APPROXIMATIONS

Ideas require mental images. If you don’t have the former, you don’t have the latter. But what are these ideas in our mind? How exact are they? How real are they?

They are best described as models. Models, as we know are not the whole ball of wax. Models are mere simplified approximations. A model is some type of abstraction of the reality in the physical world. If the object were not a model, then it would be the real thing.

What falls on our eye are simply 2D shapes and colors. The mechanics of our visual input is, indeed, flat. Light waves fall on our retinas, and the flat shapes and colors are then electrically transmitted to the brain.

The understanding of our 3D physical world happens in our nervous systems. It is our nervous systems that allows us to understand the forces that act in the physical world. It is the nervous system in which our mental images are formed and models created.  And any drawing springs directly from the models in your mind.

Yet despite these approximations and inaccuracies, the sheer muddle of the written language is far higher. Our awareness of these approximations will only help you to find ways to work toward decreasing your mental approximations. This, I think, should be our goal, with just about any endeavor that we engage in.  In this scenario, our drawings have better fidelity with the image in your head.

We are lucky, though, that our output is drawings. And these drawings are the closest approximation to our vital mental images.