(Re)Search

I think I'm gonna' start a new category of posts titled "(Re)Search," which will be mostly a collection of links and maybe some commentary on the content or inspiration for posting said links. These will likely be related--perhaps sometimes very abstractly--to ideas explored in this blog.

Tonight I found myself thinking about figure/ground ordering in perception, as well as its connection to Gestalt psychology.

I also discovered that Gestalt therapy is somewhat different from, and not entirely connected to, Gestalt psychology.

'Gestalt' being defined as: a physical, biological, psychological, or symbolic configuration or pattern of elements so unified as a whole that its properties cannot be derived from a simple summation of its parts.

There are dualities involved in the creation of the whole from its parts (aside from "whole & parts," see also : mereology): figure/ground being one aspect, in this case, of perception.

Also noted in some of the above links is the duality of Self and Other. I particularly liked the following from Gestalt therapy:

"...self...is a comparison with 'other'. Without other there is no self, and how I experience other is inseparable from how I experience self,"

which also makes think of Jung. Indeed, part of what led me on this search was the duality that can be perceived between the consciousness and the collective unconsciousness--as a form of the figure/ground relationship--with respect to interpretation of experiences.

As an aside, this applet of a stereoscopic animated hypercube is a fascinating interplay of figure/ground in 3d! But the viewer requires those blue/red 3d glasses for full effect.