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Understanding: a way of seeing

 
 
coberst
 
Reply Sat 7 Jul, 2007 04:05 am
Understanding: a way of seeing

Know is see. Understand is grasp. These are rather common metaphors. Such metaphors help us comprehend.

Empathy is a technique for understanding. We can try to understand another person by creating a means whereby we can ?'walk a mile in her shoes'. We can create analogies of what the other person experiences as a means for us to ?'put on their shoes'.

An artist may paint in the manner of Picasso, or perhaps in the manner of a Rembrandt, or perhaps in the manner of a Monet. These different forms of painting represent different ways of seeing. They represent a personal understanding which provides us with a prism for seeing.

Mathematics is a way of seeing. Mathematics is the science of pattern. Imagine a very elaborate Persian rug. Imagine that you have only a small fragment of that rug. Mathematics offers a means whereby you might be able to construct the rest of that rug to look exactly like the original. Math can perhaps create a formula for the pattern in the rug such that you can, by following that math formula, exactly duplicate the pattern from which that rug was created.

Understanding is a stage of comprehension whereby a person can interject them self into the pattern through imagination. ?'Understanding is math' because it helps the individual to ?'walk in the shoes' of some other entity.

Understanding might correctly, in my opinion, be considered to be a personal paradigm. Knowledge is about truth but understanding is about meaning. Understanding is a means for placing the individual within the picture including the entity about which the individual wishes to become very familiar.

Understanding is a creative process that extends knowing. Understanding may or may not enhance the truth quality of comprehension. Picasso and Monet may paint the same object but have they captured the truth of that object.?

Is truth anything beyond what is normally considered to be truth?

Is truth anything beyond what humans have normalized (standardized)?

Does understanding aid or deter normalization?

Are you normal? Would you rather be normal than right?

Dare to be abnormal, but not foolish!
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fresco
 
  1  
Reply Sat 7 Jul, 2007 07:10 am
Coberst,

You are playing on the sands of epistemology where concepts of "truth" dissapear with the ebb and flow of linguistic analysis. I suggest you expand your interest in language (metaphor) by reading up on Deleuze and Foucault if you wish to make any sense of your questions.
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VSPrasad
 
  1  
Reply Sat 7 Jul, 2007 07:52 am
Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder:

http://www.chinapage.org/story/beauty.html

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/59100.html

Beauty in eyes of beholder, study confirms:

WASHINGTON: When it comes to something pleasant, it seems that the phrase "easy on the eyes" may hold more truth than earlier believed, for a study has found that objects or people appear more attractive when the mind can process their looks faster.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/2037080.cms

Scientists ponder beauty and the eye of the beholder:
Evidence increasingly suggests the human brain is hard-wired for aesthetics.

http://www.sigidiart.com/Docs/beauty.htm

I will give a simple explanation of my own. I will go to a blind man and
describe the beauty of a top cine actress. Can any amount of description
make him realize how beautiful she is? He needs eyes to see and understand
for him self.

When candles are off, all women are fair!

There is no single definition of truth about which the majority of philosophers agree. Various theories of truth, commonly involving different definitions of "truth", continue to be debated. There are differing claims on such questions as what constitutes truth; how to define and identify truth; what roles do revealed and acquired knowledge play; and whether truth is subjective, relative, objective, or absolute.

For example, take the case of a grain sand. One scientist explores
its chemical contents and publishes a paper. It is his view of truth.
Another scientist explores its micro magnetic properties hitherto
unknown and publishes his theory. That is his view of truth.
Then another scientist uses some ultra modern equipment to find
aura fields of sand. That will become his view of truth.

In fact, Masaru Emoto has done research on how molecular structure of water is affected by emotions.

http://www.life-enthusiast.com/twilight/research_emoto.htm

http://www.energetic-medicine.net/research/Conciousness%20of%20water.htm

Macrocosm and microcosm is an ancient Greek schema of seeing the same patterns reproduced in all levels of the cosmos. It may have begun with Democritus in the 5th century B.C. or with Pythagoras and is a philosophical conception that runs through Socrates, and Plato and through to the Renaissance. With Pythagoras, the discovery of the golden ratio and its philosophical conception called the Golden mean, the Greeks saw that this golden ratio is repeated in all parts of the ordered universe both large and small. The Greeks were very concerned with a rational explanation of everything and saw this repetition of the golden mean as a pattern that was reproduced throughout reality. It is a product of the ancient Greek mentality of seeing reality as a whole and noticing patterns that are repeated throughout all the levels of reality.

The English physician and alchemist Robert Fludd (1574-1637) expicitly based his work Utriusque Cosmi Historia (The history of the two worlds) upon the macro/micro correspondence; as does Sir Thomas Browne in his binary Discourses of 1658: Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial depicts the small, temporal world of man, whilst The Garden of Cyrus represents the macrocosm, in which the ubiquitous and eternal quincunx pattern is discerned in art, nature and the Cosmos.

The Hindu Upanishads say that every thing in creation is a microcosm.
The more you investigate, the more you will know that there is more
to investigate and know. Even a sand of grain is a microcosm.
It contains infinite number of truths.
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