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 --

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 --

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.

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.

computing

The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers.
-- Richard Hamming --

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 --

eternity

To see the world in a grain of sand, and to see heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hands, and eternity in an hour.

-- William Blake --

Speech recognition

"Human beings' recognition of speech consists of many tasks, ranging from the detection of phonemes from speech waveforms to the high-level understanding of messages. We do not actually hear all speech elements; we realize this easily when we try to decipher foreign or uncommon utterances. Instead, we continuously relate fragmentary sensory stimuli to context familiar from various experiences, and we unconsciously test and reiterate our perceptions at different levels of abstraction. In other words, what we believe we hear, we in fact reconstruct in our minds from pieces of received information.
Even in clear speech from the same speaker, distributions of the spectral samples of different phonemes overlap. Their statistical density function are not Gaussian, so they cannot be approximated analytically. The same phonemes spoken by different persons can be confused too; for example, the /ε/ of one speaker might sound like the /n/ of another. For this reason, absolutely speaker-independent detection of phonemes is possible only with relative low accuracy."

(The Neural Phonetic Typewriter, Teuvo Kohonen - IEEE 1988)

optoelectrical speech transcriber

"In 1930 a Hungarian scientist, Tihamer Nemes, filed a patent application in Germany for the principle of making an optoelectrical system automatically transcribe speech. His idea was to use the optical sound track on a movie film as a grating to produce diffraction patterns (corresponding to speech spectra), which then could be identified and typed out. The application was turned down as “unrealistic.” Since then the problem of automatic speech recognition has occupied the minds of scientists and engineers, both amateur and professional."

(Teuvo Kohonen, IEEE March 1988)

Long hair

Long on hair, short on brains.
- French Proverb -

Balzac

Love is the poetry of the senses.
-- Honoré de Balzac --

Most people of action are inclined to fatalism and most of thought believe in providence.
-- Honore De Balzac --

It is easier to be a lover than a husband for the simple reason that it is more difficult to be witty every day than to say pretty things from time to time.
-- Honore De Balzac --

The Role of Phidippides

Phidippides a professional runner of the Athen's army is the one whose tale was immortalized by the Olympic Marathon.
The Athens were fighting the Persas and they were outnumbered, so the Athenian generals send Phidippides to call for Sparta's help. He run 140 miles and another 140 miles back with the disappointing news that the Sparta agreed to help but said they would not take the field until the moon was full due to religious laws. They fought in disadvantage, but they launched a surprise offensive thrust which at the time appeared suicidal and won the battle. Phidippides was again called upon to run from the battlefield in Marathon to Athens (26 miles away) to carry the news of victory and warning about the approaching Persians ships. He reached Athens in 3 hours delivering the message and died thereafter from exhaustion.
When the modern Olympics began in 1896, the tale of Pheidippides' feat was immortalized: A 24.8-mile race would serve as the final event of the Games, covering the route from Marathon Bridge to the Olympic Stadium in Athens.

Critique of Practical Reason

Zwei Dinge erfüllen das Gemüt mit immer neuer und zunehmender Bewunderung und Ehrfurcht, je öfter und anhaltender sich das Nachdenken damit beschäftigt: Der bestirnte Himmel über mir und das moralische Gesetz in mir.
[Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more seriously reflection concentrates upon them: the starry heaven above me and the moral law within me.]
-- Immanuel Kant --

words, thoughts and reality

As words miss when they want to express any thought, thoughts also miss when they want to express any reality.
-- Fernando Pessoa --

night and silence

Il ne voit que la nuit, n'entend que le silence.
[He sees only night, and hears only silence.]
-- Jacques Delille --

Conversation between Achilles and Tortoise

"Tortoise: (...) But it is beautiful anyway, is it not?
Achilles: Oh, yes, there is no doubt of its beauty.
Tortoise: I wonder if its beauty is related to its impossibility. (...)"

Introduction - Gödel, Escher, Bach - Douglas Hofstadter - pq. 29

Juana's Dream

Juana's Dream - Eduardo Galeano

She strolled through the market of dreams. The saleswomen settled various dreams over big clothes on the ground.

There arrives Juana's grandfather, deeply sad as it's a long time he doesn't dream. Juana takes him by the hand and helps him to choose dreams, dreams of marzipan or cotton, wings to fly while sleeping, and they go away, both, so full of dreams that there won't be enough night.

(translated by me)

Justice

A personification of the four cardinal virtues (Justice, Prudence, Fortitude and Temperance) represented usually by the scale, the sword, the blindfold and the law books. She symbolizes the fair and equal administration of the law, without corruption, greed, prejudice, or favor.
This figure dates back to the ancient history. The Ancient Egyptians referred to Ma'at, a woman carrying a sword with an ostrich feather in her hair to symbolize truth and justice. The Ancient Greeks believed in Themis, the goddess of divine justice and law. She held a pair of scales upon which she weighs the claims of disputing parties. She was daughter to Uranus and Gaia and was a partner and advisor to Zeus. Themis was a Titan who believed in and taught obedience to laws and peace. "She became known as a goddess of divine justice." The Roman goddess of justice was called Justitia. She’s represented by the constellation Libra, shaped like a heavenly pair of scales.

mortals

"We are all mortal until the first kiss and the second glass of wine."
-- Eduardo Galeano --

Measure

"Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so."
-- Galileo Galilei --