Phenomena
133
It is nature’s prohibitions that guide our hand as we segment our world and
form a model of it. Although there may be alternative ways of segmenting
reality—hence different, non-similar world models may be constructed—few
are actually possible: The prohibitions whittle down the possibilities to a very
few, or perhaps to just one.
At the beginning of this section, it was argued that physical phenomena
could be treated as things presented to the observer by nature. We are now
able to put this claim into sharper focus: Physical phenomena are presented to
observers in the form of restrictions to their freedom of action. The observer
is assumed to be an active agent in its environment, and its activity is sculpted
by nature’s restraints just as a whittler shapes a figure by carving out of a block
the material that is not wanted.
In order for nature to act on an observer by enforcing constraints, it must
be assumed that the observer is a striving agent which has specific aims and
purposes. Indeed, if the observer were not actively pursuing definite goals,
then restricting its activity would not achieve anything. The essence of this
mechanism is that the observer is actively striving to achieve definite ends, and
nature is acting on it by constraining the ways it is able to behave in pursuit
of its goals. This insight reveals to us once again that the form of the natural
world is not inherent in matter, but emerges out of the interaction between
the background reality and the living observer.
In the previous chapter we noticed that a similar process is at work in all
animal perception. What we take to be an object or event is deeply embedded
in the physical background, and must be painstakingly and precisely extracted
by a living observer. It is the observer who extrudes this essentially arbitrary
concurrence of happenings from the objective flow. In order to accomplish this,
the observer must have a purpose, that is, a motive for undertaking to extract
this one particular thing—because what it is separating out of the background
is not random but something very specific and deliberately chosen.
Once again, we are confronted with the realization that the very existence
of individual objects and facts in the universe rests upon the prior existence of
observers having goals and purposes, and above all, having Gestalt perception.
It appears, then, that all of existence consists of two separate and equal strands,
or components: There is the pre-animate universe whose effect is to introduce
physical constraints, and there are active observers that strive to accomplish
goals in the face of these constraints. It is the observer that divides reality into
objects and features and creates structure. The structure is represented within
the observer, and does not exist separately from the observer.
Although the pre-animate universe has no separate objects or properties, it
harbors a great amount of latent information and order, since it must contain
133
It is nature’s prohibitions that guide our hand as we segment our world and
form a model of it. Although there may be alternative ways of segmenting
reality—hence different, non-similar world models may be constructed—few
are actually possible: The prohibitions whittle down the possibilities to a very
few, or perhaps to just one.
At the beginning of this section, it was argued that physical phenomena
could be treated as things presented to the observer by nature. We are now
able to put this claim into sharper focus: Physical phenomena are presented to
observers in the form of restrictions to their freedom of action. The observer
is assumed to be an active agent in its environment, and its activity is sculpted
by nature’s restraints just as a whittler shapes a figure by carving out of a block
the material that is not wanted.
In order for nature to act on an observer by enforcing constraints, it must
be assumed that the observer is a striving agent which has specific aims and
purposes. Indeed, if the observer were not actively pursuing definite goals,
then restricting its activity would not achieve anything. The essence of this
mechanism is that the observer is actively striving to achieve definite ends, and
nature is acting on it by constraining the ways it is able to behave in pursuit
of its goals. This insight reveals to us once again that the form of the natural
world is not inherent in matter, but emerges out of the interaction between
the background reality and the living observer.
In the previous chapter we noticed that a similar process is at work in all
animal perception. What we take to be an object or event is deeply embedded
in the physical background, and must be painstakingly and precisely extracted
by a living observer. It is the observer who extrudes this essentially arbitrary
concurrence of happenings from the objective flow. In order to accomplish this,
the observer must have a purpose, that is, a motive for undertaking to extract
this one particular thing—because what it is separating out of the background
is not random but something very specific and deliberately chosen.
Once again, we are confronted with the realization that the very existence
of individual objects and facts in the universe rests upon the prior existence of
observers having goals and purposes, and above all, having Gestalt perception.
It appears, then, that all of existence consists of two separate and equal strands,
or components: There is the pre-animate universe whose effect is to introduce
physical constraints, and there are active observers that strive to accomplish
goals in the face of these constraints. It is the observer that divides reality into
objects and features and creates structure. The structure is represented within
the observer, and does not exist separately from the observer.
Although the pre-animate universe has no separate objects or properties, it
harbors a great amount of latent information and order, since it must contain