Program 3
Lesson 1.3
"Paradigms and Perception"

Music So, look, look at that cloud over there. Oh, that's pretty nice. Yeah, do you see it?. What do I see there? Its like, it's like... Like a greyhound bus. A greyhound bus? I don't see that at all. What do you see? I see Neil Diamond in concert. Neil Diamond in concert? A very small concert. Very small concert. I kinda see, the hair, I kinda see that, you know. Not like his old stadium shows. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I'd don't know about Neil Diamond, it might be, who is that?. Maybe, Leon Russell? Leon Russell or Neil Young? Neil Young. Neil Young.

Music. OK, this is it. This is your big chance, let's go. This it is, come on, let's go, you're on. We are back with Science 122 where we discovered The Nature of Physical Science. This is Program Number 3, "Paradigms and Perception,D which is Lesson 1.3 in Section 1 of the Study Guide. Well, that was really very good, except the word is "paradigms. That is what I have said, "paradigs."I am learning. Do not become impatient with me. That's a little better. One more time,"par-a-dimes. "Language is a little hard for you with your silicon brain, isn't it? Unlike your carbon brain, my paradigms are hard wired, and we prefer to call them algorithms. I see. Does that mean, then, that computers don't get puns? Right. By the way, I did not know that a Al Gore had rhythm. Do I detect a little bit of humor in your voice? There is nothing in my tone of voice. It is very precise. Yours, however, is odd. Maybe you are perceiving something which is not really there.

Before we're done with this program, we will have learned about the way in which our brains gather and store information as we learn about paradigms and their role in perception and in our world view. We will examine the relationships in what we see and what is real as we learn about the interaction of observation and perception, and the role played by experience and expectation. Some interesting visual illusions will demonstrate the concept of a paradigm and its effect on our perceptions. We will consider how paradigms comprise the world views of individuals as well as cultures, and compare the concept of a paradigm with the related concepts of metaphor and model, and hopefully, we'll see how it all relates TO science, which is, after all, our way of understanding how the universe works. It's also our reason for being here. Be sure to read these Objectives in the Study Guide and refer to them as you study the lesson.

Focusing on the Learning Objectives will help you to study and understand the important concepts. Compare the Objectives with the study questions for this lesson to be sure that you have the concepts under control. What is real? For that matter, what is reality? How do we know when something is real? What sensory information allows us to determine whether or not our perceptions are correct? Which is the true world? The one you see without, or with, your glasses? We cannot, under any circumstances, ever be aware of everything that our senses are receiving information about. Try and focus for a minute on the sensory input in the room where you are now. Listen to all of the sounds, the hums, the rustling and extraneous noises. Look around the room at all of the details, the clothes, the textures, and the shapes, and what about smells, and itches and aches and pains, and don't forget the different tastes in your mouth. You may become aware of a great number of things but you always have to ignore some of them. How do we know what we see? That's a dumb question, I know, but you look out there and you see something. For example, how do you know that I'm here? Because you see me. What is sight? What are you doing when you see something?

OK. So, what I'm really seeing when I see you is light bouncing off of you. Light comes from the light here and the light outside and whatever light sources. It bounces off of you. It comes into my eyes and my eyes process it somehow. All right. It goes through a lens and it forms an image on the retina that forms an electrical signal that goes to my brain and then what happens? The brain has to do something with that information, right? In other words, the brain looks at that image on the retina and your brain has to do something with it. It has to translate it somehow right? Because all the brain is getting when you see something is a bunch of impulses, a bunch of electrical signals, sort of like the computer monitor, right? The computer monitor gets a whole bunch of signals and it translates those signals into a picture. So the question and what we're getting at with this topic today's how does your brain process material and on what basis does it do the processing? Think about this. People have said that you only use about 10% of your brain.

On the other hand, I'd like to put out the conjecture that we do use most of our brain. But '0% of our brain goes to deciding what information is not important, and what information is important. So, do you have a paradigm for change? Sure. You give me a quarter, I'll give you a nickel and a pair of dimes. I guess for this program, at least, we're going to have to put up with these puns. But, you know, actually they weren't just making a pun. What was really happening was they were getting their paradigms crossed. We learn about our world, but we also learn from it. As we collect information, we must process it and organize it. A paradigm is a way of organizing and classifying sensory information. Paradigms help us to organize sensory information to help us make sense out of the world.

As scientists paradigm affect the way we design, record and interpret our experience and observations, as scientists and as humans. There's an old saying that goes, "You can get as drunk on water and you can on land."Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana. So what's funny about this? Humor often involves a paradigm shift at the end, at the punch line, after the set up. Well, Groucho was a master at this. In this particular quote the first line defines a context which sets your paradigm. The next line delivers in a different context, forcing you to switch paradigms in order to make sense out of it. Are you ____?Time flies when you are having fun meant that you enjoyed(?)taking your stop watch to the fly races. We all build internal models of our world which we rely upon to understand it and to assure our survival in it.

Our brain uses paradigms to classify, sort and process information received by the senses. Paradigm is consistently free of significant contradictions, and even when it isn't, it still works because we can shift in and out of various paradigms, although not always as well as we would like. It guides our expectations and helps us to sort, organize and classify information that we receive from our five senses. A paradigm may be personal or cultural and we each have many different paradigms for different contexts. Paradigms affects the types of questions we ask as individuals and as cultures when we are trying to make sense of the world around us. They incorporate the knowledge and experiences we have acquired since birth as we become conditioned to our physical, social and spiritual environment. It's time for another food for thought. What does the concept of paradigm have to do with the nature of science?

Now let's look at some examples of paradigms, as we try to find answers to the questions posed in that food for thought. There are many examples of paradigms at all levels. The better you understand the concept of a paradigm, the easier it should be to think of examples. Remember, a paradigm is a mental model which helps us to organize and classify information. What do you eat for breakfast in the morning? You eat breakfast food, right? How many of you eat plate lunches for breakfast? Some people do. How many of you eat cereal for dinner? Some people do. But, I'm willing to bet if you walk into a restaurant and look at the dinner menu, they don't have corn flakes on the menu. Right? Why not? Is there something bad about corn flakes in the afternoon or evening? Is there something that makes corn flakes unsuitable as a food in the evening? You see what I'm getting at here, though, right? There are certain foods that we tend to eat at certain times of the day, and depending upon how you were brought up and what culture you were raised in, you like certain foods, and don't like other foods. So, is this paradigm? When you're thinking, "Gee, I'm hungry, what am I going to have for dinner?D You sort of classify things based upon certain kinds of foods which you're more likely to eat for dinner than others. But, don't get me wrong. Not everybody does this. There are some people who don't care what they eat at a certain time of the day.

Some people are more enmeshed in certain paradigms than others. Which is the correct side of the road to drive on? Depends on the country you're in, doesn't it? If you're in the United States or, in fact, in most countries in the world, the correct side of the road to drive on is the right hand side. Why is that? We just adopted it. There's nothing any more right or wrong about the right side of the road. It's just that everybody does it. Even crossing the street can be hazardous. If you're in the right lane paradigm in a left lane country. Usually we glance to the left to see an oncoming car coming in the right lane before we step off the curve. In a left lane country, the traffic will be approaching over the right shoulder in the left lane. A quick glance won't work because it will be in the wrong direction. This is an example of a paradigm which we, as individuals, develop to even our survival which turn against us when we're out of context.

Fortunately, not all paradigms are so dangerous. Even fads were a type of paradigm. Almost everyone needs to identify with some sort of image which creates a group identity at one time or another in our lives. After all, how do we decide what clothes to wear? Whether it's to work or to church or to a party, or to the beach, the situation sort of dictates what sorts of clothing are more appropriate than others. It doesn't mean we have to dress that way, of course, but it certainly gives us guidelines. It helps us make a decision. This applies to fads in all areas, not just in fashion, but also food and music and movie themes. You name it. How many of you have ever determined for yourself that the earth goes around the sun? Anybody? So, how do you know it does? Do you know what it does? If I was to ask you, most people anyway, if I was to ask you, Does the earth go around the sun, or does the sun go around the earth?D What would your answer be? Most people would answer the earth goes around the sun. How do you know this? Its the belief of our time. This is what we were taught the first time anybody ever told you about anything having to do with astronomy. This is the model that you adopted, and everything you've learned about it since then, you put into that framework. This is a paradigm, and when we send spacecraft on a mission to Jupiter, we do this based upon a heliocentric paradigm. When we discover something new in the solar system, we try to fit it into a heliocentric paradigm. When a new discovery is made, we assume that it's got to be consistent somehow with the idea that the sun is at the center and the planets go around it. Because this is a model that guides our expectations and it guides the kind of questions that we ask. So, our perceptions of our surroundings are colored by our experiences. It's like seeing the world through colored glasses. That's the way I see it.

Paradigms color our perception by filtering information, much in the same way the sun glasses filter light, letting light only a certain color through to our senses. So, which is the real world? The world through the glasses, or the world not through the glasses. Our personal paradigms, the filters, are conditioned by our experiences throughout life as we learn about our surroundings. Paradigms are not just ideas that are used by scientists. They are part of the way our brains work and we all rely upon them. Paradigms are involved in all aspects of learning at many different levels. But they also help us get through our day. We develop habits and routines as we turn over certain activities to auto pilot as we learn how to do them. Remember how hard it was to drive a car the first time you tried it? You had to pay attention to everything, accelerator, steering, brakes, shifting gears, and the feeling of the road, and the forces and the sounds inside the car required your complete attention.

Now, when you drive, I'll bet you hardly notice what your hands and feet are doing. And you've learned to ignore the unimportant sounds and vibrations in the car. Likewise, I'll bet you've had the experience of driving home after work or school and suddenly find yourself on your street and you don't remember getting there. When things like this happen, it usually means we've been ignoring those things which are not critical to driving and simply not remembering them. You can be sure that had a child run into the road, you would have noticed, reacted, and remembered. The reason we go on auto pilot sometimes is so as not to overburden the brain with trivialities, thus freeing it for important things, like survival. A very well written book entitled, "Flatland," by Edwin Abbott, chronicles the difficulties encountered by two dimensional creatures as they try to comprehend the third dimension.

Now, this book is not a small book, but it's not a large book, either, it's kind of fun reading. I highly recommend that you take a look at this. Unlike flatlanders, we can visualize three dimensions of space, although we don't do it very well, and we're still not very good, at least most of us at thinking three dimensionally. We do have stereo vision, but that only gives us the illusion of virtual space, unless we have the verification by touch. Do you think, for example, that you could enjoy virtual reality if you had never experienced the concept of space? Hello. Yeah, turn over this way. I have something to tell you. The time has come to play some mind games, to see if we can get an idea about how our expectations are governed by perceptions, and the vice versa. We are fooled by optical illusions because there something which looks familiar. Yet at the same time, it provides contradictory information. Like Groucho's time and fruit flies. What do you see on the screen here? Its a cube right? Its a cube. It's labeled with, one side is labeled A and the other sides are not labeled. So, if you were to describe how you're looking at this cube, what perspective, in other words, are you looking down on top of it, are you looking up from under it, are looking at the right side, or the left side? Well, what do you think?

OK, the cube is turned at an angle. Are you looking down on the top of it, or at the bottom of it? Suppose I was to tell you that you're looking at the top of it, and that this represents the top and this side A represents the front. It's a transparent cube, so this the bottom, and you're looking down as if it was on the floor. Everybody see that?

OK, now close your eyes for a second, just sort of, you know, just close your eyes and look back, and this time when you look up like sitting on a glass table and you're on the floor under the table looking up at the bottom of it. See that? It takes a minute to switch it sometimes. It takes a minute for you to convince your brain that you're looking it in the wrong way, and that you have to switch it around. Anybody see that? Anybody do it? All of a sudden when you look at it, you tell yourself, I'm looking at the bottom, I'm looking at the bottom, I'm looking at the bottom. All of a sudden it snaps into place like this, and now you're looking up at the bottom. So the question is, which is the true perspective of the cube? Is it looking down at the top, or is it looking up from the bottom.

Now it keeps switching, right? So, now that your mind, your brain knows that both ways are possible, it keeps switching, and sometimes you can't even control it. If you focus really hard and tell yourself, you know, if you visualize this is the key word here, if you visualize, yourself looking down on top of the box, it will stay that way. If you visualize yourself looking up at the bottom of the box, it will stay that way. But if you're not sure, and you just sort of go into it with no preconceived notion, then it doesn't seem to do either one. It seems to flip back and forth. And so everybody see that? Everybody see it both ways? Some people never will, by the way. Some people will only see it one way and there's nothing you can do to get them to see it the other way. Short of showing, you know, showing them the actual cube looking at it from the bottom. So if you don't see it, that's OK. It doesn't mean your brain's not working correctly, or anything, it just means that your paradigm is so tight in one particular perspective, that you're not seeing the other one. Staircase, right? So, how would you describe your perspective of this staircase? How are you looking at the staircase? For example, are you looking down at the staircase as if you're standing here on the second floor, looking at the staircase that comes up to you, or are you under the staircase looking up at the bottom of it as if you're on the first floor under the staircase looking up. How many of you see it as if you're looking down on it? How many see it as if you're looking up at it? Can you make it switch? This is a little harder to switch. Why do you suppose this one's harder to do than the cube? Its not transparent for one thing. That's what I would suggest. That you're more used to seeing stairs looking down on them from the top, rather than from beneath them. How often do you spend time under the steps looking up? You may not want to answer that depending upon your own personal, how you spend your time. But, if you look down on the staircase, this is a typical way of looking at it, when you walk down. So, can you see this? It sometimes helps if you have the page in front of you to turn the whole picture upside down. I can't do this on the screen easily, but if you have the page in front of you, turn the whole thing upside down and look at it and you'll see that looking at it upside down makes it look different. It makes it easier to see one perspective as opposed to the other.

Yeah, OK. Then again, that works for you, it may not work the same for everybody. Isn't it interesting though that although your brain is receiving this information, you can decide, you can tell your brain, it's time to switch this now. We're going to switch it and we're going to make it play the other way. Now, keep in mind, when we're looking at things hereon the screen, these are designed specifically to be optical illusions. They're designed for this purpose. Part of the reason they're designed this way is because when we look at normal patterns in nature, like for example, groups of stars in the sky, our brain wants to build patterns. All right? Our brain is wired to recognized patterns, and what I'm telling you here is that if there is no pattern there, your brain will invent one. Because your brain needs to see some sort of organization. It needs to see some sort of order. I think we'll see more of this as we move through some of these examples.

We are fooled by optical illusions because our brains rely on paradigms to compare patterns in sensory information to existing models stored in our memory. We have seen some simple geometric models of two of these types of illusions. But paradigms get much more complex than this. The ability of our brains to see patterns of order is phenomenal. It's so phenomenal, that we often allow ourselves to see things in those patterns when it's not clear whether the patterns are objective or subjective. Here's what I mean. Take the patterns in tea leaves which have been used for centuries for fortune telling. It's a great art to be able to read the leaves, but it makes no difference as far as the validity of the fortunes whether the perceived patterns are in the tea leaves or in the mind of the reader. The idea in the mystic arts is the fortune, not its source or its medium, is the message.

In the physical sciences, it does matter. We're trying to understand the rules of the game, not to predict the outcome. The truth or falsity of the prediction is only for confirmation of the idea, not an end in itself. We do use the comparison of outcome with predictions when we analyze experiments. But, we insist that the predictions must consistently match the outcomes with a small margin of error before we claim to know the rule and call it a law.

Now let's go and see how we process more complex shapes, where there are many models or categories of models instead of only a few to compare against incoming sensory impressions. What I'm saying here is that facts and patterns have different interpretations, that different minds will interpret different facts, different patterns at different times. Let's see what happens here. This is an example of what artists call figuring ground. So, what is it that we're looking at here? Could it not be a vase or a chalice, drinking cup? Which one is it? Its both, isn't it? Well, let me ask this. Most people, although you recognize it as both, and you can probably get it to switch back and forth fairly easily. In fact if you focus on the white part, it's a chalice. If you focus on the black part, it's two faces. Can you see both of them at the same time? Really? Be sure it isn't switching back and forth really fast? Some people can do this. And I suggest here that some people who write great music like Bach, for example, was probably very good at hearing the entire piece at the same time he was hearing how each of the individual pieces played one against the other. But most people cannot do this. Most people, when you look at this, even though you know that both of them are there, it will switch back and forth, and it will sort of oscillate really fast. Is it a vase, or is it vases? Listen to this fugue as you look at it. In the music try to pick out the individual melody lines. But wait, which one is the melody? Then try switching your perspective to listen to the piece as a whole, as the melodies blend in counterpoint.

Music. OK. Again, this is drawn specifically to illustrate this point. But what I see here is an old lady. Everybody see an old lady? What do you see? Both at the same time? Sort of have to take your choice. So how many of you see the old lady, the old hag here? I'll outline the old hag for you. So, here's her chin, here's the mouth, here's the nose. Sort of got a bump on the nose. Here's one eye. Here's an eyebrow sticking up. Here's sort of bushy hair. So here's the outline of the face, right? Here the hair's almost covering the eyes, here's the nose, here's the chin. Her chin is sort of buried in her fur that she's wearing around her neck. Everybody see that one? How about the young lady? See the young lady? She sort of turned with her head, sort of three quarter to the young lady. Here's her chin. Here's a little nose and here's and eyebrow sticking out here. Here's an ear, and here's a neck and she's wearing a necklace. She's still wearing the same fur. She's still wearing the same scarf on her head, even got the same feather, and the same hair. Everybody see that one? So the question is, which one is it? You say it's both, right? I'm going to disagree with you. It's neither. What it is, is a bunch of lines on the screen. Your brain takes those lines and turns them into a pattern that reminds you of something that you've seen. Either whether you've seen that particular picture or not, you have enough pattern recognition based upon your experiences throughout your life, that you can recognize the picture of a woman standing like this or the old hag with the chin. It makes it easy if you have things in your experience to the compare the pictures to. If you have never seen any of these things, you might have a difficult time.

You know that anthropologists back in the 1'50s were very amazed when they went into some of the less technological cultures who have been shut off from the outside world to take pictures and show the people the pictures, people don't recognize the pictures. In other words, you show somebody who's never seen a photograph, never seen a drawing on a flat piece of paper, show them a photograph.

At first people don't recognize a photograph. All of us, or most of us, anyway, have been looking at books and pictures and everything since we were too small to remember, certainly from the first grade. So that we've built up a paradigm of recognizing flat things and expanding them into three dimensions. That's why we recognize the cube, right? Its not really a cube. What it really is, is a figure, and it's your brain that takes that cube and makes the three dimensional and compares it to a classification of items that you have stored in your brain some place which you call cube. You can generalize from that if I showed you a cube that wasn't the same on all sides, a box, in other words. You'd recognize that as well. This is why art works. What's interesting about this particular picture is that it is actually a picture of a Dalmatian. A dog, a spotted dog. Does everybody see it? Here's an ear, here's a nose. The dog's sort of sniffing the ground and here's its back, and here's its rump, and the tail is sort of here. Here's one back leg. Here's another back leg. Here's a front leg, and the other front leg, sort of out in front. Don't see it? What's interesting about this particular picture is that I've used this in several classes throughout the past five or six semesters and people have said they see all kinds of things in it.

One semester somebody said they saw a pig. Today you see a face. But it is actually a photograph of a Dalmatian. I think, well, there's a tree in the background. And what it is, is a high contrast picture, right, of a tree. This is the shade of the tree, a bunch of leaves on the ground from the tree, and the dog standing in the leaves, sniffing. Everybody see the dog now? If you look away from it, try to envision 101 Dalmatians and then all of a sudden look back at it and, you'll probably see it. This picture is also in your notes, so if you don't see the dog, you might want to take a few minutes to stare at this and see if you can see it. You see my point, though, right? What's happening here; this picture is much more obscure, there's much less of a clue here of what the thing really is. Is there really a dog here? Well, I think there is. But, if you don't see it, there's no way that I can convince your prove it to you that it's here without sitting down and actually drawing the outline of the dog in. In other words, if I was to try to convince you that there is actually a dog here, we could argue about it forever. You could say, "There's no dog," and I could say, "Yes, there is. And, to you, there's no dog; to me, there is. Who's right? Who's wrong?

There's a very interesting story behind the Canadian flag.

I don't want to spend a lot of time relating the story, but it goes something like this. You may not be aware of this, but there's been a strong separatist movement in Canada ever since the revolutionary times. Separatist meaning that there's a French culture in Canada that would like to be a separate country. They had just a vote whether Quebec was going to separate from Canada.

In the 1'70s the Canadian government decided that they needed a new flag. So, they set out to commission an artist to draw them a picture of a new flag. At which point it was to be given back to Parliament and subcommittees within Parliament would decide upon the design of the flag. And then they would throw this out to an open election and the people would vote on it and they would get input and they'd finally decide on a flag. The 1'70s was a particularly hard time for the country of Canada because the separatist movement was extremely strong. So, what happened was that the artist drew a picture of the flag based on the maple leaf. They drew the design and took it back to committee and the committee, which consists of both separatists and the Royal government, argued about it. They argued back and forth about, they didn't like this design, they didn't like this part of it. This went on and on for months.

Finally, after many months of haggling and squabbling, they finally decided upon this design, and they published the design and said this is going to be our new flag, we want comments. One of the first comments was that this is not a maple leaf at all. Remember the picture of the vase and the chalice? Somebody pointed out that if you look at this, sort of in a stylized way, that you can see two men with angry expressions on their face with their foreheads together scowling at each other across the table. You see that? Now the question I have for you here is, "Was this an accident?D Nobody said, "We're going to make this flag look so that the figure and ground thing looks like two people arguing. But apparently what's happened here was that in the process of arguing about the design of the flag and suggesting changes, that the people involved had put their feelings and the tension of the situation into it.

Now, I may be reading more into it than there really is here. It may be that this is simply just a sketch of a maple leaf, and this isn't here at all. There certainly was no intent or at least the parties involved deny any intent. I want to show you what an actual maple leaf looks like. Just so we can compare and see whether it looks like a maple leaf or not. Here's a maple leaf. You see that it has certain features of the flag, but do you see the two angry men in this? I don't see it. I mean, it may be there, but I don't see it. I see something here that looks like one of the noses on the guys. You notice first of all that the maple leaf doesn't have the symmetry of the actual flag. But certainly here's the long portion that represents one of the points of the leaf, and here's that same thing in the stylized picture. But there's nothing that indicates the tension there in the actual maple leaf. When we see something like this, we have no way of knowing whether it's actually there, or actually whether it's just something that we're perceiving because of this necessity to have order in our lives. Does that make sense? See this is what we're confronted with all the time in science. Because we are looking for patterns and we see patterns whether there are patterns there or not.

So our job as a scientist is to decide which patterns are really there, and which patterns we're only creating out of this necessity for sense of order from our own brains. And the problem is, of course, that we never know. The only way we know in science is to keep collecting enough information until the pattern becomes so clear that we have no choice.  And what often happens, by the way in science, is that we start collecting information and we see a pattern start to emerge, and we assume that this pattern means something, and so we go off on that tangent until we find that we have enough information to realize that the pattern was wrong in the first place. That the pattern really wasn't there and we were simply imagining things. This is basically what happened with the geocentric idea. That on the surface the geocentric seems like a really good idea. But as you begin to collect more and more data, which shows where the planets actually are as opposed to where you think they ought to be, then you find that the geocentric ideas, it doesn't work. It just becomes too complicated. What do these two pictures have in common? Is there any way that you could confuse one picture for the other? I mean, one's very clearly, well the face of a man, and the other's very clearly, the body of a woman. But there are some common elements here, aren't there? There's this piece which is the hair on both which is the same shape, same size. There's this which is the nose on the man, and here it's the elbow of the woman. I want to switch for a minute to a movie where we can watch one of these images morph into the other one. When you watch it, you can see very clearly how one becomes the other. I think I want to loop this back and forth as I run it.

Watch how one image very slowly changes into the other. And you notice as it moves very slowly this way, it's so subtle that you don't really see the changes happening. But if you look away for a second or so, when you look back, you can see that quite a bit of changes has happened. See what's happening? The woman's suddenly appearing now and the man's disappearing. The question I want you to think about when you're looking at this stuff is, at what point does the woman disappear or the man disappear and the woman become apparent? In other words, at what point, given the picture, would you say, this is a picture of the woman as opposed to this is a picture of the man? And I would suggest that you will say that transition takes place at different points depending on whether you see the picture of the man first or whether you see the picture of the woman first.

I want to stop this and move it over here about half way. When it's about half way from one to the other, which one does it look like? This particular illusion is designed to show this aspect. The way we've done this where I showed you the transition first, it's impossible now to go back and show you this and say, "What does it look like? Because you've already seen the whole thing, you already know what's going on. I've done this in previous classes without telling anyone what it is, you know, just showing this picture first. And if you start over here with it very clearly a man, and you run it like this, by the time it gets to about here someplace, people will say, "Oh, yeah, now I see the woman. But on the other hand, if you start over here with the woman and run it backwards or run it this way, they'll usually get maybe this far before people will say, "Oh, now I see the man. So, depending on where you start, it makes a difference as to how much you can alter this before you see the other image appear. How's that relevant for science? The whole idea of seeing patterns whether there or not is the basis behind the Rorschach test psychiatrists use to help psychoanalyze people. What a psychiatrist does is to show the patient a bunch of ink blots. And simply ask the patient to describe what they see in that ink blot. And, you know, if all the patient says is, "I see a bunch of ink blots," that tells the psychiatrist something about your particular way of perceiving things. But, if every story, for example, involves squashed bugs, that also tells the psychiatrist something about your particular personality.

Now, again, I'm not a psychiatrist, nor do I pretend to be. But, the basis for this Rorschach analysis is exactly that. The different people will see things is a particular pattern which, say something not about the pattern itself, but say something about the mind of the person who's doing the perceiving. One of the best examples of the way in which we create patterns is the famous case of the face on Mars. This case is famous enough that it even has its own Web page. The URL or address for that Web page is on your screen. Of course, you'll need Netscape or some other Web browser and the connection to the internet in order to find this. That doesn't matter. We've downloaded some of this stuff for you. So we can show you some of these NASA photographs. So here's the story.

In the 1'80s when the United Stated still had a space program the Mars orbiter sent back many pictures of the surface of the Red Planet. In one of the pictures a feature was discovered which resembles a face. In the intervening years a cult has been built around this shadowy outline whose followers suggest that it proves the existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life, and a conspiracy by the government to withhold this information from the rest of us, among other things. It's important to note that the NASA photo which revealed this feature was released to the public only after it was image enhanced by computer. Here we see that there's no recognizable face in the top photo which is the unenhanced version, or in fact, any other pattern at all, in this raw data. When the computer enhances the image, it uses an algorithm which increases the contrast and brings out details. The enhancement process requires a decision on the part of the computer to darken or lighten a particular pixel in the image. The resulting patterns are reasonably accurate, but nonetheless, they have been altered, and we can never be sure exactly how much and exactly to what degree.

Now, one could claim that the intelligent aliens specifically designed this thing, whatever it is, to be computer enhanced in that way. There are some problems with that. I mean, why would you build something which can only be computer enhanced in a certain way, if you were trying to design it to be seen? As some of the cultists claim. So, here are some of the intermediate images in the enhancement process. Note that the face only becomes apparent after several stages of enhancement. In these pictures the enhancement increases from the bottom to the top. We don't know why they did that, but that's the way the images came. So, where is the face? Is it on the surface of Mars? Is it in the algorithm which enhances the image? Or, is it in the mind of the beholder? Or, is it an interaction of all three--the thing, itself, the processing algorithm and the perception of the beholder. Are you suggesting that a computer is a conspirator? No, I'm not implying that at all. In fact, what I'm suggesting is that the only conspirators are to be found in the nature of the interaction between consciousness and patterns, mediated by paradigms.

Now, pay attention, please. Analysis of this Martian face shows it's not face at all, but just an illusion that depends on the angle of viewing and the angle of the sun that happened to be at the time the picture was taken. These film clips show the crater with different lighting angles. Notice how the shape and shadows change with the angle of light. Just the way they did with the image of the cube, which we saw earlier. In the other film we see a view as if the camera was flying a circle around the bottom of the crater from ground level. And you see this is very clearly an odd looking shape, but it's nothing that looks like a face. It's a cinder cone with a ridge down the center.

Now, it's still possible to claim that the intelligent aliens constructed this cinder cone so that it would appear to us to be a face upon computer enhancement using the appropriate algorithms which we would have to invent when we were ready. It's possible. But which is more likely? And more consistent with our physical knowledge of the Martian environment? One, it's an alien structure designed to be visible only upon extensive computer enhancement by algorithms which have to be invented independently. Or, two, it's a cinder cone, not unlike those on earth that kind of looks like a face. It looks like a face because our perception is highly sensitive to face recognition. And so we tend to see faces more often than other things. But take your choice. The parsimonious and paradigmatically consistent and, therefore, the scientific way is to conclude subject to further verification or denial, that it's a cinder cone like those here on earth. The pattern of the face may or may not be there. It may be in our minds. All we can say for sure is that what we see is influenced by a complex web of conscious and subconscious paradigms which sort, classify, prioritize, and file information. We know that the human brain possesses the capability to provide missing information in order to make sense out of patterns, and will do so, even to the extent of adding enough detail to create something which is not really there. In fact, if we now go back to the enhanced image of the face, it's clear that in addition to the face, there's also a picture of Mickey Mouse. Don't you see the mouse there? Look, here's the ear, and here's another ear, here's the nose.

So, now that we've seen this, what conclusions do we draw from this? That the intelligent aliens were Disney fans. No, I don't think so. Our conclusion is that we need to remember how easy it is to jump to conclusions based upon incomplete information. Unjustified and unwarranted assumptions get us into a lot of trouble. Our scientific observations and theories try to supply as much of the missing information as possible. We design experiments which can give us more information about those areas in which the pattern is weak. We learn much this way. But even then, it's all too easy to think we know more than we really do. In this one respect, science and art overlap again.

Great artists take advantage of our tendency to create our own images from incomplete information. Relying on the mind of the beholder to provide the missing experience so that each of us gets a slightly different impression.

So, this is a summary. I wonder why they don't call it a wintry! I dunno.

We've seen some visual examples which demonstrated the way in which our brains fill in gaps and information by comparing sensory patterns to internalized models. We also learned that we do this in order to organize the data received by our senses and be able to recognize familiar patterns even if they're slightly incomplete.

If a pattern suggests something familiar, the brain, craving order, connects the dots and identifies the pattern which reminds it of something. And so, people draw constellations in the sky and see shapes in clouds and patterns in tea leaves, and faces in window reflections, in the grain of a log and on the surface of Mars. It's not just for the sense of sight that this happens. In fact, in perception, all of our senses are involved. A certain smell may trigger a vivid memory of some experience where a particular fragrance was prominent. Or a certain song on the radio may recall a particular trip in the car.

It doesn't really matter which sense provides the input, the signals must first be processed by the brain through the filters of our paradigms. The complete set of which is unique to each individual, and we are conditioned by the prior experiences which we share as well as those which are ours alone.

It sounds as if you saying only computers can be entirely objective.

No. What I'm saying is just as you have different programs which interpret the data stream in a certain way, we humans have different paradigms which do the same thing.

The difference is that computers run one program at a time, independently of each other. And you, as a computer, know what program you're running, or at least I do most of the time. And your programs are better debugged than ours. We, on the other hand, run many interactive programs at once, but we don't know what the programs are or how they work, or even what they're supposed to do, and they're not debugged. And not only that, but their operation is influenced by our moods and by our acquired attitudes. That's why it's so hard to build an intelligent computer.

Yes, I know I am not intelligent, but I am really quick.

Ha!. Hey, don't take it personally. We're not all that intelligent either, and we're not even very quick.

Well, your task now is to read the remaining material in the Study Guide in the section entitled, "Challenge Du Jour." Today's challenge involves four concepts. To master them will require that you synthesize from the TV program or tapes, Study Guide and the texts. Special consideration will be given to those responses which integrate material from previous lessons into a solid synthesis.

So here's the four questions:.

Number 1: Is a paradigm the same thing as a model or metaphor? Compare and contrast.

Number 2: Discuss the topic of significant contradictions to a paradigm. Be sure to address the question of how significant is significant.

Discuss the concept of multiple or nested paradigms.

And Number 4: How do paradigms and awareness interact. Can we be too aware?

Well, you have all the tools you need to understand this material and to synthesize answers to the questions at the end of the section. Don't hesitate to consult with the instructor or the students, if necessary. You can send e-mail, fax or come by the campus to talk. Log on to the chat line, if it's available.

Well, that's it. That's another episode of the Nature of Science. We hope you'll join us next time. Remember, when it comes to science, get physical. Bye.

What kind of voice is that, what are you doing? Why are you doing all these weird voices, you never do anything when you're supposed to do something. You just talk in a regular voice and now when it's time to say good-bye, you start doing that. I don't want you doing that anymore. You gotta ask me first, I don't want you to pull any surprises. You're a computer and not supposed to be thinking about stuff. I don't know what's going on.

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