Life as "Humanitis" has taught it to be

This year has been mainly (for me ) a year full of experiences, and I, the tabula rasa in which all that I has happened I learned from. I truly believe what John Locke had to say about being a blank slate and form that all that happens to us, gets inscribed on this slate, as an experience in which we learned form. Yet I did have opinions that arose from the cogito (“I think therefore I am” and “I am a thing that thinks”). This was mainly because of my ability to reason and make decisions, just like Descartes speaks of. Some things that I learned from through experience have to do with art, and the art of dissection.

When it comes to art, I am always learning new ways of painting, drawing, or even sculpting, but its things like these I can’t just read about in a book and automatically know how to do them; I have to experience them. When it came to learning how to oil painting, I had to actually paint the picture in order to know how to do it. With oil painting I had to experience the why the paint and thinner smelt, the way the paint handled on the canvas, the way to blend the rich colors and how they blended as the painting became more complete. It was clear now that the once blank canvas that I started with now had meaning and life to it; just like my tabula rasa, before and after this experience. The art of dissection is the same as painting, in a sense that you can read about it and how, but you will never really know how, until you actually try it.

Sure there are tons of books on the art of dissection, the proper way to do it, and what you’ll look for and find, but it’s not the same as when you actually do it. When dissecting you get the experience of actually feeling parts of the body (rat or sheep, etc.)Like the strange, micro-spongy, wet lungs, or see and feel the difference in slicing through fatty tissue and muscle. This was an experience that I learned from that will really make an impact on my life, now that I have been accepted into a pre-med program. From this I was able to experience these things first-hand, rather than watching someone (which would be another type of experience in itself) or trying to imagine it, while reading about it. Still, even in art and dissection, as well as other things, my cogito must be used in order to make logical and rational decisions or actions.
Descartes as a rationalist believes that all the knowledge that we obtain comes from the basic knowledge of reasoning and understanding basic abstract principles. From this cogito was made and is famous for its meaning, “I think, therefore I am,” and “I am a thing that thinks.” It’s this type of philosophy that can be seen in techniques of art that was done this year, Chinese calligraphy, and when reading the Allegory of the Cave.

When asked to choose and copy a picture exactly, without tracing, your mind begins to analyze the problem and how to come up with a solution. Many people chose to take the approach of breaking the picture into even grid sections, than making an exact replication of that grid on a blank piece of paper. From here they began copying sections of the grid, one by one, onto the blank grid; thus when finished they would get an exact copy (of close to it) of the original picture. Others simply chose to just look at the picture as they copied it onto a blank sheet, but where not as successful. I on the other hand, chose to use a technique called, “Fine-Point drawing.” With this type of technique I was able to rationalize the quality of my final product, in both likeness and image clarity (unlike all the people that had done grids and had that displayed on their final copy) and used fine points or dots, to mark out an outline of the image. Overall it was a, connect the dots approach. It was this type of rational thinking that allowed me to come up with a basic approach to a larger, more complex problem. This same type of reasoning was also used when trying to learn Chinese calligraphy.

In Chinese calligraphy, there is more to it than just lines and dashes, in which make up a character, which than is grouped and becomes part of a poem or another form of literature. Chinese calligraphy defiantly made my sense of cogito come out in the sense that I realized I couldn’t just make the dashes or lines, but as a “thing that thinks,” I had to think about how to do them the correct way. In order to get the correct shape for each character, every line and dash had to be just right. A lot of this had to do with the amount of pressure that was applied to the paper as the black, ink-soaked, brush pushed and glided across it. All of this had to do with me thinking and figuring out the “trick,” of using my wrist and not my hand. Than after I had gotten a hold of the characters, reading Tu Fu’s poetry and others became easier to appreciate. Another piece of literature that I had to use reasoning and in the end appreciated a lot more was, Allegory of the Cave.

The Allegory of the Cave is about a slave that is brought to a cave and shackled to a wall, from where he can see a show of horses and people made by a shadow cast on a wall by a fire in the distance. The slave then is taken to the outside world and sees that his once “play” of horses and men was not just imagined but really did happen. For the slave in this piece of literature, he used his cogito to understand and reason with the idea that he was not imagining all of those shadows as just things in the shadows but that they were really shadows of living, breathing, things. Then I had to reason and think about the reading as well. I was asked to read the Allegory of the Cave and than draw a picture of how the slave must have seen the images on the walls. I really had to think about the reading, and even had to re-read parts of it over and over, just to convince myself that I was doing it right…or some what right. This took a lot of concentration, and that is something that only “I” could do. “I think, therefore I am,” made this possible. Plus “ I am a thing that thinks,” was really evident because if I wasn’t able to have thoughts or opinions of my own, the slave nor I would be able to reason through the problem of the shadows.

From all of these different views of rationalism and empericalism, you really can learn. I do find that when I come to learning from experience, you do actually use a lot of logic and rationalism. For example, when dissecting you do learn a lot that could never be taught in any book. Still cogito allowed me to make a logical decision about how far down to cut, what to cut, and what not to cut. Still the main connections that I found was that all the things I used to show John Locke’s theory of tabula rasa were things that were very hands on and very visual. All of these things were things that only books could try to teach and describe, but you would never get the full-effect until you actually did it; thus learning from. The things that I used to show Descartes rationalist view were more concentrated on the cogito and the idea that “I am a thing that thinks.” The ‘Fine-point” drawing, Chinese calligraphy, and Allegory of the Cave all use reason to figure out how to solve a problem or challenge. Plus the last two examples were both pieces of literature that “I” read in my head and figured out, and appreciated the fundamentals of the text. This all took an effect on my life that I will never forget.