Ontological Underpinnings
It is in this chapter that the authors honestly state that "…our only purpose is to inspire software engineers to come up with new ideas for visual communication and to facilitate arguing about such systems. Therefore, we think that our frivolous and speculative attitude towards mathematics, biology, perception theory, and cognitive psychology is, from the point of view of design methodology, at least partially acceptable."

Accepting the above statement, I will therefore offer my serious criticism of the book's ontological underpinning in a spirit of good-willed criticism contributing the little I can to this important debate and this essential research.

The book is riddled with statements that seem to be rooted in a "naive belief in an objective world" which, unavoidably, limits the scope of the software the book's science helps design.

I will take only a few of the many (many) examples present in the book to illustrate that: In "Before and After Photorealism" on page 3, the authors refer to an illustration of an ancient Egyptian mural in these terms: "Note how the artist has taken the liberty to draw the subjects in a way in which they cannot possibly have looked."

I share Giacometti's view that "to the Egyptians, their work had nothing to do with 'Style,' they painted what they saw as best as they possibly could." We have to be careful, especially when looking at other cultures' artifacts, to not fall into this "imperialist view of reality" that posits other cultures' worldview(s) as "primitive" or at least as "lesser" than our own. It is only if we posit our superstitious belief in an "objective world "as the norm for all that we can state that an ancient Egyptian mural depicts reality in ways that could not possibly correspond to the artist's (and the viewers') experience of "the real."

In a later example (a 1569 drawing of the city of Nîmes), the authors say: "These examples show how artists, either consciously or unconsciously, have taken advantage of being able to define a 'point of view.'" They go on to say, "Drawing by hand, it is possible to free oneself from physical constraints of reality and to convey an impression rather than just convey details of a scene's appearance."

I therefore have to ask: can one see without a point of view?

Before we consciously (or not, though this is a red herring) can "define" a point of view, we are already experiencing a point of view: nothing of what we see is free of a point of view, each and every one of us has — or rather is — as Merleau-Ponty rightly says, "a brand new point of view on the world."

Isn't every perception, by definition, a subjective experience?

Again, Merleau-Ponty made it quite clear (at least to me), "Perception is constitutive."

This points to the stance of the viewer as being a constitutive "part" of the experience, yet the book's science acts as if the object of experience (the visible world) could be accessible bereft of a viewer's built-in "subjectivity."

Much research has shown that a slight shift in priorities (a shift in "intentionality") causes the patterns of scanning to be altered drastically, and one's focus on a pre-determined aspect of a scene can and does make one totally oblivious to some aspects of the scene that are "right in front of one's eyes." (This is just a minor example that sacrifices to the "objective-world" golden calf.)

Also, and this is fundamental in this research, the body can help us "cater to the appearing as it appears" in ways that reach far beyond what reflection alone can reveal. Artists know that to work under the control of the usual "look-understand-do" is limiting one's work to the "already known," while shifting to "look-do-understand" opens up much of what is usually limited by language.