How does what we do affect what we understand?

How does what we do affect what we can understand?  This question came to me very insistently while I was taking in some art at the Prado this weekend.  This question could frame some really good character contrasts – two characters with very different backgrounds and life choices encountering the same dilemma.  The story could start with two characters reacting in different ways to the same situation – one way seemingly shocking and bad, the other reaction seeming good and appropriate; but after further development we come to understand that what seemed bad is really good and what seemed good is really bad. This is not suggesting moral relativism.  It is merely the examination of appearance vs. reality.  The putting on of dramatic appearances – the creation of a dramatic play, a TV show or movie – ironically reveals what is most real.  Playing with how things appear can reveal how they really are.

As the NYC subway quote says that Isaac Newton said,

“I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”

Its a process of continuous learning from the senses, mostly by trial and error. You do something, in the company of something, then it influences your thoughts, ideas, and wishes, and changes your attitudes, feelings, and outlooks.

Hmm. Thanks anymonkeycanmanage at Mahalo Answers.