Nida Bıçak
Deepak Chopra says “There is no fixed physical reality, no single perception of the world, just numerous ways of interpreting world views as dictated by one’s nervous system and the specific environment of our planetary existence.” As Chopra says people perceive things and so the word, perception comes out from that. Every people perceive in different ways. This can be because of physical characteristics, physiological characteristics or may be because of both of them. The perception is related to the scale and so it is related to macro and micro. As it is told before people perceive in different levels, generally they can perceive in micro scale or macro scale. Different levels of perception is sensed by various senses.
Sense is important for perception and so for the micro macro subject. People and also the animals can sense by the help of neurons. Neurons are the smallest parts of human body thus the neurons are in micro scale according to human body. Human body is composed of cells, a micro building block of human body which is in scale of 3.7±0.8×1013. The micro size of the cell can be understood clearly from the number. There is a term which is called microphotography, it is basically taking a photo of something in micro scale. A microphotograph of a neuron can be visualized in different ways. Like, if a photograph of a neuron is given to different people, and asked to tell what they see in the photograph, they will all give different answers to the question. Some people say it is a lightning, some will say it is a drawing, some people say it is a scar on the table or they can say it is a pattern. The answers of all these people show that, they all have different perspectives. Some of them perceive in micro scale and some of them perceive in macro scale. Perceiving happens by the help of neurons. Just like Chopra says, interpreting the world by the one’s nervous system, he obviously try to say that the interpretation happens with the neurons. Neurons are the connecting material of human body parts. By the help of the neurons, people can understand the surrounding with their sensory organs. There are five different senses at human body. Basically, they are sight, hear, taste, touch, and smell. The first type of sense which will be subjected to this essay is the sight. Sight is directly related to perception and so it is related to micro and macro as well.
The painting of Salvador Dali is shown, the name of the painting is Three Sphinx of Bikini and it is made in 1947. The meaning of the painting cannot be perceptible easily that is why every people see different images on the painting. The different perceptions of the people lead them to different directions about the Three Sphinx of Bikini. Some people see clouds, some people see trees, some people see land they are all different. In real, the painting of Dali consisted of one tree, one head and one nuclear mushroom. The tree symbolizes the nature, the head represents the humanity, and the mushroom cloud represents the destruction of nuclear bomb. In surrealism the interesting juxtaposition and symbolic imagery are used to express the working of the mind. The surrealist painter Dali, did the same thing in 1947. He wanted to show the explosion. And how it will affect the tree which is the closest to it and then it will affect the head. This means that the impact on nature is far greater than the impact on human kind. The different ideas of people about the painting is because of the scale of perception. Some perceive in micro scale and some perceive in macro scale. Also in this painting there is something different about it. Salvador Dali sees a great historical event and paints it. This shows that he uses a macro element and put it on to a micro scale surface. The other type of sense is the hear, the ear is the sensory organ for hearing and there are the smallest bones in the ear according to other human body bones. The bones are called hammer, anvil and stirrup and these are the micro scale bones. By the help of the vibration of these bones, people can hear but also it depends on their perception. Some people hear in macro scale and some people hear in micro scale just like in sense of sight. The other types of senses are taste, touch and smell. They all have benefit from micro scale organs. For instance, the papillae are the main building block of the tasting sense and they cannot be seen with bare eyes thus they are in micro scale. Everybody can taste but they all taste in different levels because of their different scale perception. If a candy is given to ten people and asked to give a number between one and ten about its taste. Probably they all give various answers. It is similar in touching as well. The sensory organ for touching is the skin, people perceive in micro or macro scale about sensing. The smelling is basically similar to other senses but there is something special about it. After sometime, about 20 minutes the sensory organ, noise, gets lazy and cannot understand the smell any longer.
When it comes to time, some people may think that the time cannot be perceived. But it is for sure that there is something called time perception. The time can be changeable according to people and so it is related to micro, macro perception. For instance, there is a phrase like every student uses in their daily lives. And this sentence is “How many minutes are there to the end of the class?” The answer depends on people’s perception, some students say “There are lots of time”, and other students may say “No, there is only 15 minutes.” The first type of students perceive the time in macro scale and the other type of students perceive the time in micro scale. Beside all of these, there is a solid time scales like microseconds, centuries, light years and so on. The time measurements show that forms. The oldest member is called nana and the smallest member called as baby, this shows a macro, micro scale in a family. And also family members have special bonds.
The bond between family members is named as love. Which is the second strong feeling of all the feelings, the strongest one is the revenge. Feelings have an important role in people’s lives. People feel in different ways and in various levels and also they represent their feelings in different ways. Emotions are just like the senses. Every people feel something but they feel in different levels and this leads to micro macro feelings. Loving and hating are the two opposite feelings. Some people may think that they can only feel one of them at the same time. But they do not realize that when they hate something they actually love some part of it. This situation can be told as macro and micro feelings. At this case, the macro feeling is hate and the micro feeling is the love. Or the vice versa of this case can be happen as well. At another perspective, some feelings of people cannot be readable from the mimics or gestures, even the person cannot recognize the feeling. These feelings can be named as micro feelings, and the opposite of it, is the macro feeling. In this macro feeling, the feeling can be readable by an outsider. For instance in the painting, there are three versions of body gesture and people can see that he is depressed or angry. From this image, people can see how he feels because his feelings are in macro scale.
To sum up, the perception is directly related to micro and macro. Every single thing has a macro scale and micro scale since there is different perspectives of people. Some people perceive in micro scale and some people perceive in macro scale.