[TheForge] Re: question for part-timers & hobbyists

[Mike Spencer]

Now I *like* this answer (from Michael Horgan):

     >Back to the questions.
     >What are your personal goals for blacksmithing?

     To be able to make real what I visualize.


A very versatile and brilliant guy named Warren McCulloch published a
lot of his essays and lectures in a book entitled "Embodiments of
Mind" and that phrase has long stuck with me.  Someone (Josh Billings
?) said:

   The trouble ain't that people are ignorant; it's that they know so
   much that ain't so.

But if you know something that ain't so and you have some skills with
stuff, sometimes you can make it so.  That's an "embodiment of mind".

McCulloch was (I've read somewhere) often described, somewhat
condescendingly, by his highly technical, engineering-oriented
colleagues at MIT as "rather too much of an artist".  What a fine
complement: a highly technical and mathematical mind with the
sensibility of an artist!

For those that like to read arcane stuff, his paper (with Jerry Letvin
and others), called "What the frog's eye tells the frog's brain", can be
understood without an advanced degree in anything and makes a point
very relevant to artists and visual designers:  visual perception is
determined by the wiring in the viewer.  If you want the viewer to see
what you intend, you can't assume that (s)he'll see what you want
h{im,er} to see, what you're thinking about when you make something.
You have to make a thing that exploits the way other people look at
things to get them to see what you intend.

A little technical but if that stuff appeals to you, the paper is very
interesting and a 2nd edition of "Embodiments of Mind" appeared (MIT
Press, 1st ed 1965) a few years ago.

- Mike

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada 
                                 
mspencer@tallships.ca            
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/