Ignorance of how our brain works, which is only just beginning to be understood today, has not prevented past generations of scientists from theorizing in the field of visual perception and communication. This is the basis for the misleading idea of an image-like retinal projection that is evaluated by a superior rational device in the brain. Metaphorical terms such as “inner images, imaginary, perceptual or dream images” are still firmly anchored in society’s linguistic memory today and are part of the constant explanatory repertoire of scientists, journalists and educators. However, this means that we miss out on the essence of the process of vivid perception, imagination and representation.
We do not see “images” that we subsequently interpret, but rather the already visualized, embodied or spatialized result of our interpretation process. This is only complete when we stop searching for new things through our attentive gaze and questioning what we have already recognized. Vivid perception, imagination and representation describe a communication process through which we link the meaningful structures in the environmental or imaginary situation, like the words of a sentence, into meaningful action contexts. To do this, we have to move our eyes constantly, as we only see about 2° of the field of vision consciously, while about 99.9% of the information is perceived unconsciously or read between the lines. The peripheral field of vision controls our attention and determines our feelings and emotions as well as our interests and assessments.
Even if we already know today that we only understand a fraction of the processes in the brain, we still have the task of taking the available material from the neurosciences into account when forming theories. We can only promote the learning process methodically if we know the biological prerequisites for it.
