'Ways of Seeing.'

NN VIII, charcoal & chalk tonal study.

'Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.

But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled. Each evening we see the sun set. We know that the earth is turning away from it. Yet the knowledge, the explanation, never quite fits the sight.'
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John Berger, 'Ways of Seeing', 1972. 

I was recently reminded of Berger's essay, particularly it's opening sentence. Knowledge is the key to interpretation, no matter how small that amount of knowledge might be. When we look at the world our definition of what we see is based on what we already know. But sometimes this knowledge may lead us astray via a bias based on an insufficient amount of knowledge or even on a want; the conspiracy theory area of apophenia. Berger's example of the world turning is an excellent, if unintended, example of this:

'Each evening we see the sun set. We know that the earth is turning away from it. Yet the knowledge, the explanation, never quite fits the sight.'

For some people it never will fit. The science is sound and yet some people chose to believe that the world is flat. 
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