A summary of two scientific articles: Jonathan Hey's "The Data Information Knowledge Wisdom Chain" and James Gibson's "Theory of affordances" from "The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception." This summary provides a clear overview of everything needed to make the articles thoroughly understandab...
The environment: surfaces that separate substances from the medium in which animals live (eg. water for fish, air for
humans.
The environment affords animals with what they need to survive affordances: the things it has to offer.
Physical properties are measured relative to the animal affordances unique for that animal. An affordance is
relative to the size of the animal.
If an affordance is perceived visually, it looks like it affords its function (eg. a chair looks sit-on-able).
A niche a species of animals utilize/occupy offers a set of affordances.
In nature, a lot of niches may be occupied, but not all.
Affordances of the environment may look physical and objective, unlike values and meanings. However, affordances
point to the environment AND to the observer both physical and psychical.
Earth has been modifies by man substances of the environment have partly been converted from natural materials
to artificial materials.
Changes has been made to change what the environment affords man made more available what benefits him.
The earth and the sky are basic structures on which all lesser structures depend humans cannot change it.
Some affordances of the terrestrial environment:
The medium: air affords respiration, unimpeded motion (eg. flying), visual perception, vibratory events (eg.
sound) and odor fields (travelling gasses).
The substances: water affords respiration for certain animals, drinking and so on. Solid substances have
characteristic surfaces.
The surfaces and their layouts: a horizontal flat, extended, rigid surface affords support basis of the
behavior and the visual perception of land animals.
Flat earth lies beneath the attached and detached objects on it Earth at the scale of the human animal
flat, not round.
The progress of locomotion is guided by the perception of barriers and obstacles away from surfaces that
afford injury.
The objects: objects can be attached or detached (eg. to the surface of Earth. They can’t be detached without
breaking). If detached objects afford behavior, the object must be comparable in size to the animal afford a
variety of behaviors, especially for animals with hands (eg. manipulatable and manufacturable).
To be graspable, an object must have opposite surfaces separated by a distance less than the span of the
hand.
Affordances are what we perceive when we look at objects. What the object affords us is what we normally pay
attention to.
With young children, the infant begins to notice the affordance of an object.
Perception is economical: one only perceives the important parts of an object, as it is never necessary to distinguish all
the features of an object, nor is it possible to do so.
In the theory of affordances one does not label and classify things in order to perceive what they afford.
Affordances offered by other animals are so different from ordinary (inanimate) objects that infants learn almost
immediately to distinguish them. They interact with the observer and with one another behavior affords behavior:
one’s behavior is dependent on what someone else affords.
The habitat of a given animal contains places: a region, with different affordances for different places.
Animals are skilled at place-learning: finding their way to significant places.
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