Instant Impact of the Whole Word - Essay Example

Essay 12 May Instant impact of the whole word When I see a building from far, I see it as a whole, and with every step forward, I start seeing more of its parts with successive loss of its identity as a unit. If I step backwards, the impact is reversed. It means that, not only the being of building but also its distance from the viewer has something to do with the perception of the viewer. It also means that both; stance of the ‘viewer’ and the nature of the ‘view’ correlate and coexist throughout the phenomenon of seeing. Just as a building is made of bricks, words are made of letters, their basic building blocks. Although I have this knowledge, yet do I ever see, at the first glance, the building in the form of bricks or its very basic building blocks? When I see a human figure, I see it as a whole and not in its x-rayed, skeletal form. The external factor; distance, however counts and impacts my vision of the image. Faculty of hearing is not different from seeing in this respect .When I hear a word and understand it in a flash, does "the whole use of the word come before my mind" (section 139)? If so, how? If not, how then do I really understand the word? ( Wittenstein )1”. I am of the opinion that when I hear a word and understand it in a flash, the whole use of the word comes before my mind. Regarding its mechanism; how I understand it, let me explain an example of the organoleptic or sensory perception of flavors. Whatever an expecting mother drinks or eats, the child, in the very early (fetal) stage perceives its flavor; the combinated effect of odor, taste, color and even the feel of its texture. How is it possible, while the child has never seen the color of the food? Now, can we perceive the strawberry flavor in a product, if the product is white? Not really, not at least in its full impact, reason being that red color is an essential to the ‘whole’ of strawberry. Suppose, the strawberry flavor used in the product was green , ripe, over ripe or fermented type, the experienced note is embedded in the retentive memory of both; mother and child. At a later stage of life, if any one of them happens to consume a product of similar flavour, the matching flavor in memory is retrieved and not only facilitates but also accelerates the process of identifying it. Similarly a data base of flavours is there in the mind of everyone and the identification of the flavour is subject to the size of the data base and the accuracy of retrieval of the relevant flavors.A flavourist recognizes more types of flavours in their true profiles on account of his or her larger data base, extensive use(repeated and faster retrieval) and accurate inference. The formal route of identification; olfactory sense, taste bud perception etc.are skipped and the brain response in case of the falavourist is as the ‘whole profile of flavour’ and not as its constituents; odor, taste, colour, texture etc. In addition to the accumulated experience there is another very important factor in the instant perception of something as whole, and that is ‘intution’. I have seen sheep and goat grazing in the field with lot of ‘Datura’ plants with their very attractive, pure white, trumpet like flowers. Never, anyone of them tries or even indicates an intention of consuming this plant. How do they know about the toxic nature of the plant? Through ‘Intution’ only, I would say. Occasionally and rather strangely, a cat is seen chewing the grass. Why so, while by nature a cat is carnivorous? I think, in this case too, intution is at work. It may be a corrective action to adjust pH (say acidity) of the stomach contents. Intution is at work in both the cases with a difference that in the former case it repels while in the later case it attracts. In reference to the inherent characteristics, it had been for long, a popular belief that we see the objects by virtue of their inherent light, while now we understand that it is owing to the ‘external’ light reflected from the surface of an object. Question is that, don’t we see a phosphorescent object on account of its inherent luminescence? Answer to that is, it depends upon the nature of the object. A word, similarly is heard by virtue of both ,the inherent characteristic as well as its external image, which is perceived in accordance with a particular frame of mind of the listener; either as a duck or a rabbit. Letters have their own energy and the words too. Energy contained in the words is the sum of energy of letters used in the word multiplied by the energy of its sending, communicating or presenting. An energetic word, communicated strongly is perceived as whole by the recipient and that, at a faster rate. Mechanism of this transference is like any other form of energy. A weak word contrarily, is perceived as a loose bundle of wood, comprising of letters of course, in this case and, it is not perceived instantly. In case of being too weak it may be even split into its constituent letters prior to reaching the target. What ‘externalization’ is to a psychiatrist, ‘punctuation or citation’ is to a writer. Many factors count towards building up energy into a word. Even the font style and size, capatilisation. Underlinig, phonology etc. are the nutrients of a word. How well a word has been coined, pronounced and how effective is it’s projectory, depends upon the medium or ether through which it has been projected. Rate of movement of electrons through a bad, semi, good or super conductor is obviously in accordance with the resistance offered during their movement. The ethereal medium may function either like like a coarse and dry ground or like a slippery Ice, allowing almost friction free skiing of the words enabling quick transference in the image form as a whole unit. In case of resistance, the image is either transferred in a foggy or even distorted form or delivered almost in the shattered form of letters. How different persons interexchange while none of them understands the other, s language? It is ,obviously the body language including the pitch of voice, the movements of hands, the facial expressions and use of additional in-built device; intution. I saw a lady who offered her prayers regularly. She was deaf and dumb by birth. I wondered that with her congenital blindness and absolute loss of hearing what she recited during her prayers? What was her concept of God? What words she used in her offerings? She had never heard someone praying; give us this day our daily bread. As an illiterate she was, there was not the remotest possibility of thinking that she might have read it somewhere. There was however a consensus among us; the people around her, that she prayed just in a normal and formal way. How we can interpret this phenomenon? Can we coin an alternate word for ‘Amen’ and have the same impact? I think not, because of the lack of the intrinsic energy which the original word has. Amen, is transferred to the concerned as a word and not as letters. Mechanism of this transference is like transference of energy from one to the other form, from letters through words to a whole ‘image’ just like transformation of heat energy through red heat then white light, say as in an electric bulb. How does a child conceptulise the word ‘mama’? regardless of the colour ,creed ,or geographical situations, this word is probably the most frequently asked word by children ,right from their infancy, and probably the most ‘said’ word too, at least when it is a matter of mother and child relationship. If we analyze the cognition of the word by the infant, it is definitely a matter of ‘whole’ not a part of it. The infant perceives it as the whole picture of the mother in her fullest and complete form. How the divine books were revealed upon the Messengers? Word by word in the form as they are, or meanings only were revealed upon them which were later on, depending upon their prevalent conditions were transformed into the suitable languages? There are different schools of though but one at least out of them is in favor of the former; that they were revealed in ‘form’ and not in ‘meanings’. Is it logical? Yes, because a beginner, amateur poet , collects and selects the rhyming ‘words’ first, structures a suitable mould and then pours tailored ideas into them. Unlike them, an idea in its ‘whole’ form enlightens great men of letters in a finished form; a verse, a sentence, may be even in the form of a whole stanza. If this happen to the great poets who are after all common men, then why not upon the Holy and Gifted Messengers, the divine books could be revealed in their ‘whole’ form as they are. An addict during hallucination, a patient of Alzheimer’s disease during soliloquy, or a dreamer, all utter ‘words’ not letters. Their words however have different meanings on account of externalization. Words are like fire flies, with their continuously discontinuous, light and dark pattern of flight. Had they been flying at an accelerated speed, I think they might have left a continuous trail of light behind them. Sentences too are arranged in a continuously discontinuous fashion, and appear like uninterrupted continuous lines to those who can infer them correctly and like set of different words to those who experience difficulty in inference. Not only the literal meanings but also the, frame of mind, the environment and many other factors give shape to the denotation and connotation of words. Words appear as ‘whole’ but the mechanism of this appearence depends upon who is their thinker, former, speaker or listener. As a thumb rule, the more advanced is an animal, more is the number of rudiments in it, as it is in case of the human beings. A cow can easily move the ears on account of its functional ear muscles, while human beings can not, though it is manifest in some human beings at times. My point is that the presence of non functional ear muscle in human being is not an indication of an insufficiency, it is rather freedom from its need on account the highly dexterous limbs. A genius similarly skips quite a few stages during cognition on account of superiority of his or her thinking process, which is performed like skiing or a super conduction. How a word is converted and perceived as a whole, is a different mechanism for a mediocre and for a born genius, in fact the thought process is customized and individualized and it is not the same for Newton, Einstein, Bertrand Russell and many others like and unlike them and there is need for more research to decipher cognition. Work Cited 1. Wittenstein, Ludwig. "Philosophische Untersuchungen 139."http://everything2.com/title/Philosophische+Untersuchungen+139. N.p., n.d. Web. by apocryphistThu Apr 11 2002 at 21:47:29 Read More