Tuesday, January 26, 2010

The greatest improvement in the productive power of thought

We have long been aware that people differ in the way they can see things, at least in those ways which are amenable to correction with the aid of an extra lens.

The science of brain scanning is revealing all kinds of other differences in perception.



Some people really are tone deaf or cannot hit the right note even if they know what it is. Others cannot recognise a face, even of their own child while some can recognise any face once seen. And so on.

Medical scientists in particular tend to christen these ‘conditions’ – prosopagnosia for instance. I prefer to think of them as examples of human variability.

But if we do not all perceive the world in the same way, can we maintain that the world is.

Can it be an entity which we can understand by observation?

Yes - in fact it is probably essential that we each see it differently (albeit in overlapping ways).

Just as division of labour makes us more efficient as economic producers, so division of perception makes us more efficient as observers, interpreters, understanders & inventors of our future.

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