The Left Brain Speaks, the Right Brain Laughs by Ransom Stephens

Author:Ransom Stephens
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: The LEFT BRAIN SPEAKS The RIGHT BRAIN LAUGHS
ISBN: 9781632280466
Publisher: Viva Editions
Published: 2016-11-08T05:00:00+00:00

6.2.2 Reduction of the inconceivable

Reductionism gets a bad rap because it seems kind of stupid. Why would you take a big, complicated, interrelated system and break it into pieces instead of trying to appreciate the whole thing at once? Because we’re kind of stupid.

To keep more than one concept handy, we have to pay attention. The word “pay” indicates that it costs something. Attention puts intent, interest, motive, and instinct to work. Since you can only focus on a given kernel of thought for about half a second, and since you can only perform a single operation at a time, when you try to make sense out of complicated situations, you should cut yourself some slack.

To understand something complicated, we have to break it down and reduce it to its constituents. Then, if we can make sense of the pieces, we have a fighting chance of understanding the whole.

Let’s build something inconceivable from something simple.

Stick out a finger, any finger. Okay, even that one, I’m not offended.

That one finger is one dimension; now stick out your thumb. The space between your finger and thumb, but not above or below, just between, defines two spatial dimensions, a surface. With that finger and your thumb sticking out, curl your other fingers against your palm. They’re in the third spatial dimension. Forward-backward, side-to-side, up-down: three-dimensions.

You can draw any one-dimensional object. You’re like the Renoir of one-dimensional art. Me too; check out my one-dimensional drawing (figure 14). One spatial dimension is a line. It doesn’t have to be a straight line, but it can’t have any width or thickness, just length.

Drawing or thinking in one dimension is so easy that it’s hardly worth the bother.

I try it again in two dimensions (figure 15), advancing an entire order of complexity. While my one-dimensional art is flawless, my two-dimensional art is, well, flawed. Still, even when masters paint, they do so one brushstroke at a time. We conceive great works in all their multidimensional greatness, but when we put them together, whether the act is physical or conceptual, we do so one piece at a time.

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