Thinking in Pictures: Artists and Accountants (Grandin)

Grandin’s observations about what she calls “thinking in pictures” are very interesting to me. I, like many others, was aware of the use of pigeons as messengers but never really thought about what the implications of this were. I never stopped to think about how the pigeon knew how to get home. Reading about how pigeons make their way home made me realize that maybe animals do have the capacity to think at a higher level than I had previously assumed. Hearing of other stories of other animals behaving in ways that would make me believe that they do have cognitive capabilities and these capabilities are different than the way humans think, well for the most part. Although I was not enthused to find out that the human brain is not much different in terms of physical size and makeup than that of a pig or horse, she does make a good point that the most dramatic difference would be between how we respond to our emotions and how we deal with them as opposed to how animals deal with them. I couldn’t help thinking that as babies we all “think in pictures”. Children will constantly learn things by first relating to pictures. Children books are overwhelmingly dominated by pictures, why, maybe because we first learn by “thinking in pictures” and then evolve to a more involved way of learning.


Lives of a Cell (Thomas)

It is interesting to think of a community as a cell, that instead of individuals working to obtain personal goals we are actually working together to achieve a larger more universal goal. That we might be biologically programmed to do specific tasks without us knowing and these tasks are meant to help the “community” to achieve a desired goal; in this sense we would be similar to bees or termites. Personally I have trouble agreeing with this because I would like to think I have a more meaningful impact on whom or what I am. However, Thomas does give us some reason for hope. As he points out we have not had much time to evolve and will keep evolving for many, many years to come. Hopefully we will learn to use our brains to a higher degree and achieve much more.

I also thought that Thomas’ observation of how much individual autonomy is a good thing or bad thing interested me. The fact that at some point we may be able to control specific brain activities individually is at a first glance exciting and something to strive for. However, Thomas makes a very good point, are we capable of managing our own bodies? I tend to agree with him that we for the most part are not. I think this is a very dangerous line to walk, at what point does it stop? I would not want to be in control of my own body. I would probably be so focused on the more complex bodily functions that I would forget to breathe! Furthermore those who had the ability to do so and then teach others would inherently gain power over those who cannot. Who would decide who would be taught and how would this decision be made?