IB Essay: Is seeing believing? Or is believing seeing?
The concept of belief can be drawn from two distinct sources: what enters the body externally through the senses and what already resides internally in the individual. All five senses, seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, and tasting, are important in developing thoughts and ideas, but the sense of sight typically sets itself above the others in its effectiveness at creating strong and lasting beliefs. Many times in life, the sense of sight is used to give evidence that will determine what is believed. Logically, believing what you see makes sense. The knowledge is experienced first hand or, as Bertrand Russell would define the term, knowledge by acquaintance. However, at times when a person assumes that they are basing their belief on sight, they are really allowing themselves to see what they already internally believe. The mind can be made to see something in a certain way simply because the belief that it is so is present. Therefore, while seeing conditions what we believe, in the same sense believing also conditions what we see.
The natural sciences, for example biology, rely heavily on sight to lend evidence concerning what to believe. When watching cell division through a microscope, a biologist is able to physically see the cells divide and pass through the various stages of prophase, metaphase, anaphase, and telophase. Therefore, the biologist then believes that when cells are moving about in the manner observed in the microscope, they are dividing. After actually seeing cell division, the biologist believes in the observed fashion of division. Through the sense of sight, external information has been taken in and transformed into a belief.
The Essay on Cell Division In Animals: Mitosis, Cytokinesis, And The Cell Cycle
Cell division in animals is a two-step process involving mitosis and cytokinesis and is set up by interphase. Interphase is a growth period for the cell. In the nucleus the chromosomes are duplicated but are not yet distinguishable because they are still a form of chromatin. There is also a nucleoli, one or more, present producing ribosomes that are sent to the cytoplasm. Mitosis is the division ...
However, at times scientists believe that they are seeing cell division when could be seeing something else. The biologist could be seeing a mutated cell, a small, moving cell, or simply something other than a cell. In this case, the biologist would be allowing his or her previously acquired internal beliefs to interfere with what is actually happening. As a result of believing that if cells are moving in a certain format, they are dividing, the biologist sees cell division. Although the process being observed may not be cell division, the biologist sees cell division because he or she believes it to be cell division.
In mathematics, the dilemma between seeing and believing is also present. If a series of steps designed to solve problem dealing with integration are presented to an individual and an integration problem is solved using those steps, the individual will believe in that procedure’s ability to solve similar problems. The belief that other integration problems may be solved by the same process arises. As a result of physically seeing the problem solved using the sequence of steps presented, the individual now believes in the procedure’s validity. Sight has lead to a formation of belief.
However, in mathematics, not everything is as simple as following one, distinct set of steps. In certain cases, a special procedure called integration by parts must be employed in order to solve an integration equation. The earlier belief that the original steps for solving integration problems are valid in all integration cases would lead an individual to see integration equations in a light dictated by their previously acquired belief; the thought that another equation can be solved with the original methods. This belief would be incorrect in the case of integration by parts but because of the internal beliefs held by the individual, his or her way of seeing has been altered to only absorb the fact that an integration problem can be solved by the original procedure.
The Essay on Belief And Knowledge Stem Cell
There are many contentions our present world has faced that require a thorough thought process in order to represent a side of the argument. We see that there are many different authorities that tell us we should be thinking in certain directions. However, most people need to realize that influence from these different sources such as academics, politicians, companies, global organizations, media, ...
History provides examples of how seeing an event leads to belief. The moon landing can be considered an occurrence that presented the public with a visual image in which they placed their beliefs. The public had no way of knowing for absolute certain what occurred with regard to the moon landing other than the visual stimuli with which they were acquainted. Only the astronauts that walked upon the moon can know the actual truth as to the affair of the moon landing, but through the pictures and videos presented to the public, belief in the landing has become accepted. Therefore, seeing the visual information conditioned what was to be believed by the American public.
It can be argued that the moon landing never even took place as there are many individuals that refuse to believe that men flew to the moon and actually walked upon it. Those people are not believing what they see, but are seeing what they believe. They feel sure that the moon landing was a conspiracy to aid in popular disapproval of communism. Their belief in governmental ulterior motives alters the way they view the pictures and videos of the moon landing. They see the visual documentation not as truth, but as propaganda. The way that those who protest the moon landing view NASA’s videos is dictated by their internal beliefs.
Believing in something so that it affects perception is also present in the past issues surrounding the shape of the world. Hundreds of years ago, the world was thought to be flat. The belief of a flat world was etched into the majority of the people’s minds by schools, rulers, and simply because it was a commonly known fact. When learned men of science produced data and calculations that disproved the theory of a flat world, they were laughed at and ignored. The internally held belief that the world was flat altered the way that individuals viewed the scientist’s evidence.
The Essay on Apollo moon landing was a hoax
The US Moon landing program was started by John F. Kennedy in response to the Soviet Union’s early successes in space exploration, just in case the world decided that Communism was the way to go. The Moon landing hoax refers to the belief of a small, but persistent, percentage of people who think that the Apollo Moon landings of the late 60s and early 70s were propaganda films produced by ...
The matter of the shape of the world could not be completely solved until pictures of the earth taken from space were viewed. Although it became accepted that the world was round long before man’s entrance into space, only when images of a spherical world were sent back from satellites could there be no doubt whatsoever concerning the shape of the earth. The complete acceptance of a round earth is due to believing through seeing. The visual pictures of the spherical earth gave evidence that allowed for the shape of the planet to be established once and for all as round.
In another area, art and its appreciation are based primarily on a visual stimulus. When art is first encountered, it is processed through the visual senses. Picasso’s Guernica is a work of art that has been seen and interpreted by many people through what they have taken in visually. The meanings that they have seen in the work have led to the development of beliefs surrounding Guernica.
However, in art there are also instances in which earlier held beliefs influence the way that a particular work is seen. Ink blot tests are notorious for their varied interpretations based on the state of an individual’s psyche. As a result of internal beliefs held prior to contact with the ink blots, the way that the different drawings are seen varies tremendously from person to person. In this case, seeing is based on what is believed.
In almost every subject in life, the question as to whether a belief is created by a visual image or whether a visual image is created by a belief can arise. Belief based on visual evidence in a scientific event, a mathematical formula, historical events, or the meaning of works of art can all be construed to show that previously held beliefs are responsible for the interpretations, not sight. If too much emphasis is placed on sight, then one could be lured into believing something that is not true. On the other hand, if one places too much emphasis on internal beliefs, one could become blind to what is actually happening in the world. In examining the things that one encounters in the course of one’s life, one must be careful to ensure that a correct balance between what is being seen and what is already believed is maintained.
The Essay on Defining the Visual Arts
Visual art defined Visual arts can be defined in many ways. The textbook answer was unobtainable for this class. Visual literacy seems to be the focus of the textbook. Online research has yielded slightly better insight: “The visual arts are art forms that create works that are primarily visual in nature, such as ceramics, drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, design, crafts, photography, ...
