84
5 The Mind-Made Firmament
object’s form is an aspect of the object as an undivided whole, viewed from
outside the object: It is a facet of the Gestalt image given to an external observer.
The reason this is an important and penetrating revelation is that it shows
us that an object’s form is not indwelling in the object, and is not located in
the object at all. It is located away from the object, in the external perceiver.
In particular, the material universe outside the purview of any observer has no
such thing as form. We find that very difficult to believe. But the reason for
this is that—unwittingly and carelessly—we imagine the universe as if we were
there looking at it, and find it very hard to picture a reality in which we are
totally absent.
It is not merely the appearance of objects that emerges from observation, but
also their structure. Indeed, the structure of an object is its precise description
in analytic terms: It is an explicit accounting of all the functional parts and
the relations by which they are connected. Such a description rests on a specific
segmentation of the object into parts. If an object is segmented into parts differently, this of course gives rise to a different description. This is an important
observation, because it reveals that structure is in the observer, rather than in
the object itself. This fact is strongly counterintuitive, for commonsense tells
us forcefully that every object in the world has a unique structure, and its
structure is inherent in the object.
There are, of course, complex things in the world—and they are what they
are even when not being observed. They are complex—but their explicit structure, as it is given in a structural description, is not fully determined by the
object, but rather, it flows from the way the object is divided into parts. In the
1960s a new branch of mathematics was created, called Kolmogorov Complexity Theory, which addressed the problem of quantifying the degree of
complexity of structures. The general idea is that if an object is segmented into
parts, and you describe it by disclosing how each part is related to every other
part, then its complexity is defined to be the length of the shortest computer
program able to describe it. If it is possible to segment the object into parts in
an alternative, more efficient way, its complexity is the one corresponding to
the most parsimonious segmentation. 10
There are objects in the world which are complex in an absolute sense,
not simply because we know a complex description. There may be several
alternative ways of segmenting such an object into parts. The structure of
the object is the explicit way of describing it within one given scheme of
segmentation, hence the structure depends on how you have segmented it.
However, its complexity is something objective, because it takes into account
all the alternative descriptions of the same object and selects the simplest. There
is an austere lesson in this fact: If structure, like shape, arises out of the mind
5 The Mind-Made Firmament
object’s form is an aspect of the object as an undivided whole, viewed from
outside the object: It is a facet of the Gestalt image given to an external observer.
The reason this is an important and penetrating revelation is that it shows
us that an object’s form is not indwelling in the object, and is not located in
the object at all. It is located away from the object, in the external perceiver.
In particular, the material universe outside the purview of any observer has no
such thing as form. We find that very difficult to believe. But the reason for
this is that—unwittingly and carelessly—we imagine the universe as if we were
there looking at it, and find it very hard to picture a reality in which we are
totally absent.
It is not merely the appearance of objects that emerges from observation, but
also their structure. Indeed, the structure of an object is its precise description
in analytic terms: It is an explicit accounting of all the functional parts and
the relations by which they are connected. Such a description rests on a specific
segmentation of the object into parts. If an object is segmented into parts differently, this of course gives rise to a different description. This is an important
observation, because it reveals that structure is in the observer, rather than in
the object itself. This fact is strongly counterintuitive, for commonsense tells
us forcefully that every object in the world has a unique structure, and its
structure is inherent in the object.
There are, of course, complex things in the world—and they are what they
are even when not being observed. They are complex—but their explicit structure, as it is given in a structural description, is not fully determined by the
object, but rather, it flows from the way the object is divided into parts. In the
1960s a new branch of mathematics was created, called Kolmogorov Complexity Theory, which addressed the problem of quantifying the degree of
complexity of structures. The general idea is that if an object is segmented into
parts, and you describe it by disclosing how each part is related to every other
part, then its complexity is defined to be the length of the shortest computer
program able to describe it. If it is possible to segment the object into parts in
an alternative, more efficient way, its complexity is the one corresponding to
the most parsimonious segmentation. 10
There are objects in the world which are complex in an absolute sense,
not simply because we know a complex description. There may be several
alternative ways of segmenting such an object into parts. The structure of
the object is the explicit way of describing it within one given scheme of
segmentation, hence the structure depends on how you have segmented it.
However, its complexity is something objective, because it takes into account
all the alternative descriptions of the same object and selects the simplest. There
is an austere lesson in this fact: If structure, like shape, arises out of the mind