Sunday, August 13, 2006

Perception

Perception Magen David Recently I wrote about the numerous potential possible designs of the Star of David and today I stumbled upon Max Black's theory which gives a logical explanation for this phenomenon.
The Star of David was chosen by Max Black as a perfect illustration for showing that perception is concept-driven. Max Black wrote a book about this titled Models and metaphors (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 1962). One of his illustrations shows that you can see the Star of David as three butterflies, which reminded me of Isaiah 6:2:
Over him were the winged ones: every one had six wings; two for covering his face, two for covering his feed, and two for flight.
Max Black thinks that we see the star (or any other thing) "through" the concept and if we are used to see it as (“seeing-as”) two superimposed triangles- we will not see it as three butterflies.
The Star of David is an excellent example for this idea since you can see it "through" numerous concepts:
Hexagon with 6 triangles
3 W's
3 M's
2 X's and 2 triangles
Etc.
BTW this Isaiah 6:2 verse may prove that the origin of the Star of David is from the bible…

2 comments:

zeevveez said...

About the six wings see: (in Hebrew)
http://www.pnimi.org.il/yesodot/musagim/sodHamagenDavid.asp

zeevveez said...

The Star of David is called also hexalpha because it is made of six (hexa) A letters. In the same way the pentagram is called pentalpha because it is made of five (penta) A letters.