S K-B: HomSap is a remarkable species (i) driven by "pure" curiosity;
able to enhance its own sensory perceptions BEYOND the minimum "animal-survival"
needs (ii) able, magically, to CALCULATE exactly the LIMITS of what can be
observed and measured (Heisenberg's Uncertainty and Planck's constant) (iii)
able to SUSPEND both belief and dis-belief, i.e., happy to shun dogma; free to
consider conflicting theories as equally plausible until further evidence. (
Summary)
JM: Gregory, in The
Intelligent Eye, and Eye and Brain stressed that humans were
sensorially poorly equipped and significantly inferior to all the other
animals. But he also pointed out that
our human freedom to think and to entertain revolutionary ideas is a
direct consequence of this inferiority of ours: instead of seeing
objective things as they "really"are, our deficiencies
force us to interpret, hallucinate,
invent them.He argues that, from the adaptative stand-point, our
diminished perceptual capacity is an asset for
survival.
S
K-B detailed how we can "view the world
through our instrumentally enhanced sense organs, aiding and
aided by astute analytical brains. Jumping slow evolution, we now have better
eyes than a house-fly, faster flutters than a butterfly: our spectrometers,
electron-microscopes and atomic clocks boost the natural scale of our
perceptions a trillion-trillion-fold[...] whereas Gregory argued that we are adaptable to alien
environments only because our deficiencies force us to exercise
our imagination and inventiveness - in alliance with our
intelligence, of course - whereas other animals, with
their extremely ready-adapted eyes, ears, noses (or scientifically
excessively atuned brains?) die, due to the lack of any coherent input
their programs demand.
Nabokov's writings, besides everything else, help
me to envision verbal objects and their strange
logic to reach towards realities which my senses only dimly
apprehend. I think here S K-B would agree with me: "Nabokovians can, I suggest, more
readily than most, imagine the vastly different world-views of mice, men and E
Coli arising from having these widely different sensory acuities. Yet all these
world-views are valid unto themselves, reflecting different aspects of what we
loosely call an under-pinning "reality."
He also noted that "NOBODY (oft mis-read by VN as "Nabokov," you may recall!) yet
understands how these new observations FIT together." Is it fundamental to make these often contradictory "new
observations FITt together"? Do we need to become more
"evolved" animals in a struggle of a "survival of the FITtest" -
or should we make allowances for this "vagueness" ( the risks are
madness) which is such a part of artistic sensibility,
generosity, tolerance... We may always consider that this "inaccuracy", at
least, is fundamental for our "survival" as "simple
humans".