What is knowledge? It’s all the information that comes to us either through the senses or by reflection. Let’s look at knowledge that comes from sense activity. Note that your range of knowledge is largely determined by the range of your senses. If the senses of sight and hearing, for instance, are unresponsive, you will miss we half of life. The ideal of Pelmanism, in reference to the senses, is to be alive to external appeals.
Life and Response
You are a living person. You can grow. External facts like sunsets, lakes seen in the moonlight, the mist in the valley, and the song of the nightingale, can change the outlook of your soul, if you will only see and hear. The slogan of this lesson is: BE ALIVE
The Senses and Mental Efficiency
Begin by supposing that you have almost no sense power; that you cannot see or hear anything; that your senses of taste and touch and smell are only moderately developed.
Out of a Sense Prison
Then imagine that the sense of touch was fully restored to you, adding itself to those of taste and smell. You could then know a great deal more about external things, their shape, their weight, their heat, and their coldness. The mind would have a considerable increase in data about which to exercise its powers, but the complete absence of the powers of sight and hearing would form an insuperable barrier against any further advance. Should another sense suddenly come – hearing, for instance – to act in conjunction with the taste, smell and touch already working, the outside world would become more and more real; voices would bring language into being; and that would bring communion with others. Add still another sense, the most important of all, and the advent of sight would release you entirely from your “senseless” prison. You would come out into the normal state of ordinary human beings with senses alive to all the joys of social intercourse.
Sensation and Perception
It is possible to have sensations that do not immediately become perceptions; or, if they do, the perceptions are so weak that they fail to live beyond the life of the moment. Thus, if we hear a clock striking, the sound acts on the nerves of hearing, which in turn enable us to perceive the fact that the clock is chiming the hour. If, after paying no particular attention to the number of strokes, we ask ourselves “What hour did it strike?” it is sometimes possible to tell exactly the number of strokes by consulting the record in our subconscious. This record of sensations of sound is kept for a few moments, subconsciously, by the registering power of the mind; and although the striking of the clock was immediately perceived, full perception of the number of sounds was not instantaneous. But, for the bulk of daily experiences, it may be taken for granted that perception follows upon sensation with a rapidity that eludes the closest analysis. On the other hand, one may see and hear a great deal without comprehending it; and this vagueness of the life of sensation and perception is responsible, for much mind-wandering and bad memory.
Priority of Sight and Hearing
It has been said that taste and smell are inferior to the other senses, because they introduce us to a smaller range of interests; and that they are not so certain on account of their relative nature. For instance, a moderately sweet drink is hardly sweet at all if we have just partaken of a very sweet drink; and there is apt to be confusion between smell and taste. You have possibly heard somebody say, “This tastes like musk smells.” For all ordinary purposes, as well as for business life, sight, and hearing, and touch, are the most important senses, and of these we should place sight and hearing ahead of touch, and of sight and hearing we should place sight first.
The Value of Efficient Senses
When sensations are weak or inaccurate, our knowledge also will be weak and inaccurate, from which it follows that memory also will be confused; therefore a good memory depends on good knowledge, and good knowledge depends on good sensations and perceptions.
Professional Values
While one of the benefits of sense training is cultural – artists and writers have their senses wide open to capture information for their art. The second benefit of having trained senses is professional.
The result may not be an immediate and striking originality, but your knowledge will be delivered with confidence because you learned it firsthand. It will also be more intimate knowledge and ought to lead you eventually to some type of superiority.
The Value of Observation
The importance of accuracy in observation is illustrated by the manner in which many of the greatest discoveries in science and industry have been made. We all know the story of Newton and the falling apple. Those who are familiar with astronomy know that it was the observation of certain unaccountable eccentricities in the movement of Uranus that led to the conclusion there must be another planet somewhere in the solar, system, and Neptune was located, and named. It was the observation of the iridescent rays in a pile of refuse outside an oil refinery that led to the discovery of the possibilities of coal-tar dyes, and many of the most valuable by-products of petroleum. In the realm of industry and mechanics, who has not read the story of Watt, who observed that when he held a teaspoon in front of the spout of a kettle, the vapor forced it backward in spite of his effort to hold it still? From that hint he developed the steam engine.
The Artist as Observer
An illustration of the trained eye is furnished by Leonardo da Vinci in his “Treatise on Painting” (London edition 1877). To a young man of artistic susceptibilities, he says that “in order to acquire a true notion of the form of things be must begin by studying the parts which compose them, and not pass to a second till he has well stored his memory and sufficiently practiced the first; otherwise he loses his time, and will most certainly protract his studies.” Leonardo then gives some of his own observations, one of which shows that the cartilage which raises the nose in the middle of the face, varies in eight different ways.
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