okieinexile
Well-Known Member
The thinker and the feeler
By Bobby Neal Winters
Those of you who are in education are probably familiar with something called the Myers-Briggs personality test. By means of the right questions, it divides humanity up into different personality types. There are a number ways in which is does this contrasting the Introvert with the Extrovert, the Judge with the Perceiver, the Sensor with the Intuitor, and the Thinker with the Feeler. I usually test out as an introverted, judging, intuiting feeler.
The fact that I am a feeler surprises a lot of people. They think that since I am a mathematician I should be a thinker because mathematicians are thinking all the time, supposedly in a cold, analytical way, but that is not what the technical term means. I am not an expert on this in any way, shape or form, but what it seems to mean in practice is that when push comes to shove, I will do what I feel is right rather than what I think is right. That is to say, I have a tendency to follow emotions rather than reasons. This is in spite of the fact I have noticed that the outcome is usually better when I force myself to be rational.
I’ve run into this mostly in interacting with students. A good, well-told sob-story will go miles with me. Lest any of my students should read this and think they can walk all over me, I have noticed the shoe prints and have set up safeguards in my class policies so that they don’t.
One of the people who has been surprised that I am a feeler is me. I grew up during the tail-end of the Cold War when science and math were still being supported by the government for the sake of the arms race. Scientific disciplines were where academic types were supposed to be while the arts and the humanities were nowhere.
Yet I’ve been attracted by poetry, by the lyrics of popular songs, by matters transcendental, and in some sense I’ve always been a writer even when I wasn’t writing.
I like symbols. Mathematical symbols which can stand for so much, which are aids for communication. It is here where the artist and the scientist come together. I have a message inside me and I wish to re-create that message inside you. It could be anything. I may have seen something or I may have learned something, but I want you to know it too.
Since you and I don’t share the same brain, I have to use some means external of myself to transmit this meaning to you. This is done by the use of symbols. I notice this most when I am sitting in church looking at the stained glass windows. I see the Cross and I think of story about the man who took a walk down the streets of Jerusalem with it strapped to his back one day and how his mother watched him die.
If I show someone this symbol, he might think of that, or he might not think about the part with his mother but of what happened the following Sunday instead. It is an inexact process, and the results are the same whether I use pictures or words because both are symbols.
This can be done not only with thoughts but with feelings. Music can evoke happiness, sadness, and the whole range of emotions. Musicians can move a feeling from their heart into yours. Play <st1
lace w:st="on">Dixie</st1lace> real slow in the right group and you’ll know what I mean.
Painters, sculptors, and performance artists can do the same thing, though those who study such things say that the determining factor in art is ambiguity. While someone who is interested in communication a precise message wouldn’t want ambiguity, the artist would. To create an object or an experience that would evoke multiple responses is measured as a success.
In this sense, an object of art can serve not as a means for the artist to speak to me, but for me to speak to myself. If an artist can, through her creation, help me to better understand myself, this is truly an achievement. Yet I prize more highly those who can connect me more fully to the rest of the world. I may be a mathematician, but I understand that when the arithmetic is done well one plus one is more than two.
Am I thinking that or feeling that? I don’t know.
(Bobby Winters is a Professor of Mathematics, writer, and speaker. You may contact him at bwinters1@cox.net or visit his web site www.okieinexilepress.com. )
By Bobby Neal Winters
Those of you who are in education are probably familiar with something called the Myers-Briggs personality test. By means of the right questions, it divides humanity up into different personality types. There are a number ways in which is does this contrasting the Introvert with the Extrovert, the Judge with the Perceiver, the Sensor with the Intuitor, and the Thinker with the Feeler. I usually test out as an introverted, judging, intuiting feeler.
The fact that I am a feeler surprises a lot of people. They think that since I am a mathematician I should be a thinker because mathematicians are thinking all the time, supposedly in a cold, analytical way, but that is not what the technical term means. I am not an expert on this in any way, shape or form, but what it seems to mean in practice is that when push comes to shove, I will do what I feel is right rather than what I think is right. That is to say, I have a tendency to follow emotions rather than reasons. This is in spite of the fact I have noticed that the outcome is usually better when I force myself to be rational.
I’ve run into this mostly in interacting with students. A good, well-told sob-story will go miles with me. Lest any of my students should read this and think they can walk all over me, I have noticed the shoe prints and have set up safeguards in my class policies so that they don’t.
One of the people who has been surprised that I am a feeler is me. I grew up during the tail-end of the Cold War when science and math were still being supported by the government for the sake of the arms race. Scientific disciplines were where academic types were supposed to be while the arts and the humanities were nowhere.
Yet I’ve been attracted by poetry, by the lyrics of popular songs, by matters transcendental, and in some sense I’ve always been a writer even when I wasn’t writing.
I like symbols. Mathematical symbols which can stand for so much, which are aids for communication. It is here where the artist and the scientist come together. I have a message inside me and I wish to re-create that message inside you. It could be anything. I may have seen something or I may have learned something, but I want you to know it too.
Since you and I don’t share the same brain, I have to use some means external of myself to transmit this meaning to you. This is done by the use of symbols. I notice this most when I am sitting in church looking at the stained glass windows. I see the Cross and I think of story about the man who took a walk down the streets of Jerusalem with it strapped to his back one day and how his mother watched him die.
If I show someone this symbol, he might think of that, or he might not think about the part with his mother but of what happened the following Sunday instead. It is an inexact process, and the results are the same whether I use pictures or words because both are symbols.
This can be done not only with thoughts but with feelings. Music can evoke happiness, sadness, and the whole range of emotions. Musicians can move a feeling from their heart into yours. Play <st1
lace w:st="on">Dixie</st1lace> real slow in the right group and you’ll know what I mean. Painters, sculptors, and performance artists can do the same thing, though those who study such things say that the determining factor in art is ambiguity. While someone who is interested in communication a precise message wouldn’t want ambiguity, the artist would. To create an object or an experience that would evoke multiple responses is measured as a success.
In this sense, an object of art can serve not as a means for the artist to speak to me, but for me to speak to myself. If an artist can, through her creation, help me to better understand myself, this is truly an achievement. Yet I prize more highly those who can connect me more fully to the rest of the world. I may be a mathematician, but I understand that when the arithmetic is done well one plus one is more than two.
Am I thinking that or feeling that? I don’t know.
(Bobby Winters is a Professor of Mathematics, writer, and speaker. You may contact him at bwinters1@cox.net or visit his web site www.okieinexilepress.com. )