The high school History examination here has a section on
interpreting images. Students always have trouble understanding how
much can be drawn and interpreted from much more complex pics than
these - I'll refer them to this argument I think with the exam coming
up in a couple of months. Quite an amazing depth of disagreement over
so little information. Wonderful.
It's an excellent example of the way our paradigm colours our
interpretation. To Sonntag and others, the understanding of what they
are seeing is completely obvious. Once that interpretation is made it
is defended, because every possible other interpretation is a
challenge to one's paradigm and thus to something very intimate.
That's why we defend our ideas to the death, even when they are
clearly flawed and faulty. My favoured character here is the curator
who changes his mind on a daily basis - given that we can't actually
'know', what else can you do but enjoy the uncertainty?
Andrew Fildes
afildes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
On 27/09/2007, at 1:35 AM, Winsor Crosby wrote:
> I found this discussion interesting especially for catching the
> bloviating Susan Sontag in an error because of lack intellectual
> rigor. I reached that conclusion because it seems obvious to me that
> she got the order wrong. She could not bother to look at the pictures
> and took the word of someone else who disliked the photographer.
>
> http://morris.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/which-came-first-the-
> chicken-or-the-egg-part-one/index.html?ref=opinion
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