[Buddha-l] Query about Francisco Varela

[Dan Lusthaus]

Hi Barnaby,

The Gestalt Psychologists were "hard scientists" of their day, and did
exactly as you suggest:

>a rigorous study of cognition and neurology.
> It's one thing to say that the mind co-creates reality, but another thing
> entirely to look closely at what actually happens in visual perception.

The principles of perception they codified -- primarily but not exclusively
visual perception -- are still important cornerstones of every textbook on
perception.

But subsequent psychological experiments have demonstrated further examples.
That, e.g., "contrast" is a mental, not purely, physical interpretation of
visual stimuli (we exaggerate contrasts); that there is no 1:1
correspondence between light frequencies and colors (despite the common
assumption that there is); and so on. Many decades of issues of Scientific
American have presented such studies.

If Varela and others are getting other scientists to take their own data
seriously, and others to become aware of this literature, so much the
better.

Thanks again.

Dan