Teacorps — Think tank · Worker cooperative

Türkçe

Arts / Flow · Turbulent

The serendipity of human perception

Perception reaches discoveries that strict reason would never set out to find.

Our view

Horace Walpole coined the word serendipity in 1754, from a Persian tale whose princes kept making discoveries “by accidents and sagacity”. Both halves count. Accident supplies the material; sagacity recognises that it matters. The arts train the second half.

Reason tests the hypotheses it is handed; perception enlarges the set it is handed. That is why a think tank devoted to truth keeps the arts in its programme — as an instrument of discovery, and as part of what makes the lives we work for worth living.

Our work

Three of our applications work at the edge of perception.

  • Nelabu — Language taken in through real text, not drills.
  • iris — Perception as a feedback loop: the image learns its viewer.
  • theGame — Play: a board read and decided in the same instant.

Our selection

Reading

The whole library

An effective path

For a society

  1. Keep public-domain works open, complete and at full resolution.
  2. Fund making as well as preserving.
  3. Teach attention: long time with single works.

For an individual

  1. Spend thirty minutes with one work.
  2. Make something yourself, however rough.
  3. Keep a record of what moved you, and why.

Next: Humanity