5
The Mind-Made Firmament
Carving up the World
When we open our eyes and observe the world around us, we don’t see a smooth,
evenly distributed continuum, but a scene that is sharply and unambiguously
divided into separate objects. Each of these objects is familiar to us, we know
their identities, and we are able to name them.
To the animal mind, the world is subdivided into separate, discrete things.
Without a separation into independent parts, nothing would be
comprehensible, there could be no understanding, and thought would not
be possible. Common sense has us believe that the world really does consist of
separate objects exactly as we see it, for we suppose that nature comes to us
ready-carved. But in fact, the animal visual system does such a thorough job
of partitioning the visual array into familiar objects, that it is impossible for us
to look at a scene and not perceive it as composed of separate things.
Every species of living creature has its own mental segmentation of the world,
that is, its own way of cutting up the perceived world into varied and separate
things. Humans, no less than other animals, carve up the world in a certain
way into objects, features, categories, natural forces, all of which constitute
their reality. The way we divide our environment into objects and other things
circumscribes and determines our way of life as well as the way we see reality.
Such a segmentation of reality is formed gradually over evolutionary time and
is part of every species’ genotype.
A scheme of segmentation is a way that the world is carved up into component
parts. However, segmenting reality is more than merely cutting it up into pieces.
The most significant part of segmenting the world is picking out those objects
that are important and relevant to us. Such objects are individuated, that is,
© The Author(s) 2021
C. Pinter, Mind and the Cosmic Order,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50083-2_5
67
The Mind-Made Firmament
Carving up the World
When we open our eyes and observe the world around us, we don’t see a smooth,
evenly distributed continuum, but a scene that is sharply and unambiguously
divided into separate objects. Each of these objects is familiar to us, we know
their identities, and we are able to name them.
To the animal mind, the world is subdivided into separate, discrete things.
Without a separation into independent parts, nothing would be
comprehensible, there could be no understanding, and thought would not
be possible. Common sense has us believe that the world really does consist of
separate objects exactly as we see it, for we suppose that nature comes to us
ready-carved. But in fact, the animal visual system does such a thorough job
of partitioning the visual array into familiar objects, that it is impossible for us
to look at a scene and not perceive it as composed of separate things.
Every species of living creature has its own mental segmentation of the world,
that is, its own way of cutting up the perceived world into varied and separate
things. Humans, no less than other animals, carve up the world in a certain
way into objects, features, categories, natural forces, all of which constitute
their reality. The way we divide our environment into objects and other things
circumscribes and determines our way of life as well as the way we see reality.
Such a segmentation of reality is formed gradually over evolutionary time and
is part of every species’ genotype.
A scheme of segmentation is a way that the world is carved up into component
parts. However, segmenting reality is more than merely cutting it up into pieces.
The most significant part of segmenting the world is picking out those objects
that are important and relevant to us. Such objects are individuated, that is,
© The Author(s) 2021
C. Pinter, Mind and the Cosmic Order,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50083-2_5
67