Newton, Goethe and the Process of Perception: an approach to Design

Figure 5

5. 'Seeing' meaning Figure 5 now extends this exploration of the process of perception. What first appears is a black and white patchwork. On looking differently, a recognisable shape emerges from the chaos. Figure 5 is unlabelled to enable the reader to experience the process for themselves. What is portrayed in figure 5? There is a point at which the head and upper neck of a giraffe 'appears'. What happens in this moment of perception? The experience of suddenly seeing the giraffe is the experience of seeing meaning where there had only been shapes. The unity or wholeness which is perceived in that instant is the meaning 'giraffe'. It is not the meaning of what is seen, it is the meaning itself which is 'seen'. Goethe's engagement with the process of perception as described in the colour experiments entails putting attention into the looking, working to engage with, and thereby experience, the qualities of the colours. The act of concretely engaging the imagination in recreating the colours in inner visualisation exercises not only takes the person away from the verbal-intellectual mind but also away from the analytical mode of consciousness. It is engaging right-brain, holistic, pattern based synthesising consciousness, rather than left-brain, analytical, reductionist, verbally and numerically descriptive consciousness. Exact sensorial imagination is sensory and concrete, not intellectual and abstract, it is thinking the phenomenon, not thinking about it.