Re: Polyphasism

[Russell Lichter <lichter@earthlink.net>]

Jorge Luis Borges: Funes The Memorious

Allan MacLeod wrote:

> I just thought I'd add my own totally unscientific thoughts in this
> subject.
> My guess is that in order to understand our ability to deal with
> multiple media inputs at once we need to keept two things in mind:
>     1)  Gould's polyphasic ability referrred to his ability to process
> different sources of information simultaneously and not the same source
> at once.  In other words, not even Gould, I believe, could listen to a
> radio broadcast of Brucknrer and a recording of Bach at the same time,
> except to the extent that he already had tucked away in his fabulous
> memory the score/sound of those works so that he wasn't really listening
> to them at all, but conjuring up his own mental images.
>     2)  We need to make a distinction between foreground, midground and
> background.  What we think of us polyphasic experiences may refer to a
> midgrounding experience.  I can sit in a park here, and be aware of the
> grass, trees, river, boats, sky, dogs, and people walking, jogging,
> bicycling, roller-balding, throwing a frisbee, all at once.  But don't
> ask me to tell you in detail about any of them--what the people looked
> like, or what sort of dog they were walking.  And in that state I do
> feel relaxed and dreamy.  But if I foreground a person's dog, let us
> say, everything else recedes dramatically.  We all can probably read a
> newspaper, watch television and carry on a conversation with someone, if
> all of these activities require little attentiveness on our part.  And
> we are processing all 3 at once, for a sudden change in tone, a key
> word, or an interesting visual will attract our attention.  In that
> sense we have been attentive to all three information sources, but not
> very attentive.  I suspect this is what Gould did, but that even he,
> when he was seriously concentrating on something, could not address
> himself to other information sources simultaneously.
>     Allan

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