Fire and Knowledge

For those just jumping in, here are the previous links:

• John’s Article: A Word Wrapped in Light
• My First Thoughts on His Article
• John’s Comment and My First Response [you are here]
• John’s First Response
• My Second Response
• John’s Second Response
• My Final Response

Yesterday, John Marstall responded to a brief commentary I made regarding his article “A Word Wrapped in Light.”  Since my response to his comment ended up being quite longer than I expected, I have decided to make it it’s own entry instead of replying as another comment.

John Marstall is an exceptionally talented icon designer and currently works at Firewheel Design.

John’s Comment

Hi Josh,

Thanks for mentioning my article. I hoped to make it clear that I wasn’t disagreeing with Postman in general; just questioning the sharp dichotomy that he (and others) assume between image and type.

I’m sure I don’t "understand the epistemology" fully, but it’s something I’m very interested in. (Epistemology was a focus of mine in my university philosophy studies.) I’d be interested to hear what you think is lacking in the argument. Feel free to email me or post a follow-up, if you like.

Thanks,

John Marstall

My Reply

John,

Thank you for your charitable response to my off-the-cuff commentary to your article.  It was not meant to be a comprehensive response, just a first reaction, as I am sure you can tell by my lack of detail.

In looking over your article a second time, I must say that I am impressed with the depth of insight you write with.  I also enjoyed the occasional humor.  It is a very well written  and well reasoned article.

In your comment on my site, you remarked:

I hoped to make it clear that I wasn’t disagreeing with Postman in general; just questioning the sharp dichotomy that he (and others) assume between image and type.

My response to this would simply be that questioning the epistemological differences between typography and imagery would be disagreeing with Postman in general (and specifically), since he goes to great lengths in all of his works to show that imagery and typography do not inhabit the same universe of discourse. In one such paragraph, explains:

Almost all of the characteristics we associate with mature discourse were amplified by typography, which has the strongest possible bias towards exposition: a sophisticated ability to think conceptually, deductively and sequentially; a high valuation of reason and order; and abhorrence of contradiction; a large capacity for detachment and objectivity; and a tolerance for delayed response. (Posman, Neil.  Amusing Ourselves to Death, pg. 63)

In other words, without a foundation of typography (without which your argument could not have been developed in the first place) people are not as rational and intellectual as they would be if they had a strong foundation of typography.  Postman argues this magnificently in Amusing Ourselves to Death, which has convinced me in what I am arguing for now.

You asked what I thought was lacking in your argument.  My response would be that I think the article is very well argued, but my main concern is that you do not interact with the full-force argument that Postman has make in his works.  That is significant to me, since Postman has expertly argued for the view that when the word is exalted, reason is exalted; when imagery is exalted, frivolousness is exalted.  He would also argue that we are regressing back into an oral and imagery-based culture, which has resulted in the flowering of "show business" and amusement to which has brought us to the brink of killing the progress we have made through the printed word.

So, with that in mind, I would argue that even though icons do make people "think" to some extent (and I mostly agree with your assessment there) there is still the epistemological bias of images to deal with.  That is, 1) they do not have syntax, therefore 2) they cannot communicate propositional truth which 3) makes it impossible to refute any assertions, because it does not have assertions. And without making assertions, 4) they cannot communicate anything abstractly.  Hence images 5) do not cultivate the "higher reasoning" skills that words do.

That doesn’t mean you are making people stupid.  Most of them already are stupid due to our cultural regression.  Icons may be the best medium to communicate something in a computer interface.  But that doesn’t mean icons should be placed on the same pedestal as words. Asking questions that deal with the benefits and purpose of the technology would be helpful here.  For instance, what is the purpose of this computer interface in the first place?  How is it helping people?  Is it only because it makes something quicker and more efficient?  Is making something quicker and more efficient beneficial to society?  How?  Are the icons communicating better than words?  Why?  Is it only because it looks better?  Takes up less space?  Easier to comprehend?  There are not always easy answers (or answers at all) to such questions.

To take the questions back even further, I quote Postman.  He lists his own questions regarding information and its usage:

What is information?  Or more precisely, what are information?  What are its various forms?  What conceptions of intelligence, wisdom, and learning does each form insist upon?  What conceptions does each form neglect or mock?  What are the main psychic defects of each form?  What is the relation between information and reason?  What is the kind of information that best facilitates thinking?  Is there a moral bias to each information form?  What does it mean to say that there is too much information?  How would one know?  What redefinitions of important cultural meanings do new sources, speeds, contexts, and forms of information require?  Does television, for example, give a new meaning to "piety," to "patriotism," to "privacy"?  Does television give a new meaning to "judgment" or to "understanding"?  How do different forms of information persuade?  Is a newspaper’s "public" [and we should add Internet's "public"] different from television’s "public?  How do different information forms dictate the type of content that is expressed? (Amusing Ourselves to Death, pg. 160)

Let me be more specific to the article now.  In it you said:

As you might imagine, we do not think the dichotomy succeeds. We disagree with the notion that images cannot be as cognitive as written words. In our work, we have found that images have a tremendous capacity for conveying content. [emphasis mine]

You are saying two different things here (which I have emphasized by italics), one that I agree with and one that I disagree. I agree with "images have a tremendous capacity for conveying content."  We may disagree about what kind of content is conveyed, but I do think that images can convey content—otherwise they would be useless.  However, I disagree with the idea that "images [can] be as cognitive as written words."  The keyword there is "as."  That is incorrect.  Postman is worth quoting at length here because he goes right to the root of this:

Photography [we could substitute “imagery” for “photography” throughout this quote] and writing (in fact, language in any form) do not inhabit the same universe of discourse. . . .

Photography is a language that speaks only in particularities.  Its vocabulary of images is limited to concrete representation. Unlike words and sentences, the photograph does not present to us an idea or concept about the world, except as we use language itself to convert the image to idea.  By itself, a photograph cannot deal with the unseen, the remote, the internal, the abstract.  It does not speak of “man,” only of a man; not of “tree,” only of a tree.  You cannot produce a photograph of “nature,” any more than a photograph of “the sea.”  You can only photograph a particular fragment of the here-and-now—a cliff of a certain terrain, in a certain condition of light; a wave at a moment in time, from a particular point of view.

And just as “nature” and “the sea” cannot be photographed, such larger abstractions as truth, honor, love, falsehood cannot be talked about in the lexicon of pictures.  For “showing of” and “talking about” are two very different kinds of processes.  “Pictures,” Gavriel Solomon has written, “need to be recognized, words need to be understood.”  By this he means that the photograph presents the world as object; language, the world as idea.

For even the simplest act of naming a thing is an act of thinking—of comparing one thing with others, selecting certain features in common.  Ignoring what is different, and making an imaginary category.  There is no such thing in nature as “man” or “tree.”  The universe offers no such categories or simplifications; only flux and infinite variety.  The photograph documents celebrates the particularities of this infinite variety.  Language makes them comprehensible.

The photograph also lacks a syntax, which deprives it of a capacity to argue with the world . . . . Its testimony is powerful but it offers no opinions. . . .  Photography is preeminently a world of fact, not of dispute about facts or of conclusions to be drawn from them.  But this is not to say photography lacks an epistemological bias. . . . The photograph itself makes no arguable propositions, makes no extended and unambiguous commentary.  It offers no assertions to refute, so it is not refutable. . . .

The new imagery [the fierce assault on language made by forms of mechanically reproduced imagery that spread unchecked throughout American culture], with photography at its forefront, did not merely function as a supplement to language, but bid to replace it as our dominant means for construing, understanding, and testing reality. . . . The new focus on the image undermined traditional definitions of information, of news, and, to a large extent, of reality itself. . . . the picture forced exposition into the background, and in some instances obliterated it altogether.  By the end of the nineteenth century, advertisers and newspapermen had discovered that a picture was not only worth a thousand words, but, where sales were concerned, was better.  For countless Americans, seeing, not reading, became the basis for believing. (Amusing Ourselves to Death, pg. 71-74)

This is seen most clearly in your example of "truth" with an icon.  There is no possible way that an icon representing truth can match a propositional statement of what truth is.  Consider the following five definitions of truth:

To say of what is, that it is not, or of what is not, that it is, is false; while to say of what it is, that it is, and of what is not, that is not, is true. (Aristotle)

Man is the measure of all things. (Protagoras)

What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and; anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. (Friedrich Nietzsche)

Truth is merely the word for the way the world really is, which we are trying to picture or mirror with our knowledge. (Philip Kenneson)

Truth is a property of propositions that correspond to the way things are. (Ronald Nash)

There is no way that an icon can convey that kind of cognitive information—unless one already has read and understood the definitions—and then it can only “be recognized”—it is not conveying abstract thought but only the symbol of it (and it is beside the point to ask which definition the symbol might refer to).  Therefore, the icon simply comes alongside of the foundation of the word and represents it.  The icon conveys content (a better term might be “symbolizes content”), but surely the icon does not contain the same cognitive ideas as a written statement.

So that would be my main concern regarding what you are saying.  I think I would agree with much of what you said based on "images have a tremendous capacity for conveying content."  It is when you say they are "as cognitive as written words" is where I draw the line and cannot agree.

That being said, I continue to believe that your article is helpful in many ways to other designers and how they think about imagery.  I thank you for putting your time and energy into it and hope you will consider thinking about this topic more and perhaps even write another article or two about it!

Most Respectfully,

Josh Sowin