Article Review
I
Tyson’s article is about the doubts as well as the delusions of people, scientists, politicians, journalists and others who make predictions without really putting much thought into it. Whatever they claim would not happens eventually happens and what they predict with so much passion does not come to pass. Tyson says, greed, war and celebration of religious and royal power is what drives innovation and funds major projects. These trump over curiosity to invent and discover. he makes his argument effective by quoting the various predictions through the years that have fell flat. He mentions predictions about airplanes, space living and transport made by inventors and scientists to drive home his point. These predictions by great men in their respective did not come true and that's what he calls the delusion of enthusiasts. Committing to something without analyzing the possibilities.
Tyson’s speaking and writing style are light hearted. Although an acclaimed astrophysicist he does not get into boring theory and definitions to explain something. He interjects his serious ideas with jokes both in his speech and writings to enable everyone to understand what he’s talking about. Tyson debunks the stereotype of an astrophysicist by accepting that they too can be delusional and prone to make assumptions about the future like the others. He also fits the stereotype as he believes that science has the answer to everything and it is only a question of looking at the right place and having enough resources to fund the project.
II
“Photographs of the victims of war are themselves a species of rhetoric. They reiterate. They simplify. They agitate. They create the illusion of consensus (Sontag 83).”
“Harrowing photographs do not inevitably lose their power to shock. But they don’t help us much to understand (Sontag 94)”
“The first idea is that public attention is steered by the attentions of the media-which means images (Sontag 96).”
Sontag in her article states that no matter how powerful and disturbing images and photographs of war are, the observer cannot really understand the pain, fear and the struggle that a soldier, a journalist or a civilian who went through it would have felt. Pictures can shock people but a narrative is what helps them remember the event. A photograph will be remembered for the images but not for the incident that it captures.
III
Berger claims that, "the relation between what we see and what we know is never settled. Each evening we see the sun setting and we know the earth is turning away from it. Yet the knowledge, the explanation, never quite fits the sight (Berger 7). " What he means is that although we accept the explanations for certain things in life and take it for a fact, a closer inspection of what we see and what has been told to us does not really compute. In the case of stars, the person knows for a fact that they are millions of miles away, yet when he or she looks at them, they seem so close. Although convinced they are not close, they seem to be close as they are visible to the naked eye. What a person perceives from an image or from what he or she sees is usually congruent with the facts associated with it.
Both ‘Looking at War’ and ‘Ways of seeing’ talk about how the original impression either through an experience or through a seeing an original painting changes when seen through a reproduction. A reproduction either through a photograph or a video shows the viewer what the camera lens can see and capture and is situated in the present environment of the viewer. The original on the other hand captures the real moment as is as the person painting it or experiencing it looks at the object as if it is the only thing present.
I agree with Berger’s view that reproductions affect the meanings of the paintings. Reproductions are presented in a way that is open to many interpretations unlike the original which has a singular meaning and explanation-that of its creator.
The above image is of arepas, a colombian street food. It looks delicious and filling.
The same image doesn't look too tantalizing when you see it with a warning message. Now you see it with a dread and start imagining as to what in the food can kill you or be dangerous to your health. Although the above images are the same, the narratives change how a person looks at it.
Works Cited
Sontag, Susan, “ Looking at War”. The New Yorker. 9 Dec 2002. Web. 9 Mar 2016.
