Seeing 101
Seeing 101 focuses on the human visual perception system. It starts with a brief history of how it has evolved to the scientific principles we use today.
Metaphysical decorating can be powerful. It calls attention to the subliminal geometric reality behind the physical objects of design. As we tr
ain the eye, our awareness becomes easier. Yet we first have to und
erstand how our visual perception system operates so we can work with the actual physical objects and place them in way that creates a harmonious scaffolding.
The Evolution of Visual Perception Theories
In the 5th century BC, Empedocles postulated that Aphrodite made the eye out of the four elements: fire, water, air and earth. She then lit the fire in the eye, which made it shine with rays. Thus, the “emission theory” was born. Empedocles maintained that sight occurred when rays, emanating from the eyes, fell on an object, a theory followed by the scholars, Euclid and Ptolemy. [1]
Another ancient idea, the “intromission theory,” is quite the opposite. It postulates that an object sprays miniature copies of itself into the air. If a person saw a rose, it meant that a few of the copie
s of the rose had to land on that person’s eye. The main supporters of the intromission theory were Aristotle and Galen.[2]
It was a theory that continued into the 18th century through Isaac Newton and John Locke. They advanced this theory when they stated that the little objects were actually composed of matter. These little bits entered the seer’s visual perception system through the eye’s aperture.
Moving Towards the Modern Age
Despite Newton’s misconception of floating fractals, he successfully conducted the first scientific experiments on visual perception with prisms. Through them, he proved that visually perceived color was due to the character of light the object reflected. Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894) is credited with the first modern study of visual perception. He concluded that the brain made assumptions based on past experience, an idea now included in modern theories.
From the time of Helmholtz’s research until the early 20th century, perception theory was dominated by the structuralists. They believed that when we see an object, we see all
the parts as little pixels. Known as sensations by the structuralists, these dots were akin to taking a picture of a rose from a comic book and magnifying it.
Modern Theories of Visual Perception
Today, the science of visual perception is based on Gestalt psychology. [3] One of its founders, Max Wertheimer, discovered in 1910 that we do not need to add up all these sensations to perceive objects. We see just enough of them to allow our brain to correctly interpret the data. The maxim, “The
whole is greater than the sum of its parts” best describes the founders’ work. In essence, we see the whole before we see the individual parts.
An enhancement to the Gestalt theories is the constructivist’s point of view. Constructivists believed it is not just the stimuli that must be considered but the role of the observer.
When people see a rose, they take an active part in the process by fixing their eyes on certain points of the flower. In the language of perception, each of these sensations or points of rest is c
alled a fixation.
Please note that when I use the word fixation, it is a point where the eye will stop and rest for maybe a fraction of a nanosecond. Looking at a rose, the eye might fixate fifty or a hundred times. The lines I drew above were hypothetical. Usually fixation based patterns of living things will be very specific and reveal
Fixations and Forms: Think Small and Big
A fixation is a small thing.
A bunch of fixations allows the brain to see the form of the object.
The eye might first fixate many times on each rose. If there is a group of roses like in a bouquet, the brain, after identifying each rose will look at each rose as one fixation.
This then reveals a bouquet to the brain.
Remember, though the fixations create a form, that form might then become the fixation of a larger form.
Patterns Caused by the Eye Moving on Fixations
As the eye moves from fixation to fixation, a pattern is generally unveiled. This not only reveals the object but also the geometric scaffolding behind it.
Above find a diagram that shows the scaffolding of the two outside layers of a rose. Petals 1, 2 &3 are larger than petals 4 & 5. We can see the inside petals of the rose seem to be p
ositioned in front of the outside petals by roughly a third. If we w
ere to complete the drawing of the scaffolding, the petals should decrease in size as they came to the center and have the same positioning. Such positioning is not exactly a third but .618, which is the reciprocal of phi (1.618…or the golden number.) Right now, we can just look at the diagram to experience the scaffolding concept without worrying about the math.
The golden mean is a scaffolding found in most living things including our own bodies.We share a common mathematical underpinning with the rose. At some point,
in a future lesson or blog, I will write about the golden mean. It could be a good scaffolding to use in decorating. For now, however, using the scaffolding of the circle in the forthcoming Lesson VIII will be challenging enough. Occasionally, I will just leave you with scaffoldings to the golden mean because it allows a growing awareness of the geometric scaffoldings behind matter.
Here is another way to look at the scaffolding of the rose.
The Gestalt Laws
The brain is a computer on steroids as it processes ten million pieces of information per second. To save time and energy, it relies on shortcuts. The Gestalt psychologists saw how the brain used logic, structure and patterns to overcome this issue.
They broke down their theories into six simple laws, still used today. They are the Laws of Simplicity, Similarity, Proximity, Closure, Continuity and Figure/Ground.
Sometimes these laws are referred to as principles, for they are not laws in the traditional scientific sense.
Additional laws were added later by other gestalt psychologists. They are Symmetry, Parallelism, Common Fate, Meaningfulness, and Familiarity, Uniform Connectedness or Unity. Even though these laws were discovered before the computer was invented, they are used substantially in website design.
In the next lesson, I will examine in depth the laws that can be used by designers of their environments. The laws are scientific, and they do help to explain the geometric scaffolding of the objects we see.
Using these laws and the constructivist theory of eye movements, the decorator will be able to align the decorating materials to create the hidden geometric forms of harmony,. This brings energy into any environment.
Articles on the History of Visual Perception Theories
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[1] Euclid. Optics. 3rd century BC.
Ptolemy. Optics. 2nd century BC.
[2] Aristotle. De Sensu. 4th century BC.
Galen. De Usu Partium Corporis Humani. 2nd century BC.
[3] The Gestalt psychologists of perception should not be confused with Gestalt psychotherapy founded by Fritz Perls almost sixty years later.
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There are two parts to this website, The Lessons, which are more difficult in concept and the blogs, which are lighter in nature. Blogs you might enjoy that have the same theme as Lesson Four are as follows:
- When we Don’t “See,” An Invisible Line in the Sand
- The Mathematics of Nature in the Most Unusual Places
Please note that my website allows you to leave comments at the end of the blogs but not at the end of each lesson. If you have a comment or question about a lesson, you may email me at ruta@rutas-rules.com