Steven Pinker -- How the Mind Works - Hampshire High Italian ...

266 J HOW THE MIND WORKSgetting have been delayed or garbled. The rule would be: if you think gravityis acting up, you've been poisoned; jettison the rest of the poison, now.1 he mental up-down axis is also a powerful organizer of our sense ofshape and form. What do we have here?Few people recognize that it is an outline of Africa rotated ninetydegrees, even if they tilt their heads counterclockwise. The mental representationof a shape—how our minds "describe" it—does not justreflect its Euclidean geometry, which remains unchanged as a shape isturned. It reflects the geometry relative to our up-down referenceframe. Our minds think of Africa as a thing with a fat bit "at the top"and a skinny bit "at the bottom." Change what's at the top and what's atthe bottom, and it's no longer Africa, even if not a jot of coastline hasbeen altered.The psychologist Irvin Rock has found many other examples t includingthis simple one:People see the drawings as two different shapes, a square and a diamond.But as far as a geometer is concerned, they are one and the sameshape. They are pegs that fit the same holes; every angle and line is thesame. The only difference is in how they are aligned with respect tothe viewer's up-and-down reference frame, and that difference is enoughto earn them different words in the English language. A square is flat ontop, a diamond is pointy on top; there's no avoiding the "on top." It iseven hard to see that the diamond is made of right angles.Finally, objects themselves can plot out reference frames: