Final Thoughts on Perception

Well readers (or reader), we are done the first unit of TOK, which is Perception. Our final lesson was today, and I am going to miss it (not really - it made my head hurt) :) but some interesting points were discussed. We had to write a paragraph on a different aspect related to perception. My choice was Language. The question simply discussed whether or not I believed that language and the way we describe something, can affect how we actually see it. Personally, as someone who loves English, and is always describing things in elaborate ways, it was something that I had already considered. I had always believed that by catagorizing an object, and coming up with plain old words to try and project an image into someones head, always leaves a small loss in the translation. It loses some of it's impressions and, in some ways, it's real-ness. It becomes an object, organised in your head. For example, a red chair. You could think of that chair in so many ways, but it would be increadibly difficult, in language and its barriers, to truly and fully describe that chair to match the exact way you see it. That can lead to you seeing that chair as how you described it. It may not be an exact type of red, somewhere between crimson and burgundy, but you cant really tell which, but you go for the best relation, leading you to forget almost, that that chair isnt really a burgundy crimson colour, but something else entirely, something without a name, or at least, not one you know. Not to mention, the language you use actually means a lot of what you percieve. Ever heard of 'idioms'; words or phrases that mean something different than the literal translation? All these barriers can prevent you from seeing the bigger picture, and imagine you were so busy trying to come up with words to describe an animal that crossed your path, trying to catagorize into a specific type of thing, and then it runs away too fast. You would probably think that animal was something that it looked like, but it may have been a totally new species, but because you could only define it your way, and put that particular name on it, you will constantly view that animal as being the same thing as that other species, and not how it REALLY was. A word is a powerful thing.