Concepts of Communication: Interpersonal, Intrapersonal and Mathematical ed. by Edwin F. Beckenbach, Charles B. Tompkins (review)

76 Books American. W. H. Freeman, San Francisco, 1972. 390pp., ilIus. $5.95. Reviewed by: Ralph Brocklebank* If the process of gaining wisdom can be described in three phases, the naive, the sophisticated and the mat~Jfe, then the naive view of perception might be characterized by saying that the objective world actually consists in the form of our percepts of it, whereas our concepts and ideas are merely subjective effects within us, private and unreal. What we see and touch is real; what we think, an insubstantial web. Such a view serves well for practical life and few of us abandon it entirely. First steps towards sophistication often start with visual illusions when we learn to distrust our senses and come to think'of percepts as subjective rather than objective. Then we can be in danger of losing all sense of reality unless we can recognize the objectivity of conceptsthat they are indeed the same concepts for everybodyand thus come to a more mature view of the world that, though philosophically the reverse of the naive view, is strangely like it in practice, stable and reassuring, where objects really are what we know them to be. Perception comes to be recognized as a process that does not merely record sense-impressions but involves our activity as thinking beings, bringing concepts to meet what our senses give us. The first of these two books well illustrates these three stages. Gombrich's Art and Illusion probably shattered a good many naive beliefs about the nature of representation in art, even if one was still left wondering just what theory one should believe in. As he now admits, Gombrich often 'discussed without explaining'. Now he takes up one topic, the nature of a facial likeness, and gently and eruditely teases us along a little further. From the caricaturist's skill to the trials of the society portrait painter, every relevant approach to the problem is brought into context and, in the end, we are offered the belief in empathy as the key to the mystery. Perhaps this could explain why Velasquez succeeded while Orpen failed but, if Gombrich is right, that in casting our features to resemble another's we not only facilitate our recognition of his likeness but open his very character to our perceptive insight, then surely the brilliant mimics who entertain us on television ought themselves to be capable of becoming master politicians. One cannot help feeling that, though he tackles illusion because he knows it is important, Gombrich remains naive at heart, believing (as perhaps an art historian should) that a picture is really only a picture, an object of value in itself. Max Black asks: 'How do pictures represent?' and subjects the question to linguistic analysis at some length but without success. He concludes, '... the moral to be drawn is that clarity about the basic notion of artistic representation cannot be expected to be reached by a process of logical analysis alone, however sophisticated ....' In which case, why did he waste his time and ours by attempting to do it? Surely the limitations of linguistic analysis are well enough known by now, and it is unmannerly to finish by calling for a 'more exacting enquiry into the production and appreciation of art objects' and then to say 'this is hardly the place for what is already too long a discussion', when that is precisely what he could have been doing. For readers who enjoy sophisticated argument in itself, Black can be entertaining, though his continual failure to * Goethian Science Foundation, Orland, Clent, Stourbridge ,Wores., DY9 9Q3, England. recognize the reality of thinking as an activity left me exasperated. And at the end he never answered his question. Hochberg is very much better value, combining a deep philosophical understanding and a respect for art with his basic equipment as an experiental psychologist. Treating the perceptual behaviour that we bring to the representation of things and people as something that may be studied objectively, he is not afraid of sophisticated arguments but works through them with patience and clear thinking to reach a maturejudgment. He fillsin gaps left open by Gombrich, and achieves just that 'clarity about the basic...