Module6 How do I love thee?

Module6 What's the big idea?

Dimensional thinking involves moving from 2D to 3D or vice versa. (p204) Every time we make a paper airplane from a flat piece of paper and send it flying or draw a map of the neighborhood with directions to our house, we are using dimensional thinking. Dimensional thinking pervades our lives. We usually overlook this fact, but in most all fields (professions), the dimensional thinking process plays a very important role. For example, Archeologists reconstruct the size and weight and height of creatures from their 2D foot prints. Physicians analyzing x-ray photographs and MRI, which only shows static sliced images through their patient’s bodies, have to interpret what they see in terms of dynamic living beings. Dimensional thinking involves mapping, perspective, anamorphosis and fractional dimension processes which is just starting to be understood. In all of these processes, size and time certainly matter. Scaling down and up can both be equally problematic. Also we need to think differently about time itself, depending on the scale and the perspective we take. Depending on our own time and perspective, every object has very different looks. It is true that moving real and imaginary things between dimensions in time and space plays an important role in a wide range of endeavors, form mundane manufacturing to modern arts, and in science from astronomy to biology. (p218) However, most people are unable to integrate information given in one set of dimensions into a model or image in another set of dimensions.

Modeling always provides deep insights of the objects so that we can capture the essential operations of the real objects and its mechanism. . Models can be made only after real situations and objects have been intensively observed. Thus, by embodying both abstraction and analogies and usually, dimensional alterations, modeling can become a very practical thinking tool for us. Once the model has been made, experimenting or playing with it determines whether the properties modeled are accurate abstractions of real situations or systems. To make this right, near all models utilize dimensional-thinking skills as well.  The huge size of the model allows us to play- act the part of something. Also, scale-downed models enable us to manipulate and control the objects and ideas with limited budgets and space. Models can allow us to reify ideas and concepts that are otherwise difficult to understand. To avoid confusing models with pure concepts themselves, making a 3D physical model is important. As computer graphic model is the 2D experience, it cannot provide us the same multisensory experience as the physical model does for us.

Both dimensional thinking and modeling require intensive observing of the objects (or the situation) to capture the essence in them. Also the modeling requires dimensional thinking process as well, because to make a correct model, scaling properly and putting in right dimensions are indispensible.  To increase these two thinking abilities, students can be encouraged to make 3D objects with flat materials, model familiar objects (house, school) after intensive observation of the objects. Trying to have a visual thinking process will also help the student to model objects, as our kinesthetic sense is directly connected to our visionary sense.  

Module6 Zoom-in

Module5 How do I love thee?

Module5 What's the big idea?

Thinking with the body depends on our sense of muscle movement, posture, balance, and touch. (p161) This general sense is called proprioception. As we walk or run we are constantly aware of how our body feels. However this sense is hidden from us because it is automatic and unconscious.  When we learn new skills, this unconsciousness becomes a consciousness. Then, we realize the sensation of muscle movement, body feeling, and touch as a powerful tool for imaginative thinking. The body thinking includes not only our movements but also our feelings about the movements. It can be expressed by movements or anything else as well. (Such as music, dance, math, sculpture, science and chemical) For example, I was told that sushi artists with much experience can always pick out exactly the same amount of rice by scooping up a handful of rice when they make sushi.  The rice is supposed to be composed around 200 grains in it and expert sushi men can pick the exact amount without consciously thinking about it. The sushi men trained themselves for a long time and developed a kinesthetic feel, which requires a strong and deep understanding of the work. This muscular, tactile, and manipulative thinking skill combines objective and subjective ways of knowing. Only when the thing we manipulate is no longer “other “but an extension of “I” does it obey our will and desire. (p179) Thus, there is a great need for a fuller consciousness of this special sense, for it to be ordered and made comprehensive.

“Empathy means to glide with one’s own feeling into the dynamic structure of an object, a pillar or a crystal or the branch of a tree, or even of an animal or a man, and as it were to trace it from within, understanding the formation and motoriality of the object with the perception of one’s own muscles.” (p186) We can find out this skill when actor and actress create their roles by empathizing with characters they are to portray. The real empathizing requires understanding other people (things) not only objectively from the outside but subjectively from inside (p186). For actors and actresses, they need to absorb themselves in someone else’s role fully which goes beyond merely acting it out. Many physicians use empathy to understand their patient, historians use this to see the past world with other people’s views. The biographers also use empathy to facilitate emotional and intellectual understanding so that they can grasp the essence of the life they study. These people not only know their subjects objectively, they know the objects of their work subjectively. We use this thinking too in our education often. To teach foreign language words, we encourage students to describe the words by moving and acting so that the students understand the world by being that words. Acting a part in a system does build real understanding and provide various perspectives to students.  

These two thinking tools have a similarity. Both thinking tool require human’s body memories for real understanding. Also both make a contribution to combine objective and subjective knowing.