência.
A alegoria que acabamos de relatar se intitula 'Traité des Sensations' e data de 1754; para esta notícia utilizamos o segundo volume de 'Histoire de la Philosophie', de Bréhier.
A outra criatura suscitada pelo problema do conhecimento é o "animal hipotético" de Lotze. Mais solitário que a estátua que cheira rosas e que, por fim, é um homem, esse animal não tem pele senão um ponto sensível e móvel, na extremidade de uma antena. Sua conformação lhe proíbe, como se vê, as percepções simultâneas. Lotze pensa que a capacidade de retrair ou projetar sua antena sensível bastará para que o quase incomunicável animal descubra o mundo exterior (sem o auxílio das categorias kantianas) e distinga um objeto estacionário de um objeto móvel. Esta ficção foi elogiada por Vaihinger; está registrada na obra 'Medizinische Psychologie', que é de 1852.
Monday, February 21, 2005
Wednesday, December 22, 2004
Christmas
At Christmas I no more desire a rose, Than wish a snow in May's
new-fangled shows; But like of each thing that in season grows.
-- William Shakespeare --
new-fangled shows; But like of each thing that in season grows.
-- William Shakespeare --
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