A&O – PERCEPTION – INTEGRATIVE and REDUCTIONIST PERSPECTIVES   

ART & ORGANISM

notes on

INTEGRATIVE and REDUCTIONIST PERSPECTIVES   

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IN the ethological ideal of JANUSAN THINKING, we pursue the seeming alternative or even opposing percepts that are reflected in familiar expressions such as “One cannot see the forest for the trees.” (Simultanagnosia?) or “… the trees for the forest”  (Related to “seeing the big picture” or “having a bird’s-eye view”  or “getting the gist” or “having a grand scheme or overview“)

WE COPE with competing percepts by creating MULTISTABLE PERCEPTIONS.   DEEP ETHOLOGY: Read Carter et al (2020) about how ambiguous or competing percepts are reconciled in perceptual rivalry in diverse species^[i]

CO-CONSTITUTING dyads in perception and conception that likely share significant core elements have been often identified more-or-less significantly in many fields, for example:

• GENERALITIES and PARTICULARS
• IDEATIONAL and SENSIBLE
• INTROSPECTIVE  and OBSERVANT
• NOMOTHETIC and IDIOGRAPHIC  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomothetic_and_idiographic
• Idiography and Hermeneutics http://www.sfu.ca/educ867/htm/idiography.htm
• OBJECTIVE and SUBJECTIVE
• ETIC and EMIC (general & specific) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emic_and_etic 
• TOP DOWN and BOTTOM-UP neurological processes (open & closed programs of development; perceptual filling-in…) 

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IN the ethological ideal of JANUSAN THINKING, we pursue the seeming alternative or even opposing percepts

? What is: Simultanagnosia? (“a condition where an individual may see individual details of a complex scene but fails to grasp the overall meaning.” BUT it has interesting neurological connections (Wikipedia on similtanagnosia)

We do not need to so a whole to make a strong inference as to the reality of parts unseen (dark matter? dark energy?)… For the everyday implementation of that idea see “Perceiving but not Seeing Whole” in a Cycleback blog by David Rudd

GENERALITIES AND PARTICULARS IN LITERATURE:

• David Shulman in his comments on Karthika Naïr’s Until the Lions, in the NYRB, identified a “poetic ornament in Sanskrit, named arthantaranyasa, “shifting to another level of meaning”—usually an intuition generalized on the basis of some concrete experience.”  “One of the joys of reading Until the Lions [about the Mahabrahata, the great ancient epic of India], is the sudden appearance of such uncanny, yet profoundly convincing, perceptions.”  (https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2020/09/24/mahabharata-widows-laments/)
• • More about arthantaranyasa  
    • Amongst the definitions: “When a general proposition is strengthened by a particular or a particular by a general one and when an effect is justified by a cause or vice-versa, either under a similarity or a contrast, there is Arthāntaranyāsa or corroboration, which is thus eight-fold.” https://www.wisdomlib.org/definition/arthantaranyasa  
    • An Ornament_of_Substantiation_arthantaranyasa_in_Oriental_Poetry:_A_critical_survey

HUMAN DEVELOPMENT of part/whole relationship?  Look at an article in Child Development (Vol. 35, No. 1 (Mar., 1964), pp. 81-90): Studies in Perceptual Development: II. Part-Whole Perception by David Elkind, Ronald R. Koegler and Elsie Go  ( DOI 10.2307/1126573 ; Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1126573)  

Abstract. One hundred and ninety-five children from 4 to 9 years of age were tested for their ability to perceive both parts and wholes in drawings wherein both parts and wholes had independent meanings. Results showed (a) regular increase with age in ability to perceive part and whole, (b) parts perceived at an earlier age than wholes, and (c) part and whole integration present in a majority (75 per cent) of children by age 9. The results were interpreted from the standpoint of Piaget’s genetic theory of perception.

NEXUS

• • Rationalism/cognitive | reason/logic
  • HOLISM and REDUCTIONISM.  (involves aforementioned  JANUSIAN THINKING  and  Integrative and Reductionist Perspective) 
    • • READ: Reductionism and Holism: Two Sides of the Perception of Reality  By Varadaraja Raman (July 15, 2005)
      • READ: Holism in the arts READING: QI: https://neilgreenberg.com/ao-reading-qi-in-the-arts-excerpt-from-huan-rose-2001/ 
  • Dialectic
  • EVOLUTIONARY perspective: Levins & Lewontin