Читать книгу The Form Within - Karl H Pribram - Страница 55

Wherein I trace the transformation of perceived patterns as they influence the brain cortex and as the brain cortex influences them.

If you throw two small stones at the same time on a sheet of motionless water at some distance from each other, you will observe that around the two percussions numerous separate circles are formed; these will meet as they increase in size and then penetrate and intersect each other, all the while retaining as their respective centers the spots struck by the stones. And the reason for this is that the water, though apparently moving, does not leave its original position. . . . [This] can be described as a tremor rather than a movement. In order to understand better what I mean, watch the blades of straw that because of their lightness float on the water, and observe how they do not depart from their original positions in spite of the waves underneath them

Just as the stone thrown in the water becomes the center and causes various circles, sound spreads in circles in the air. Thus every body placed in the luminous air spreads out in circles and fills the surrounding space with infinite likeness of itself and appears all in all and all in every part.

—Leonardo da Vinci, Optics

Enough has now been said to prove the general law of perception, which is this, that whilst part of what we perceive comes through our senses from the objects before us another part (and it may be the larger part) always comes out of our own head.

—William James, Principles of Psychology, 1890