Abstract
Jerome Bruner wrote essays both to put forth his ideas, and as a vehicle for thinking. Many of the best ideas for cognitive psychology in the 20th century, and especially for education, came from these thought pieces, and they greatly influenced the present author. Jerry’s “essays for the left hand” were about the arts, less formal and more speculative. To celebrate Jerry, we attempt a “left handed” peek at the “hidden arts” inspired by his approaches and perspectives. To avoid trying to define “Art”, we look instead at emotional reactions when we transition from the mental context we think is “reality” to another point of view, and especially when and how we are helped to make the transition by something in the world around us. This can be easy to deal with if the new point of view was one we already had but was blocked by our limitations for simultaneous attention, or it can be quite shattering—and often resisted—if the new point of view was not anywhere in our previous “reality”.Most of the traditional Arts are “in our senses”, i.e. sensual, sensical, etc.: touch, taste, visual, auditory. Einstein’s world view was changed by a compass he was given as a child where he realized: “… something deeply hidden had to be behind things”. Much of the important content of Science, Mathematics, and even Engineering—are relationships, often in terms of dynamic systems—are quite hidden in this sense, yet fluent practitioners report the same kinds of “aesthetic emotions” as for the traditional Arts: it is likely that how one gets at and expresses “what is deeply hidden” constitute new great Art forms at least equal in depth to the traditional forms of the past. Since our form of government was set up as a systems design backed by a democracy— and much of what is powerful and dangerous in the world is in the form of systems whose properties, and sometimes existence, are hidden—it is as vital for all citizens to get fluent in the “Arts of the Hidden” as it is for them to learn to read and write. Questions are asked about whether and how the “Arts of the Hidden” can be learned and taught generally to society, and several examples are given to motivate further explorations.
Article Note
Dedicated to Jerome Bruner, to celebrate his 100th year of advancing civilization. We love you Jerry!
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Notes
- 1.
Bruner (1962).
- 2.
“Attempt”, “explore”, etc. and drawing on a talk dedicated to Jerry for the Kay (2015).
- 3.
A different slant and examples on some of the same ideas in: Kay (2007).
- 4.
Cf. Ausubel ( 1978).
- 5.
For example see: Heinlein (1941).
- 6.
Bruner and Goodman (1947).
- 7.
- 8.
NYTimes, May 14, 2015.
- 9.
NYTimes, May 14, 2015.
- 10.
- 11.
Korzybski (1933).
- 12.
Invented by John Lilly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolation_tank.
- 13.
- 14.
Miller (1956).
- 15.
- 16.
- 17.
Positron Emission Tomography—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positron_emission_tomography.
- 18.
Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_magnetic_resonance_imaging.
- 19.
Cf. Huron (2008).
- 20.
Kahneman (2011).
- 21.
Examples of mental “expository fictions” about the mind: Charles Hampton-Turner Maps Of The Mind, Collier/Macmillan (1981).
- 22.
Koestler (1967).
- 23.
Blood and Zatorre (2001).
- 24.
- 25.
Hindemith (1952).
- 26.
A number of these ideas have been viewed through a modern perspective by David Huron, in Sweet Anticipation, his excellent detailed analysis of “music and the psychology of expectation” (also cf. footnote 19).
- 27.
Nathan (1960).
- 28.
Whitehead (1997).
- 29.
Feinberg (2014).
- 30.
San Francisco, USA—http://www.exploratorium.edu/.
- 31.
A reasonably accurate paraphrase of Frank Oppenheimer’s explanation of what the Exploratorium is all about.
- 32.
John von Neumann’s characterization of mathematics was: “relationships of relationships”.
- 33.
For example the LA earthquake of 1994 lowered the hills above my home by about 11 inches. The San Andreas fault is moving at about the rate of 2” per year.
- 34.
Cf. de Hamel (1986).
- 35.
Illuminated “Maxwell’s Equations” https://twitter.com/rlystad/status/526750612621246464. Also see Walter J. Miller (1959). Fig. 5.
- 36.
Cf. Bacon (2000).
- 37.
Paine (1776), cf. Dover.
- 38.
The Civil War represents a failure of a large part of the system, but enough repair happened to prevent a total crash of the Union.
- 39.
A self portrait of the Internet.
- 40.
Bruner (1960).
- 41.
Wolf (2006).
- 42.
Dow (1991).
- 43.
Alan Kay, “Our Human Condition ‘From Space’” (2003), http://www.vpri.org/pdf/m2003001_human_cond.pdf.
- 44.
- 45.
We have found that in classes of 20–30 children there will almost always be a “Galileo child” who can see this good way to make a comparison (Aristotle’s problem was that he wasn’t a child, and didn’t think to ask one!).
- 46.
Cf. Lillian C. McDermott and the Physics Education Group Univ. Washington: many papers over the years showing that science students are in a basic human “gulley” and almost none of standard physics presentations heed that gulley. For example, see: http://wolfweb.unr.edu/homepage/jcannon/ejse/mcdermott.html.
- 47.
See Drake (1975).
- 48.
Adapted from Kay (2013) Available online at: http://www.vpri.org/pdf/future_of_reading.pdf.
- 49.
These system examples were inspired by the work of Seymour Papert, Mitchel Resnick, and several decades of our own research.
- 50.
Itself a fine Work of Art by the Principal Roberta Blatt (previously one of the first wave of MACOS teachers), and the many fine teachers we worked with.
- 51.
Gardner (2012).
- 52.
For example, Jerry’s influence on the invention and design of the now pervasive overlapping windows and icons GUI is partly chronicled in: Kay (1990).
- 53.
Also see Howard Gardner’s extensive works on multiple ways of knowing and learning, and the many ways that Art pervades human existence and development.
- 54.
Actually, in the Phaedrus, Socrates relates the complaint of the Egyptian Pharoah Thamus when presented with the invention of writing. Plato, The Phaedrus, (Oxford World's Classics), Oxford University Press (2009).
- 55.
Pianists have many more problems of this sort because the instrument doesn’t require breath or change of bow, so there is nothing external to motivate phrasing, etc. There is no way to make a struck tone get louder etc. One remedy is to have piano students also learn a more expressive instrument (which ideally would include the human voice!).
- 56.
Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, Monticello (Sept. 28, 1820).
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Kay, A. (2015). The Arts of the Hidden: An Essay for the Left Hand. In: Marsico, G. (eds) Jerome S. Bruner beyond 100. Cultural Psychology of Education, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25536-1_12
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