I've been reading Reasons for Realism, a collection of essays and unpublished memos by James J. Gibson, the psychologist who ideas about affordances have been so influential in the design world (partly as rendered, somewhat controversially, by his former student, Don Norman). There are many striking ideas.
One theme of Gibson's is that we should look at the variability of the world as an advantage rather than as a problem. "Invariants", as Gibson calls them, are components of affordances and essential guides to action. Mostly, the perceptual invariants he discusses are textures, edges and surfaces. He does allow, especially in the later papers, that other invariants might be persons or events. This is where he gets closest to the foundational issues for organizational action patterns.
A distinctive wrinkle in his argument is that change supports the identification of invariants, rather than being the problem to be overcome. Instead of wondering how we ever make sense of all that "blooming buzzing confusion", he argues that it helps us sort invariant wheat from chaff – especially since we can reliably produce some of the change by our own actions.
In some sense every action is an experiment in this view, in which the crucial invariant features of an action or event are sifted from the accidental ones. “The normal activity of perception is to explore the world. What exploration does is isolate the invariants. The sensory system can separate the permanence from the change only if there is change. “ (p369)
This view gives Gibson a different take on the problem that Jeremy Birnholtz and I called the paradox of the (n)ever-changing world. We pointed to the tension between Heraclitus (You never step twice in the same river.) and Ecclesiastes (There is no new thing under the sun.).
One theme of Gibson's is that we should look at the variability of the world as an advantage rather than as a problem. "Invariants", as Gibson calls them, are components of affordances and essential guides to action. Mostly, the perceptual invariants he discusses are textures, edges and surfaces. He does allow, especially in the later papers, that other invariants might be persons or events. This is where he gets closest to the foundational issues for organizational action patterns.
A distinctive wrinkle in his argument is that change supports the identification of invariants, rather than being the problem to be overcome. Instead of wondering how we ever make sense of all that "blooming buzzing confusion", he argues that it helps us sort invariant wheat from chaff – especially since we can reliably produce some of the change by our own actions.
In some sense every action is an experiment in this view, in which the crucial invariant features of an action or event are sifted from the accidental ones. “The normal activity of perception is to explore the world. What exploration does is isolate the invariants. The sensory system can separate the permanence from the change only if there is change. “ (p369)
This view gives Gibson a different take on the problem that Jeremy Birnholtz and I called the paradox of the (n)ever-changing world. We pointed to the tension between Heraclitus (You never step twice in the same river.) and Ecclesiastes (There is no new thing under the sun.).
We took the view that flux was a deeply puzzling problem. How do (routine) actions come to be seen as "the same" when there is so much variation in their context and in the details of carrying them out?
But Gibson's view suggests that we are designed for the isolating of constancy within flux. We have the same problem just for the perception of an object as the sun comes and goes behind clouds. We somehow use the flux – and even produce it by our own actions – as a key ingredient of perception.
So Gibson says – thinking of Heraclitus, I'm inclined to suppose – "We perceive the water that flows over the rocks, but [also] that it is the same stream." (p 395). The implications of his ideas on active perception and change go further still, I think. I get to something like: "If two steps in it are in the same water, it isn't a river."
