Arnheim was a rare bird in that he could speak both art and science fluently, and translate equally well from either language. He may have come form a school of gestalt physchology but his gestaltism made him bust out of all boxes. Or almost all: he was committed to rational investigation and demanded material explanations. His was a scientifically pragmatic and philosophically phenomenological approach to questions that haved proved perennially intractable: how is it that we know the world? what makes consciousness?

Arnheim argues that because perception gathers concepts, "perceptual material" is used in thinking and, therefore, perception is thinking; that is, perception is the stuff of cognition, its material base being in a network comprised of the sensory systems, the brain, the nervous system and an exaltation of neurotransmitters. (Visual Thinking 1)

[[Association, either because it's similar or opposite to what the 2nd-century Taoist philosopher Wang Bi said about the hexagrams of the I Ching: the hexagrams suggest images, and the images lead to ideas. Arnheim perhaps alludes to the I Ching on page 4 when he mentions the "taoistic and yin-yang schools."]]

In Visual Thinking, Arnheim is critical of education: "The arts for which the bachelor and master are certified do not yet include the creative exercise of the eyes and hands as an acknowledged component of higher education." (3) Indeed, beyond kindergarten, such exercise is almost completely absent from all education.

"What is most needed," Arnheim says, "is not more aesthetics nor more esoteric manuals of art education but a convincing case made for visual thinking quite in general." (3) In Arnheim's view, we prejudicially bracket perception as inferior to thinking when in fact thinking would be impossible (Arnheim would likely temper that by saying "certainly diminished") without perception. Perceptual thinking is dismissed as mere intuition. Certain domains of human inquiry notoriously eschew intuition, but intuition is not the sum of perceptual thinking. Engineers and designers use perceptual reasoning to solve problems but we do not think of bridges as intuitive. We think of bridges as safely engineered (or at least hope they are); aesthetics is somehow a byproduct, however desirable.

It's time for designers and engineers to start arguing otherwise (in addition to Arnheim, we talk as well about other pioneers): perception isn't just raw material transformed by "mind." Cognition is alchemy in as much as perception enables solving problems creatively and arriving at novel solutions.

Arnheim points out that there is a history of prejudice against perceptual thinking, as in the Mosaic ban on graven images. Indeed, if there aren't several such studies, there should be. That we are dealing with an ancient bias is also clear from the ancient Greeks; see Ong on the contested alphabetization of Greek. Arnheim cites Democritus, who "had the senses address reason scornfully as follows: 'Wretched mind, do you, who get your evidence from us, yet try to overthrow us? Our overthrow will be your downfall."

Related is Lakoff and Johnson, and all manner of thinking on materialism, e.g. Oliver Sacks. Lakoff and Johnson study at 30,000 feet what Sacks explores clinically (and then soars when reflecting): that our consensual realities (e.g., language) are based and infused, and indeed are essentially permeable, on the material stuff of the world as we perceive it.

Aristotle: "the soul never thinks without an image." (12)

"My contention," Arnheim says, "is that the cognitive operations called thinking are not the privilege of mental processes above and beyond perception but the essential ingredients of perception itself. I am referring to such operations as active exploration, selection, grasping of essentials, simplification, abstration, analysis and synthesis, completion, correction, comparison, problem solving, as well as combining, separating, putting in context. These operations are not the perogative of anyone mental function; they are the manner in which the minds of both man and animal treat cognitive material at any level. There is not basic difference in this respect between what happens when a person looks at the world directly and when he sits with his eyes closed and 'thinks.'" (13)

"As I open my eyes, I find myself surrounded by a given world...." The "world" is "given" by the retina, Arnheim says visiocentrically. But awareness of this world is not all there is to perception. To the contrary: "That given world is only the scene on which the most characteristic aspect of perception takes place. Through that world roams the glance, directed by attention, focusing the narrow range of sharpest vision now on this, now on that spot.... This eminently active performance is what is truly meant by visual perception. ... The world emerging from this perceptual exploration is not immediately given. Some of its aspects build up fast, some slowly, and all of them are subject to continued confirmation, reappraisal, change, completion, correction, deepening of understanding." (14-15)