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5 The Mind-Made Firmament
ordering of objects in physical space, nor any kind of physical force or effect
that would tend to put objects “in their right place”. That kind of organization
is a product of mind. Certainly this does not mean that the material world is
laid out differently: What it means is that the material world has no inherent
principle of ordering or anything like a “layout”. The layout of a scene is
exclusively a product of a visual system that sees in Gestalt wholes. It has no
objective counterpart in the world of matter.
For the Mind, Reality Is Whole
Far and away the most important and most remarkable attribute of the animal
brain is that all creatures perceive in Gestalt wholes. When you open your
eyes, what you behold is a comprehensive display of the things before you, and
this display is given to you as a single, undivided experience. Vision would
be meaningless, and have no biological function if people and animals saw
anything less than integral scenes.
We are misled by common sense to assume that we see in Gestalts because
the world itself is constituted of whole objects. In actual fact, the manner in
which physical objects are related to one another and come together rests on an
entirely different principle, called the Addition of Simples, which is explained in
above. The reason events of the world appear holistic to animals is that animals
perceive them in Gestalts. The atoms of a teacup do not collude together to
form a teacup: The object is a teacup because it is constituted that way from a
perspective outside of itself.
In a similar way, a photograph consists of a large number of tiny dots of
different colors, called pixels. The little dots do not conspire together to give
rise to Grandma’s portrait. The portrait comes to exist in visual awareness when
the whole of it is seen from an external perspective. The existence of an object
as an individual whole is always something external to the object, not inherent
in the object itself.
Gestalts do not merely allow you to see whole objects and scenes, but also
to experience events that unfold in time. When listening to music, you hear
more than just the note currently being played: You hear a whole melody.
When someone speaks you hear a whole sentence. Gestalts bring into being an
entire aspect of reality that would not exist otherwise—a reality in which many
things which are separated in space and time are perceived together as a new
combined entity. The new entity did not exist before the parts were perceived
as one.
5 The Mind-Made Firmament
ordering of objects in physical space, nor any kind of physical force or effect
that would tend to put objects “in their right place”. That kind of organization
is a product of mind. Certainly this does not mean that the material world is
laid out differently: What it means is that the material world has no inherent
principle of ordering or anything like a “layout”. The layout of a scene is
exclusively a product of a visual system that sees in Gestalt wholes. It has no
objective counterpart in the world of matter.
For the Mind, Reality Is Whole
Far and away the most important and most remarkable attribute of the animal
brain is that all creatures perceive in Gestalt wholes. When you open your
eyes, what you behold is a comprehensive display of the things before you, and
this display is given to you as a single, undivided experience. Vision would
be meaningless, and have no biological function if people and animals saw
anything less than integral scenes.
We are misled by common sense to assume that we see in Gestalts because
the world itself is constituted of whole objects. In actual fact, the manner in
which physical objects are related to one another and come together rests on an
entirely different principle, called the Addition of Simples, which is explained in
above. The reason events of the world appear holistic to animals is that animals
perceive them in Gestalts. The atoms of a teacup do not collude together to
form a teacup: The object is a teacup because it is constituted that way from a
perspective outside of itself.
In a similar way, a photograph consists of a large number of tiny dots of
different colors, called pixels. The little dots do not conspire together to give
rise to Grandma’s portrait. The portrait comes to exist in visual awareness when
the whole of it is seen from an external perspective. The existence of an object
as an individual whole is always something external to the object, not inherent
in the object itself.
Gestalts do not merely allow you to see whole objects and scenes, but also
to experience events that unfold in time. When listening to music, you hear
more than just the note currently being played: You hear a whole melody.
When someone speaks you hear a whole sentence. Gestalts bring into being an
entire aspect of reality that would not exist otherwise—a reality in which many
things which are separated in space and time are perceived together as a new
combined entity. The new entity did not exist before the parts were perceived
as one.