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9 Mind, Life, and the Universe
in tandem, but are the result of different mechanisms in the brain. Though
they work together, they are radically different.
The animal mind perceives everything in Gestalt wholes, for it requires
wholes to make reality intelligible. However, the holding capacity of conscious
awareness is fairly limited, and the cost of having a wide purview is that you
sacrifice detail. As animal behavior became more complex, and species became
fine-tuned to their environment, it became necessary to be attentive to rigorously precise and specific details of the surroundings. The information in a
Gestalt has excess range and poor resolution.
Thus, further evolution of the animal brain gave rise to a new mental tool for
the precise management of information—a mental equivalent of the precision
grip. Animals acquired increased attentional control over mental processes.
With greater attentional control it becomes possible to focus on small areas of
detail, and mentally detach specific items which have a practical role to play in
the animal’s activity. In order to act effectively on external objects, an animal
must form a representation of the structural details of objects. It must be able to
zero in on specific pieces which are the functional components of a structure,
and take careful note of how those pieces are related to one another in space.
Divide and Conquer
The paramount fact of all animal vision is that what is seen by a subject is
experienced as an undivided whole. The visual scene presents itself as a unified
whole, so all the parts appear in consciousness together as one simultaneous
unit of knowledge. As noted in Chapter 2, that is what is meant by vision in
living animals. The very fact that animate life exists in the form it does on our
planet, is due to the holistic nature of perception.
However, there is another side of the coin: The purposeful activity of all
animals, from insects to man, rests on the ability to understand the world
analytically. It seems poignantly ironic that whereas living beings have the
almost magical power to behold the world in comprehensive wholes, they must
fragment those very wholes in order to exploit their powers of perception. As
noted previously, the holding capacity of short-term memory and the span of
consciousness are narrow, while at the same time the physical articulation of
animals is limited. Thus, animals may perceive problems as wholes, but their
brains and bodies do not have the complexity of articulation that would be
needed to solve problems in one simultaneous operation.
You may be able to imagine a living being with a hundred arms and two
hundred eyes, able to attend to every aspect of a problem in one deft, convoluted
9 Mind, Life, and the Universe
in tandem, but are the result of different mechanisms in the brain. Though
they work together, they are radically different.
The animal mind perceives everything in Gestalt wholes, for it requires
wholes to make reality intelligible. However, the holding capacity of conscious
awareness is fairly limited, and the cost of having a wide purview is that you
sacrifice detail. As animal behavior became more complex, and species became
fine-tuned to their environment, it became necessary to be attentive to rigorously precise and specific details of the surroundings. The information in a
Gestalt has excess range and poor resolution.
Thus, further evolution of the animal brain gave rise to a new mental tool for
the precise management of information—a mental equivalent of the precision
grip. Animals acquired increased attentional control over mental processes.
With greater attentional control it becomes possible to focus on small areas of
detail, and mentally detach specific items which have a practical role to play in
the animal’s activity. In order to act effectively on external objects, an animal
must form a representation of the structural details of objects. It must be able to
zero in on specific pieces which are the functional components of a structure,
and take careful note of how those pieces are related to one another in space.
Divide and Conquer
The paramount fact of all animal vision is that what is seen by a subject is
experienced as an undivided whole. The visual scene presents itself as a unified
whole, so all the parts appear in consciousness together as one simultaneous
unit of knowledge. As noted in Chapter 2, that is what is meant by vision in
living animals. The very fact that animate life exists in the form it does on our
planet, is due to the holistic nature of perception.
However, there is another side of the coin: The purposeful activity of all
animals, from insects to man, rests on the ability to understand the world
analytically. It seems poignantly ironic that whereas living beings have the
almost magical power to behold the world in comprehensive wholes, they must
fragment those very wholes in order to exploit their powers of perception. As
noted previously, the holding capacity of short-term memory and the span of
consciousness are narrow, while at the same time the physical articulation of
animals is limited. Thus, animals may perceive problems as wholes, but their
brains and bodies do not have the complexity of articulation that would be
needed to solve problems in one simultaneous operation.
You may be able to imagine a living being with a hundred arms and two
hundred eyes, able to attend to every aspect of a problem in one deft, convoluted