Art and Beauty

I think this painting by the artist Paul Klee is a good example of art that is interesting and aesthetically pleasing.  I like the shapes color scale he uses, and the fact that there’s more to this painting than initially meets the eye.  This painting was originally entitled “Rose Garden (The Golden Fish)”, and if you focus on the rose at the rose in the center, you can see that Klee utilized dimension in the painting – the rose in the middle of the painting becomes the eye of a fish.  Each time you look at it from a different perspective, you see something different.  I believe that this is a good example of art because Klee’s assumed goal was to create a piece of visually appealing art with multiple dimensions.  He had a message to send across as well.  Klee most likely had a message to send across as well.  He was known to challenge the common ideas of abstract art with his ideas and painting techniques.




Something that I consider to be beautiful, but not art, is a sunrise.  The colors produced in the sky and on the water from a sunrise are different almost every time, but are always pretty.  This example is not a piece of art because it occurs naturally.  Because it was not human made, it was never intended to be art and it was never intended to communicate a message or evoke an emotional response.

I was in Washington D.C. about a year ago, and I saw some weird collections of videos in the modern art museum.  Although I couldn’t find examples of these online, I found a sample of videos from the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum of Contemporary art in Berlin.  It is considered art – there was a clear intention to convey a certain message to the audience.  However, I’m not sure what the messages behind these videos are.  Although strange and thought provoking, I wouldn’t consider them beautiful.

 

Berlin - Modern Art from Robert White on Vimeo.

Paradigm Shift: The Trial of Galileo

I would try to convince the philosopher and the mathematician that although it is difficult to abandon the principles and ideas that you believed your entire life, you must be open to new evidence.  I would try to convince them that the second-hand knowledge that was communicated to them about Earth’s position in the universe might not be reliable.  For instance, the mathematician quotes the prominent philosopher Aristotle.  They quote him because he is a greatly renowned scholar who shaped a large part of the cultural paradigm of that time, but they don’t produce any real proof.  On the other hand, Galileo can produce solid evidence that his conclusions are true.  Although it may be difficult to try to convince them that we are not the center of the universe because of the emotional commitment involved in that way of thinking, I would try to show them that if your different senses match up and point you towards a certain conclusion, it can very well be an accurate depiction of reality – even if it goes against what you previously thought.

Incognito Review

Incognito: The Secret Life of the Brain by David Eagleman discusses more than just how our conscious thoughts work; it delves into our subconscious mind and its surprising processes.  In this book, Eagleman seems to at least partially back the reductionist theory – a philosophical position which states that a complex system is nothing but the sum of its parts, and that an account of it can be reduced to accounts of individual constituents.  The evidence that Eagleman brings up seems to advocate the idea that a person or a soul is not truly in control of his or her actions; instead, the chemical reactions and interactions within the neurocircuitry in our brains dictates who we are.  However, in the conclusion of the book, Eagleman ascertains that there is still much to be learned about the human brain and that examining and completely understanding our brains with our own brains is impossible, and that there are things about ourselves we may never know.

I believe that some of the evidence that Eagleman brought forward in this book is pretty interesting.  In one chapter, he mentions the condition spatial synesthesia.  People with spatial synesthesia see things in a different dimension than others.  For example, they can “see” Thursday or point to the number 99.  While I would imagine this to be an unrealistic nuisance to live with, people with this condition can’t imagine living without it.  Eaglman then draws the analogy of a color blind person asking someone with typical sight if it bothers them being able to see colors all of the time.  What he poses about reality being subjective opened my mind to the world around me.  While I know that it is best to be reasonable and live my life based on what I perceive, this evidence makes me wonder if there truly is an objective reality.

While Eagleman brings up some interesting evidence, I do not always agree with the way he interprets it.  For example, in one chapter, he brings up certain cases, such as the University of Texas shooting, where people who have committed a crime actually did so because of neurological damage such as a brain tumor.  Eagleman then goes on to say that it can be possible that people who commit crimes may do so based on the way their brain is wired, and we have no way of knowing it because the brain defect is so small that we cannot detect it.  Therefore, he proposes that eventually we should rehabilitate criminals based on the state of their brain and their mental health instead of sentencing them to prison.  While I think this is an interesting idea that can benefit a lot of people, I do not think this is a feasible possibility in the near future.  It would be an expensive feat that would require a lot of time and energy, and we would also have to change the entire criminal justice system.  I do agree that this idea is interesting and could be beneficial, but it would take a lot of debate and changes to put it into motion – something I don’t think will happen any time soon.

In all, I think that Incognito was interesting and helped put me in a TOK mindset.  It would get slow at times, but there was a lot of interesting information on how our minds work.  However, I know that many people do not like the idea that we are just a sum of chemical reactions in our brain.  While there is decent evidence for this argument, most people, including myself, don’t want to believe it.  Either way, Eagleman does an effective job at making you think.  While the book was thought provoking, I only think that I would recommend it to a friend if he was really interested in this topic.

The Colbert Report
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Eagleman and Stephen Colbert discuss Incognito, Pink Floyd, and Inception.

Knowledge Issue: Why McDonald's French Fries Taste So Good

1. Describe/summarize the content of the article/video.

This article is an excerpt from Eric Schlosser’s book Fast Food Nation. The article first discusses the evolution of McDonald’s french fries from fresh cut food into a heavily processed food commodity and why they became so popular. It goes on to explain that the oil the fries are cooked in determines the taste, and how the oils McDonald’s has used in earlier years have been traded for flavors manufactured in factories and laboratories such as IFF. The article also explains that these flavors are created by manipulating volatile chemicals that stimulate the olfactory system. In fact, completely different tastes can work together to achieve one cohesive taste. The article then explains how the olfactory system works, and how memory, visual perception, and other psychological aspects affect how taste is perceived. Another important aspect of the article is that it explains the similarity between natural and artificial flavors – both are manmade.

2. List the different perspectives/sides presented in the article and briefly summarize their view (including your own).
An important argument the article makes is that natural and artificial flavors are not very different – both are manmade. According to a professor at Cornell University "[natural flavor] is a flavor that's been derived with an out-of-date technology." The article also explains how natural flavors are not always more healthy than artificial flavors. For example, “when almond flavor -- benzaldehyde -- is derived from natural sources… it contains traces of hydrogen cyanide, a deadly poison.” This evidence seems sound, and I feel that the advertisement of natural flavor is not what it appears to be.

3. List the AOK/WOK involved.

An area of knowledge involved in this article is the natural sciences. The sensory perception (a way of knowing) of taste, which is a very important topic in this article, is highly affected by the way chemicals react with the body.

4. What issues or ideas are related to the Situation or PT?

An idea from this article that surprised me was the fact that completely different flavors can combine to make one cohesive flavor. For example, when the author went to tour IFF, he was asked to smell several different test strips that all had a distinct smell. When he smelled all of the strips together, he reported that he smelled a hamburger. The scent was so realistic that when he closed his eyes, he thought a hamburger could have been right in front of him, when in reality, it was only a strip of paper dipped in chemicals.

5. Summarize one of the knowledge problems brought up in the article/video

When the author had his eyes closed, he thought there was a hamburger in front of him. When he opened his eyes, he saw that it was just a test strip. In this example, his sensory perceptions of eyesight and smell were conflicting. This shows that we cannot rely on only one of our senses to give us an accurate picture of reality.

6. State a Knowledge Issue related to a knowledge problem.

To what extent do our different sensory perceptions (such as sight, taste, hearing, etc.) conflict with each other?

Fast Food Nation was adapted to film in 2006. Like Schlosser’s book, it examines the health risks and the environmental and social consequences involved in the fast food industry. Parts of the trailor, in a way, help depict Schlosser's experience at IFF as described in this article.

Knowledge Issue: The Placebo Effect and the Human Mind

Unpacking the Knowledge Issue:

1. Summarize the situation in your own words.

The article Placebos are Getting More Effective. Drugmakers are Desperate to Know Why. from Wired Magzine explains the growing strength of the placebo effect within medical research studies in recent years, and the pharmaceutical industry's frustration with their hinderance in clinical trials. The article attributes the increasing efficacy of the placebo effect to basic psychology and external factors such as the media and advertising.

2. What AOK and WOK are involved?

Some areas of knowledge involved in the situation include the natural sciences and psychology. While the natural sciences involve a drug's interaction with the body to treat a disease or condition, the subject of psychology pertains to the brain's response of merely taking a pill and how it affects the way someone feels. The ways of knowing that are associated with this situation are perception, reason, and emotion. When someone takes a pill, reason tells him that it contains certain ingredients that should help treat a disease or condition. Similarly, emotion and perception plays a role. As the picture to the side depicts, certain characteristics of a pill such as color or brand can alter one's opinion about the drug's actual efficacy. A person can also use sensual perception to tell wheter or not he or she feels better.

3. What issues or ideas are related to this situation?

An important idea related to this situation is a drug's efficacy at actually treating a condition versus the psychological effect of taking a pill that may make a person feel better.

4. What is the "Knowledge Problem"?

In this situation, the Knowledge Problem is that a person has no way of knowing whether or not a drug or pill is truly effective at treating a disease or condition. Your perception cannot tell you whether or not a drug is chemically effective. It can only tell you how you feel.

5. State the Knowledge Issue.

To what extent does reason and emotion affect one's knowledge and awareness of his or her actual health?

True Knowledge

To know, is to know that you know nothing.  That is the meaning of true knowledge.
-- Socrates

The world around us is constantly changing.  The universe is far from static, so why should knowledge be?  As our lives and surroundings change, so do our thoughts and ideas.  What is considered a hard fact in one generation is likely to be discarded and ridiculed by the next, just as we question and leave behind the wonderful and impossible beliefs we held as young children.  For example, in the dead of night, I used to hear tapping and scratching above my bed.  Upon hearing this for the first time, I came to the logical conclusion any five-year-old would -- ghosts.  I didn't have a reason to believe there weren't ghosts in the attic, and I constantly tried to convince my parents of the paranormal activities in the house with this fallacy.  After about a week of pestering them, I found that I was wrong.  It was mice.  After the problem was taken care of, the noises subsided, and all thoughts of ghosts left my mind.

Now that I am older, I've learned the value of justification, and I try to base my knowledge on facts and evidence.  I accept scientific findings and what I read in textbooks to be true, as long as there is substantial evidence supporting them.  I, like many of my classmates, am content with accepting the discoveries and knowledge of experts as true.  Because I do not have the tools or the background information to make a scientific discovery of my own, I must rely on the work of others.  However, it can prove useful to be skeptical of experts' knowledge.  Without curiosity and skepticism, we would not progress.  I try to place the knowledge that I gain from textbooks on the belief-knowledge continuum.  While it is extremely difficult to know something for certain, it can be viewed as beyond reasonable doubt, or probable.  Striving for more knowledge into justifying a particular subject area, or even proving the subject to be true knowledge, will allow us to continue to pursue knowledge and progress.