Rudolf Arnheim - visual thinking

In the preface Rudolf Arnheim describes visual perception as a cognitive activity. He states that artistic activity is a form of reasoning and that perceiving and thinking are indivisibly intertwined. You could say that artists think with their senses. He quotes a review that points out that the way our senses understand the environment is the same as the operations of thinking. Rudolf Arnheim claims that productive thinking takes place in the realm of imagery. According to him the problem is that a split has taken place between senses and thoughts. This book is specialized on the sense of sight and is grounded on earlier works such as "Art and visual perception" and "Toward a psychology of art" which deals with the psychology of perception.

Chapter one - Early Stirrings In order to cope with the world the mind has to fulfill two functions: gather information and process it. The collaboration of thinking and perceiving is essential for cognition. But popular philosophy insists on a division between these two. Gathering data is recognized as the higher cognitive function whereas perceiving as the inferior one. Our whole educational system is based on that idea. Young kids learn by seeing and shaping before they enter the school. School education discriminates perception. "The arts are neglected because they are based on perception and perception is disdained because it's not assumed to involve thought." Art is the most powerful means to strengthen perception which is essential for productive thinking and reasoning power.

How did this unwholesome split of perception and thinking come about? In hebrew tradition there is a long hostility against graven images. It starts with the destruction of a sculpture (the golden calf) by Moses. Here are some examples of reflections by Greek thinkers.

The senses mistrusted The early thinkers located the split between perception and thought in the outside world. They thought perception to be misleading such as a stick in water seems to be broken. They thought of an objectively existing world and our perception of it. The heavenly versus the terrestrial: The heavenly with its reliability of events in astronomy and math versus the terrestrial with its disorder and unpredictable senses. The difference between the physical and the mental marks the beginning of psychology. "Psychology, as it cam to be practized, has cautioned us not to identify innocently the world we perceive with the world that "really" is." (Sophists) Greek thinkers wanted perception to be evaluated by reasoning. "Sensory perception and reasoning were established as antagonists, in need of each other but different from each other in principle."

Plato of two minds Plato has an ambiguous attitude. He believed that logical operations lead to stable generalities of an objective existence but he also has a deep believe in the wisdom of direct vision calling it "gazing upon truth". Still the mistrust of ordinary perception marks Platos philosophy profoundly.