In a famous series of psychological experiments, human subjects were fitted with special glasses whose lenses turned the visual input upside down. At first, as you would expect, the subjects saw an upside-down world, but after a period of sustained use, the visual world began to “flip back over.” After a few days, the subjects (still wearing the lenses) reported that their visual experience was back to normal. Remove the glasses, however, and the world looks upside down until re-adaptation occurs. Even more illustrative of the mind’s “plasticity” was a group of subjects who removed and replaced their lenses in regular intervals. Amazingly, that group developed the ability to quickly flip interpretive “settings” depending upon the input. They adapted so seamlessly that eventually the world remained constantly upright regardless of whether they wore the lenses or not.

Most interesting of all, researchers discovered that these kinds of perceptual adaptations are highly action-dependent … driven by a necessary combination of the visual inputs and the experience of trying to move and act in the world. Thus, subjects who remained still or even those being pushed around in a wheelchair did not adapt, while ones who were made to walk a complex trail did.

The notion that a learning experience is simply determined by the passive receipt of information is deeply misleading. Our brains are not at all like radio or television receivers. The whole business of seeing and perceiving is inextricably bound up with acting upon, and intervening in, our world.

An ancient commentator on the human learning process once put it this way … “Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered in and, as a result, you hinder those who are trying to enter.” —Luke 11:52

(research information from “Natural Born Cyborgs” by Andy Clark, holder of the Ancient Chair of logic and Metaphysics at Edinburgh University).