However, take Language as a WOK; etymology, which explores Language through the AOK of History, examines the theory that the development of languages came about as an evolutionary adaptation – one for the sake of survival. As such, it is shown that all languages – regardless of their roots, or the cultures at play – stem from the same need. Therefore, literal translations between languages that aim to encompass the entire meaning behind terms is unnecessary, due to the ability to paraphrase while keeping the overall intent of the phrase itself, and thus the understanding in each individual language remains unaltered.
Exploring the WOK of Perception through the specific sense of sight, we come to the observation that there are certain sights that are intrinsically recognizable to individuals in the same way – in other words, each person interprets (and therefore understands) the sight in the same way. When the sun rises in the morning, this is comprehendible as the beginning of a new day, or were we to see a woman walking a dog, it is automatically assumed that the dog is the woman’s pet.
Using the AOK of Natural Science, we are shown that such a similar understanding of certain events is logical; Piaget’s work on cognitive development reveals that children form an understanding through schemas, defined as “a set of linked mental representations of the world, which we use both to understand and to respond to situations”, which are stored in the brain as behavioral patterns. Effectively, Piaget’s discovery illustrates that in order to create an understanding, an individual first perceives a pattern, which they then relate to their surroundings. As such, our understanding of the world around us stems from the patterns we associate with our environment, and therefore we do not see and understand things as “we are”, rather, we see and understand them as how “they are” within our environment.
Yet, what of those whose environments differ? Are we to believe that a rich, privileged woman in the Hamptons would view the world in the same way as an undernourished child growing up in Botswana? And how can we be certain that each individual’s images of the world are truly the same? Who’s to say that the color I consider to be blue may not appear to you as the color I call red? Joseph Carroll, a color vision scientist for the Medical College of Wisconsin states, “we can say for certain that people don’t see the same colors”.
If we return to Piaget’s research, we are shown that child development stems from a combined process of both assimilation (which refers to a situation when an existing schema is used to understand a new situation) and accommodation (which occurs when existing schemas do not work and therefore the individual develops new schemas in response to a new environment). While, admittedly, the woman and child in the scenario above may not share similar environments and may have very distinct understandings of their world, when exposed to one another’s environments, accommodation allows the two to form new schemas of their new environment, which will, in fact, correlate to each other’s existing schemas and thus their understanding of each specific environment is the same.
Furthermore, while we may see specific things, such as a certain color, differently, does that truly alter our understandings of things? Because we understand things by associating patterns with them, in spite of how a particular color may appear to an individual as opposed to another does not alter the way in which both parties understand the sight before them, which remains the same regardless.
This is further explored through the WOK of Emotion. Wolchover, a contributor to online site LiveScience, discusses research that illustrates that “differences in the way we each perceive [see] color don’t change the universal emotional responses we have to them”. The investigations, which combine both Natural and Human Sciences as AOK’s reveal that the emotional responses as caused by colors stem from the size of the wavelengths – shorter wavelengths create the sense of tranquility, whereas longer wavelengths increase our alertness. As such, when we observe certain sites, our body’s physical responses to what we see are the same, and thus we interpret the sites in the same way.
Overall, through explorations of the WOK’s of Language, Perception and Emotion, as supported by evidence in the AOK’s of natural and human sciences and history, we can discern that while each individual may see and understand this as he/she is, rather than how it is, because our understandings are formed from the experiences within our surroundings, these individual understandings do not change between each person. Abraham Lincoln’s quote, “books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new after all”, reiterates the idea that our understanding of our surroundings is not unique. However, current research shows that our comprehension of the things around us go even further; theory of mind, a hypothesis that targets both Human and Natural Sciences as Areas of Knowledge, explores the human affiliation to folk psychology, which is defined as “[the human] ability to make predictions about what’s on others’ minds”. As such, the research conducted conveys how humans are able to see and understand things not as “we are” but as “they are” and further proves how one’s understandings are merely a manifestation of their physical surroundings.
Bibliography
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http://www.simplypsychology.org/piaget.html
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