Form in Coleridge, and in Perception and Art More Generally

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Reid
Keyword(s):  
Binary Code ◽  
Sense Perception ◽  
Organic Form ◽  
Spatial Sense ◽  
Primary Qualities ◽  
Aesthetic Form ◽  
The World ◽  
Formal Relation ◽  
Spatial Shape ◽  
Representative Theory

AbstractWe should not think of aesthetic form in terms of shape, but rather, as Susanne Langer argues, as a reflection of "orderliness" or relation. When thinking of form, we should not think of Keats's Grecian urn (embodying in its shape the beauty of the eternal)--not, at least, if this leads us to think of the urn's reified shape as somehow fundamental and therefore a kind of language. Rather, we should think of therelationbetween binary code and the image it produces on a computer screen, as prototypically "formal." Such images certainly do have shape, but those shapes are the product of underlying acts (here a set of computer instructions), which accordingly are more fundamental.This allows us to understand Coleridge's mature insistence on the reciprocal formality of the Father and the Son (for in any case the Son cannot have "shape" in any spatial sense). It also allows us to rehabilitate Coleridge's problematic concept of organic form. Building on Louis Arnaud Reid's arguments against the representative theory of perception, I argue that the qualitative dimensions of everyday sensory perceptions cannot in themselves be characterized by primary qualities like spatial shape, for it is absurd to think that we have anything like Polaroid snapshots floating around within our synapses. Rather, the qualitative dimensions of sensory perception (colour, perceived shape, and so forth) are "presentations" of the relevant aspects of the world--presentations which bear a formal relation rather than immediate likeness to the world. Sense-perception is thus "formal." And we can thus also claim that an art work formally embodies its meanings; that the concept of "form" has work to do; and that form is implicitly qualitative, being characterized by texture, sound qualities, shapeliness, etc..

Brief Analysis for the Aesthetic Form of Chinese Garden Art

2014 ◽  
Vol 584-586 ◽  
pp. 650-653 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bian Ling Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Development History ◽  
Artistic Conception ◽  
High Uniformity ◽  
Aesthetic Form ◽  
The World ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Aesthetic Forms

Chinese garden art has developed gradually along with the neutralization--lasting appeal--artistic conception trend till to the peak, meanwhile, those aesthetic forms can be existed synchronously with historical advancement, logic arrangement in parallel and correspondence as well as abundance and deepening of the interior connotation and exterior extension, which represent the high uniformity of the development history and logics of Chinese garden art. Nowadays, the landscape garden development is required to probe its root, explore its cultural soul, so as to base itself upon the garden industry all over the world. Additionally, the function of traditional aesthetic form will show the powerful functions, declare publicly the deep influence of modernized landscape garden development.

scholarly journals Synet på natur og historie hos Grundtvig og Løgstrup

1994 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-106
Author(s):  
Hans Henningsen
Keyword(s):  
Sense Perception ◽  
Historical View ◽  
Self Recognition ◽  
The World ◽  
Art Forms ◽  
History Of ◽  
Different Dimensions ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Historical Life

The View of Nature and History in Grundtvig and LøgstrupBy Hans HenningsenGrundtvig’s and K.E. Løgstrup’s thoughts move in two different dimensions, but with the same intention of demonstrating that it was not the capacity of man to create culture that first gave significance to the world. But where Grundtvig speaks about history, Løgstrup speaks about »phenomena«, »nature«, and »universe«.While Grundtvig was largely unaffected by Kant, the latter - with his concepts of the selfexistent subject and the idea of the faculty of cognition as productive - became a challenge to Løgstrup. Kant heralds an era whose relationship with the universe is characterized as a »marginal existence«. Our culture became an emancipatory culture which was all to the good, but the era lost its sense of the .pre-cultural. structures in which life is »encased«.The era has also emancipated itself from Grundtvig’s historical view. But a history on the premisses of relativism is no history. Or, in Løgstrup’s words, there is no other history than the history of what is essential in life. Therefore, in reality, Løgstrup’s phenomenological and philosophical endeavours become a defence of history. Grundtvig’s view of nature was determined by his radical prioritization of history. He prefers to view nature as part of the historical life of man, which again determines his use of nature images. In Grundtvig there is no religious interpretation of any experience or perception of nature in spite of the fact that everything in the Creation is to be understood as images of the eternal.In Løgstrup there is no such cautions attitude towards nature. Here nature and sense perception are liberating, but as is the case with Grundtvig, nature is seen as the foundation of man’s life, as immediate experience.Grundtvig’s radical prioritization of history colours his view of art. The Creation itself is the greatest work of art; part of it is the upbringing through which all history must be the object of the individual’s own experience. Among the art forms, poetry ranks highest, with the song above all other forms, while Grundtvig only uses disparaging words about painting and sculpture because these art forms are wordless and preclude changes. Løgstrup, however, attaches much greater importance to sense perception and self-recognition through art.These contrasts may be regarded as what Løgstrup calls uniting opposites; it must be remembered, however, that such disparities cannot be harmonized so as to disappear, but are uniting precisely by virtue of the tension that exists between them. The actual existence of the contrasts does not preclude the possibility that in a wider sense the two views may be contained within the same framework and express a common intention.

scholarly journals Cliplike Montage and Illusory World

2012 ◽  
Vol 4 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 131-146
Author(s):  
Natalia Ivanovna Utilova
Keyword(s):  
Sense Perception ◽  
Music Video ◽  
Academic Interest ◽  
The World ◽  
The Spectator

The present publication is a fragment of a survey devoted to the emergence and development of the music video montage which enhances the sense perception of screen images plunging the spectator into the world of illusion. The search for the origins of this montage form are of not only academic interest, but reveal certain practical possibilities of using music video montage in various audiovisual genres outside TV.

The “tedious yammering of selves”: The End of Intimacy in Spike Jonze’s Her

2019 ◽  
pp. 176-192
Author(s):  
Richard Smith
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Social World ◽  
The Body ◽  
Career Trajectory ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Sound Image ◽  
Body Experiences ◽  
Aesthetic Form ◽  
The World

Spike Jonze’s unusual career trajectory, from the outer edges of popular culture to the center of indiewood, has resulted in a distinctive body of work that spans several genres and forms. This chapter traces Jonze’s career to ground a stylistic reading of his fourth feature film, Her (2013). Presented in three parts—Jonze’s short works, Gilles Deleuze’s “implied dream” and the “sound-image,” the lonely social world of Her—the chapter argues that Jonze’s cinematic style is an elaboration of a very simple image of a body in motion. As his style develops the relation of body and world becomes more central and more uncertain. In Her, the world is replaced by media affect and the body experiences itself as an aesthetic form. Smith explores a terrain of loneliness that sits at the center of much of Jonze’s work.

Empedocles (c.495–c.435 BC)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malcolm Schofield
Keyword(s):  
Good Deal ◽  
Comparative Morphology ◽  
Basic Structure ◽  
Sense Perception ◽  
Animal Sacrifice ◽  
Biological Phenomena ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Clear Relation

Empedocles, born in the Sicilian city of Acragas (modern Agrigento), was a major Greek philosopher of the Presocratic period. Numerous fragments survive from his two major works, poems in epic verse known later in antiquity as On Nature and Purifications. On Nature sets out a vision of reality as a theatre of ceaseless change, whose invariable pattern consists in the repetition of the two processes of harmonization into unity followed by dissolution into plurality. The force unifying the four elements from which all else is created – earth, air, fire and water – is called Love, and Strife is the force dissolving them once again into plurality. The cycle is most apparent in the rhythms of plant and animal life, but Empedocles’ main objective is to tell the history of the universe itself as an exemplification of the pattern. The basic structure of the world is the outcome of disruption of a total blending of the elements into main masses which eventually develop into the earth, the sea, the air and the fiery heaven. Life, however, emerged not from separation but by mixture of elements, and Empedocles elaborates an account of the evolution of living forms of increasing complexity and capacity for survival, culminating in the creation of species as they are at present. There followed a detailed treatment of a whole range of biological phenomena, from reproduction to the comparative morphology of the parts of animals and the physiology of sense perception and thinking. The idea of a cycle involving the fracture and restoration of harmony bears a clear relation to the Pythagorean belief in the cycle of reincarnations which the guilty soul must undergo before it can recover heavenly bliss. Empedocles avows his allegiance to this belief, and identifies the primal sin requiring the punishment of reincarnation as an act of bloodshed committed through ‘trust in raving strife’. Purifications accordingly attacked the practice of animal sacrifice, and proclaimed prohibition against killing animals to be a law of nature. Empedocles’ four elements survived as the basis of physics for 2,000 years. Aristotle was fascinated by On Nature; his biology probably owes a good deal to its comparative morphology. Empedocles’ cosmic cycle attracted the interest of the early Stoics. Lucretius found in him the model of a philosophical poet. Philosophical attacks on animal sacrifice made later in antiquity appealed to him as an authority.

Reply to Bernard Williams' ‘Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline’

Philosophy ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 76 (4) ◽  
pp. 605-614 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hilary Putnam
Keyword(s):  
Central Issue ◽  
Bernard Williams ◽  
Primary Qualities ◽  
Absolute Conception ◽  
The World ◽  
The Absolute

In ‘Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline,’ Williams is mistaken in thinking that I accused him of thinking that that we can describe the world ‘as it is anyway’ without using concepts. Our real disagreement is over whether it makes sense to think that the concepts of physics do this. The central issue is this: the notion of ‘absoluteness’ is defined using at least one semantical notion (‘convergence’). If Williams' view is to work, I argue, at least one semantical notion needs to be absolute. But Williams himself concedes that semantical notions cannot be reduced to physical ones, and the ‘absolute conception’ is supposed to be given in terms of primary qualities alone.

Learning Geometry and a New Language

2000 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 246-250
Author(s):  
Donna Norton Swindal
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Understanding ◽  
School Mathematics ◽  
Two Dimensional ◽  
Evaluation Standards ◽  
Spatial Sense ◽  
Television Shows ◽  
Geometric Concepts ◽  
The World

The world of geometry has a language of its own. Although most of our students learn the label names for several two-dimensional shapes from childrens' television shows, they still need to understand geometric concepts, recognize opportunities for applying these concepts, and be able to communicate using the concepts in authentic situations. NCTM's Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics (1989) jolted many teachers into realizing the need for deeper exploration of geometry. Students need the time and opportunity to develop spatial sense and investigate two- and threedimensional figures in a setting that encourages inquiry and immerses students in the experience, language, and conceptual understanding of geometry.

Comte's Positivism and the Science of Society

Philosophy ◽  
1951 ◽  
Vol 26 (99) ◽  
pp. 291-310 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. B. Acton
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Sense Perception ◽  
Hypotheses Testing ◽  
The World

Positivism is the view that the only way to obtain knowledge of the world is by means of sense perception and introspection and the methods of the empirical sciences. Positivists believe that it is futile to attempt to deduce or demonstrate truths about the world from alleged self-evident premisses that are not based primarily on sense perception. They consider, on the contrary, that knowledge of things can only be advanced by framing hypotheses, testing them by observation and experiment, and reshaping them in the light of what these reveal. Thus they regard metaphysics, in so far as it is the effort to find out about the world by methods other than those employed in the empirical sciences, as a hopelessly misdirected activity. The method of hypothesis, they hold, is applicable to any field of factual enquiry, although they admit that differences of subject-matter may call for very considerable variations of emphasis. Such variations, however, important though they be, are, on their view, matters of detail, and do not detract from the essential sameness of the effective method. This method was first consciously analysed by reference to the sciences of nature, where its use has led to impressive results both in the theoretical and practical sphere.

Mysticism and Sense Perception

1973 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 257-278 ◽  
Author(s):  
William J. Wainwright
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Mystical Experience ◽  
Cognitive Status ◽  
Sense Perception ◽  
Ordinary Objects ◽  
Important Phenomenon ◽  
The World ◽  
Mystical Experiences ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Numinous Experiences

In this paper I propose to examine the cognitive status of mystical experience.There are, I think, (at least) three distinct but overlapping sorts of religious experience. (1) In the first place, there are two kinds of mystical experience. The extrovertive or nature mystic (in some sense) identifies himself with a world which is both transfigured and one. The introvertive mystic withdraws from the world and, after stripping the mind of concepts and images, experiences union with something which (in some respects at least) can be described as an undifferentiated unity. Introvertive mysticism is a more important phenomenon than extrovertive mysticism. (2) Numinous experiences are complex experiences involving dread, awe, wonder, and fascination. One (apparently) finds oneself confronted with something which is radically unlike ordinary objects. Before its overwhelming majesty and power, one is nothing but dust and ashes. In contrasting oneself with its uncanny beauty and goodness, one experiences one's own uncleanness and ugliness. (3) The experiences bound up with the devotional life of the ordinary believer (gratitude, love, trust, filial fear, etc.) are also religious in character. Nevertheless these more ordinary experiences should, I think, be distinguished both from numinous experiences and from mystical experiences, for they do not appear to involve the sense of immediate presence which characterises the latter.

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