Here is a small flower. Which of the A group on the left and B group on the right belongs to this flower? A group.
A group. Thank you. A A B A A B B B It belongs to B A B B It belongs to B B Um, A B Why is there such a difference?
Do Asians and Westerners see the world in a different way? Westerners have always thought that this space is empty. The stars floating in an empty space is what Westerners think of as the universe. The objects in an empty space exist independently regardless of their surroundings.
But the Asians believed that this space was filled with energy. And the energy filled with space gathers to create objects. The objects made by the energy gathered exist in a state that is always connected to the energy around it.
The Western world believes that the objects exist in the air, and the East believes that the objects are created by the energy that makes up the universe. The difference between the East and the West begins with this small difference. The Westerners are two objects that are different from each other.
If they are separated, they cannot influence each other. Because the space between the two objects is empty. But the Asians believed that the two objects separated from each other influenced each other. In the East, all objects are made of air.
In the air-filled space, each object affects each other. So, the reason why the earth and the moon interact is because of the reason why the earth and the moon have a connection. The ancient Chinese understood the concept of gravity. They understood the notion that there can be action at a distance, that one object can be distant from another and it still can operate on it.
And it's amazing to us today, but the Greeks did not understand that. In fact, it's amazing that until the late 18th century, the West believed that there was no such thing as action at a distance, whereas 2,500 years ago, The Chinese understood the basic principles of acoustics, they understood magnetism, and they even understood the true reason for the tides. And this was unknown even to Galileo.
Galileo had many interesting theories about why the tides exist, and all of them were wrong, whereas the Chinese had gotten it right 2,500 years before because they were paying attention between the relationship between the context and the object. All objects in the universe are connected to each other. In the temple garden in Japan, this oriental universe is symbolically expressed.
Here. There is an object shaped like a wooden cylinder. Let's call this a DOX.
When we call a wooden cylinder a DOX, which of the wooden straight-six-sided and blue plastic cylinders can be called a DOX? This is a Dax. Dax?
Dax. Which one is a Dax? The Westerners chose a circular-shaped cylinder as a Dax. That's another Dax. Because this round is like this one.
I would say that one. Why? Because it's the same shape. The color doesn't matter.
Which one is a dachshund? That one. Why? Same shape. Which one is a dachshund?
That one. Why? Because that one's got a curve like that and that one's got two circles there and this is both the same but they're different color. But the Asians chose a dachshund with a material-like face. This is it.
Why? Because it's made in a similar way. This one.
Why? Because the texture is similar. Why? Because they are the same, so they are wood. I see.
Wood, right? This way. Please take a picture.
What is the reason? Because the materials are the same. The wood and the wood.
This one? Yes. Why? Because it's the same material. The same material?
Yes. Is there more? The same quality.
The same quality? Yes. This one? Yes. Why?
I think DOX is a wood product. I think this one is. Why?
Because they are different in shape, but they can be modified and shaped the same. It's good, right? The difference between the thoughts of the East and the West can be interpreted as the difference between matter and matter.
If you break the object in front of you, a piece of it is not the same as the whole object, right? However, if you have a lump of clay or a lump of wax, and then you break it, each... piece is the same as the lump of clay, right?
So the criteria for the same is very different for substance and an object and for substance there is no notion of individuality and then no notion of wholeness you know whole and part it's the same for substance okay but for object you know whole is a whole and then piece of it or part of it it's no longer the same object consider it the same right so this distinction is very important conceptually and English and And another, Western languages quote Chinese don't say eat one particular orange. They don't say that. In English, you have to say eat this apple, eat an apple, you know, or apple a day. I mean, you know, we have to, in the English language, have to use that. In the Chinese, you don't have to because you have to pay attention to the context.
It's the habits of your thoughts, so you don't need to emphasize that, you know, specific quantity of objects. You're supposed to know. in English language.
They want to be very clear and specific. By the way, that's how the kids in the United States react. Sometimes my teacher say, go eat some fruit.
Then the kids say, which fruit you were talking about? You want to eat one banana, one apple, one strawberry? You don't get this kind of complaints from Asian kids.
They just, oh, I'm going to eat it. And they know what you mean. Westerners emphasize the unity of objects. Therefore, the concept of the whole is also the meaning of the collection of objects gathered by Westerners.
However, for Asians, the whole is the same as a single lump without unity, meaning the state of one. When looking at the object in the picture, different factors occur in the brain of Asians and Westerners. And what we see is that when an Asian brain sees a picture, it looks at the picture as a whole and doesn't, the area in the brain that pays attention to individual objects doesn't activate so much.
Whereas for an American, when they look at the same picture, their brain actually focuses on individual objects and the part of their brain that understands what an individual object is is what will activate more. The Asian sees the whole picture. But the Western sees the objects in the picture individually. The difference between the East and the West can be seen in the way the mother and child play. Western mothers use a lot of nouns when playing with their children.
What kind of special truck is it? I don't know. What kind of truck is that called? I don't know. It's not sand, it's water.
Oh, the water. Is it orange water? Or blue water? Or green water? Green water.
Green water? Yep. And where are we going to take it?
I don't know. Okay. To the hospital.
To the hospital? Yeah, there's this medicine water. Oh, it's special medicine water.
Okay. But the mother of the East uses more verbs than the mother of the West. I will use this to make a rice ball.
I will make a rice ball and put it in the bowl. I will put it in the bowl and fold it like this. What are you going to do with that? Mom, do you want to cook a meal?
Yes. Cook a delicious meal. A turtle meal.
A crab meal. Many years ago, in the 1980s, I think, a group of Harvard linguistics found that in the English language, there are too many norms. They call them norm bias. And some people look at the...
how kids in the Western societies or English language culture environments, how they talk, they find that they use a lot of nouns as well. You know, Nisbet has this famous example when he goes to... supermarket and he find this American mothers young teach this young American baby what is this this apple what is that that's orange is all about the norm and what's interesting is that Trila Taddeff who is linguistics from Michigan she went to China look at how the Chinese mothers and talk to their own kids they find that there are lots of verbs like sit eat run do things you is very much about So that's an interesting question there. It's like, why you get those cultural differences?
When a Western asks, they use the noun, and ask, but a Asian uses the verb, and asks, The verb, expresses the interaction between people and cars. But, In the West, which believes that each other is an independent entity, the meaning of the question is expressed through the noun, the word, the word. In the West, which values the identity, the noun is used, and in the East, which values the relationship, the verb is used. In the West, the world is centered on nouns, and in the East, the world is centered on verbs. When Asians see it, all the objects in this universe are always changing.
In the East, we believe that all beings are results of interaction with the surroundings. This is the same with the Han Song's kukaku. The national flower that blooms here exists as a result of numerous interactions for a long time.
All the beings in this world are born and disappear in numerous human relationships. This is called a Being means a fixed existence. The meaning of the term arising in the East is verbatim.
But the meaning of being exists in the West, which is fixed. Here, too, we can see the difference between the East and the West when looking at objects. If you ask where the reason why this object is blue is, What can we answer?
Westerners answer that the reason is inside the object. Because the area around this object is an empty space. But in the East, all space is filled with energy, and all things are formed by the accumulation of energy. Therefore, the reason why this object is blue is because of the energy around it. And because they are connected to other objects around them, there must be a more complex relationship between people than the blue object.
The East thinks that the causes and results of all cases are complicated. But when I was in Japan, I was reading newspaper articles. Sometimes people would get hit by a train.
or a subway car and be killed. These newspaper articles would very often finish with how many people were delayed, how many minutes they were delayed, how many trains were delayed or cancelled because of this accident. In the United States, you would never see this information. It would just be, you know, it's too bad, a tragic incident, someone was killed, and that's it.
And the Japanese journalists focused on all of these indirect effects, people delayed, trains delayed. Therefore, when there is an incident in the East, the people think of a much larger number of people than the West. What determines people's behavior? Because people in the East are in the context of the whole context, people's behavior is influenced by the small changes that occur in the context. The reason why the West thinks that human is independent and a complete body is because of the difference between human and human.
But the West believes that the cause of some phenomenon is inside the object. In the West, they used to split things up and then The ancient Greek philosopher Democritus thought that the properties of objects differed from the properties of atoms. For example, the water's atoms have smooth and round properties, so they have the property of flowing water.
Also, the iron atoms have rough and bumpy properties, so they are connected to each other to form solid iron. The atoms that give sweetness are made of large and round atoms. The atom that tastes salty is thought to be a triangular shape.
In the same way, in the West, we thought that all phenomena originated from the internal properties of things. The ancient Westerners thought that the reason why atoms move was due to the internal properties of atoms, that is, weight. In Aristotle's physics, the behavior of objects is completely explained by the properties of the object. So, Aristotle says you drop a stone into water and the stone sinks because the stone has the property of gravity.
But there's this problem, if you put a piece of wood in the water, the wood floats. Why is that? Well, because the wood has the property of levity.
And of course, we understand that that's just completely wrong. Objects don't have the property of gravity. Gravity is a relationship between one object and another. Red balloons suddenly flew to the sky and asked the Asians why they thought so.
So you have this balloon that comes in, suddenly accelerates by itself. Then we ask people, why do you think this balloon accelerates by itself? American students tend to say, well, maybe it's just loose air.
So it's about the object itself. And Chinese will say, oh, maybe there's wind coming. We didn't show wind, we didn't show anything, but they have a different response. 西洋人は、どのような現象の原因が物の中に存在するのかを考えるのですが、東洋人は、どのような現象の原因が物の中に存在するのかを考えるのです。 誰かが親切だと言うと、英語では、kindだと言います。
西洋人は、その人が友好的な理由があるのです。 They're assuming something that's wrong, that the person has a disposition or a personality trait that corresponds to the behavior that they've seen. So they generalize too much from it because they're just paying attention. They assume that the reason people behave the way they do is because they have certain properties that they carry around with them.
But in the East, people think that they can be kind and rude depending on the situation. Depending on how the other person acts, my behavior can change. This interaction is expressed well in our old proverb that the words that come are good and the words that go are good. There is a heroine with a happy face. People around the heroine are also happy.
But the people around the protagonist of the second painting look unhappy. Can the protagonist in the second painting look happy? Does this person look happy?
Yeah. What about him? The same one? Yeah, I would say so.
That he looks happy. I believe happy. I'd like to believe happy.
What about him? That one? Are they different?
I don't know. I would say that one's happy as well. He's happy, yes. What about him?
He looks the same to me. He looks happy too. Is he happy? Yes. He looks like it?
Yes. What about him? He's scared. He still looks kind of happy. North Americans in general are likely to focus only on the center of the scene, which means the center person.
Yes, this is a task. They can nicely focus on the center and try to guess the patterns, the center figure's facial expression. and even though the background has been changed, like an angry background, sad background, and happy background, they do not care so much about it.
Which means that they are nicely produced consistent evaluation to the same type of facial expressions. Are you happy? Yes.
Is the person in the middle happy? I don't think so. Because people around me are unhappy. I'm happy. Is the person in the middle happy?
No, not really. Why is that? The people around me are angry.
I'm happy. Is the person in the middle happy? Not really. I'm the only one laughing. Yes.
I feel happy just by looking at her. But if I look at the others, it's awkward. I can't explain it. I can't express my happiness. Yes.
Japanese are strongly influenced by the changes in the background facial expressions, which means that if you are presented with a happy background, the happy center person is seen as much happier than the case that they are presented with a sad background or neutral background. and the object, looking back and forth between the jungle and the tiger. So they make more eye movements, and they make more movements between the background and the object, so they see more about the background, and they see more about the relationships between what's in the background and what's in that salient object. The tiger in the jungle is different from the tiger in the jungle. It is recognized as a completely different tiger depending on where the tiger is.
The situation of being surrounded by objects can eventually be called a field. And The object is always in the center of the field surrounding itself. This is called an attitude in the East.
The East believes that the attitude of the object determines the state of the object, so they always have the habit of looking around the object. The traditional characters of the East can be seen to hold the composition widely. However, most Western characters have narrow composition or many semi-short.
This is also the case for modern people. took pictures of their friends for the students of the East and the West. The students of the West took pictures of their friends with small backgrounds and big faces.
But the students of the East and the West took pictures of their friends with small backgrounds and big faces. that we've taken last party, then I'm surprised that my size is quite large, you know, compared to my expectation. And the person, my friend, focuses only on my face while ignoring the background. And then, well... I said, oh, this seems to be a big face, you know.
But he said, oh, because, you know, I'm focusing on you, you know, I just, I think it's a good idea to make your picture, your face large, okay? So that's a kind of astonishing, you know, experience, yes. But I found that, oh, wait a minute, okay, so they really want to see the focal object while nicely ignoring the background.
But my experience is that In my country, you really have to take into account the contextual factor. When you go to the shrine or something like that, or temples, so famous temples and shrines, you might want to ask your friends to take a picture, not only for you, but also you and the buildings, right? Enjoying a new version of yourself combined with a different background.
I told the children of the East and the West to draw their own houses. The difference between children of the East and the West is interesting. Western children draw with their eyes. But Asian children draw as if they were looking down from the sky.
In East Asian society, it seems to be natural to see yourself from outside. You are also a part of the society. If you take an inside person's point of view, you are going to observe this world from your eyes.
You are always the center, but your self is not visible. So everything occurs to you is just in front of your eyes, and you cannot see yourself. Whereas, you know, East Asian society, you can even contextualize yourself. If you take outside as point of view, you are also in the part of the group, part of the society. When you take a look at East Asian paintings, you can easily identify that they take a bird's eye view, which is not a completely different technique.
compared to the Western perspective. Western perspective, you really have to set up the viewer's point. Once you fix it, you cannot move. You really have to experience that you are just standing in front of the images. Based on that assumption, they draw three-dimensional like Western perspective images.
Whereas, E-thesian drawing in general is It's like something like the painter is actually flying on the sky and trying to observe all the field information from the sky. The sound means shade, and the sound means sunlight. The relationship between sound and sound is like the sun and the shadow of all things. It symbolizes that there is no one without each other. In the Lord, this is called grandness.
Here are the pictures of the monkey, banana, and panda. If you had to tie two of them together, how would you do it? The panda and the monkey, because they're both animals. The panda bear and the monkey. Why?
Because they're both animals and they're both mammals as well. The panda and the monkey go together. Why?
Because they're both animals. Monkey and the panda go together. together because they're both mammals, whereas the banana is a fruit. Panda and monkey.
Why? Because they're animals? One type of study that we do is that we show people triads of pictures, three pictures. different objects and we say which of these two go together? And it might be something like banana, panda, monkey.
And the Americans say well the monkey and the panda go together because both of them are animals. But the East Asians are much more likely to say the monkey goes with the banana because monkeys eat bananas. So the Americans, the Westerners are seeing the world in terms of of categories like animal and so on, and these are not as salient to East Asians, they're much more likely to see the world in terms of relationships, like monkey eats banana.
Monkey and banana. Why? Because monkeys like bananas.
Monkey and banana. Why? Because monkeys like bananas. Monkey and banana.
Why? Because monkeys like bananas. Monkey and banana. Monkey and banana.
What's the reason? Because monkeys like bananas. Monkey and banana. Monkey and banana?
Because monkeys eat bananas. Really? Westerners see objects from the background.
But in Western brains, it's not just the way they see objects. We found that the Americans showed more activation in their brains in the middle temporal gyrus. That's a part of the brain that's associated with contacting the meaning of objects. 서양인은 대상을 분리하고 그 의미를 해석한다.
분리하고 해석하는 것, 이것이 곧... An analysis is The reason why Asians chose group A is because the overall appearance of the flower is similar. Looking at this standard flower, round-shaped petals stand out.
And group A flowers mostly have round-shaped petals. But group B flowers are mostly pointed. So, the East is...
a group of the sun has man so young in the morning when johnny on the ground eager in the room so young in connie quite sure he is a for the second of the connie for the given a group of so connie to have a happy or so happy them to see something that's happening But if you compare the stems, The stem of the B-group is a straight line with four lines, so it is regular. Therefore, Westerners choose the B-group. Westerners see the world as a collection of independent objects. However, the world is made up of countless objects, so it is necessary to organize them. So Westerners After observing the properties of all objects, they started to classify them into the same type.
Bring rules about the categories at a somewhat abstract level to bear on how the object will behave given the rules that apply to the categories that it fits.