TEMPLATES OF THE BRAIN: Distractions and Resolution
As ‘associate artists’ we were set two tasks by Bath Spa University Psychology Dept: to make some art, and every so often to record our introspections on a paper outline (‘template’) of the human brain.
I was a psychiatrist before I started sculpting and felt it wrong to superimpose cognitions on brain regions in such a random way. So I merged the tasks, and the result was both my ‘sculpture’ and my record of introspection.
Ten parallel transparent sheets represent the multitude of ways in which people study the brain and its emergent mind.
Each school of thought grows according to its methodology, struggling for internal consistency.
The knowledge structures that result are not designed to be compatible with each other; neither are their diagrams, their words, or their cultures.
As you see in the image above, the multitude of words and pictures describing similar concepts is distracting: so the more of the transparent sheets that you look through the more distractions there will be, until you reach the point of overload.
This may be your greatest difficulty in understanding the brain and the mind.
And yet the insights from a different way of looking must be used to test each new hypothesis.
To describe nature through science or art one must resolve many viewpoints.
PLEASE CLICK TO EXAMINE THE TEMPLATES REPRESENTING DIFFERENT APPROACHES IF YOU WISH:
INTROSPECTION (clear)
REFLECTION (insert selfie?)
BACK to home page
Martin Elphick 