Victoria Dickenson

Consider the rabbit.

Not a hare, but a rabbit. The animal we commonly view as wholly domesticated an esteem alongside cats and dogs. Consider its wide brown eyes, and the way that when chased it turns to finally face the predator. Consider the stare. Is there something there in it? Is there a consideration more human, or perhaps a consideration that simply makes us more rabbit? Like the hedgehog, the rabbit is a piece of the wilderness that we have accepted into our homes and our hearts, something that we can sit, nose to nose with, and try our very best to comprehend. The rabbit is a connection to wildness, to wilderness, and to our shared past.

Consider the rabbit.

I, myself, grew up alongside a rabbit. Nose to nose, I'd stare into his eyes and try to comprehend him. We were close-friends, and it was to him that I told my secrets, that I talked to endlessly. He'd hop on my back and flop there. He'd follow me, and I'd chase him. He'd rest on my lap while I pet him and hugged him. The rabbit is a paradox to us - both innocent and bawdy, clever and naive, cruel and caring. B'rer Rabbit and Bugs Bunny, Roger Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny, Peter Rabbit and the Easter Bunny. The rabbit has suffused just about every aspect of our lives and yet we rarely think about him.

I think it's time we give him a second look, and look very hard. There's more in those eyes than one might think, and so much we could learn from it.… (altro)

The author, under the subtitle "Cognitive Anchorage", posits (p. 242-4) that visual thinking is of a different order from verbal thinking, and that the understanding of representation is an entrée to an understanding of a different order..... images have a unique function in the creation of knowledge.... representation permits interpretation. By encoding complex data in visualizations, scientists are able to record new knowledge in such a way that incremental discovery can be grafted easily to the base of the known .... the image, the visual reperesentation of the thing, is indeed at the foundation of much of our cognition of the world. Since vision is our primary sense she concludes that the thorough understanding of the visual is the way we attempt to comprehend the order of things. Her conclusion is built on a thorough and well referenced set of images of North America from 17th and 18th century visitors who were explaining the novel landscape, people and animals to a European audience without experience of North America. I believe that Dickenson's conclusion is on solid footing and leads us to consider not just static images but the role of moving imagery. This, in turn, provides a doorway into the newly identified science of "Sensory Archaeology".… (altro)

A pretty neat book about a subject that is not discussed much: how come the pictures provided by early New World naturalists look nothing like real life? and why did contemporaries think it was all good? What sort of milieu and conventions were the natural scientists operating in and under? Neat illustrations, though many illustrations described in detail in the book are not in the text and a map would have been wonderful. Kudos for having both endnotes AND a bibliography, too many books these days only have one or the other or, worse yet, none or those stupid "p. 230 - 'he took off...' Moby-Dick, p. 313" style notes.… (altro)