(See: Case Study: Robbie, Part II) 

Robbie had spent six months in the hospital, and with no prior memory to compare this experience, he was completely content with his life. The doctors subjected his eyes to laser examinations, and his muscles to fitness examinations—all of which, Robbie felt, were satisfactory. Sometimes Robbie built structures with blocks. Other times he arranged fruits and vegetables by shape, size, and color. He told stories about simple water color paintings, and explained his reactions to shadowy, blotted images that looked like solemn birds or wiry legs of spiders, or midnight flowers blooming in shrouded, rainy windows.

Sometimes Robbie asked questions; sometimes he answered questions.

Above all, he enjoyed himself the most when a man named Harold joined him for a discussion. Harold was a tall, skeletal man with pale skin and a strong clamp of jaw that swallowed his face, clear to his nose. Robbie liked him the most because of his seriousness, the way he focused his entire bent body on Robbie—as if no one else existed—as if everything Robbie said had meaning.

One day, Harold brought a new game. He placed two large cards upon the desk in front of Robbie. They looked like this:

2 + 3 = 5

and

2 x 3 = 6

Robbie already understood why adding three blocks to his collection of two blocks would increase his overall block supply—and he needed only to count his inventory to arrive at a sum. In this case, his supply now totaled five.

The second arrangement seemed less sensible, though he comprehended the method required of him. If Robbie had two blocks, Harold could conceivably offer to give him three groups of his two blocks—and yet, in order to achieve the desired total, Robbie had to assume that Harold was only giving him two (not three) groups of his previous two blocks.

Throughout several previous sessions, Robbie had repeatedly asked why he wouldn’t have eight blocks rather than six; because, he reasoned, his own two blocks, increased by three groups of his two blocks, would provide him with 2 + 2 + 2 +2 blocks.

Harold, however, refused to acknowledge Robbie’s prior block ownership.

Multiplication was a barter system, Harold explained, and no one gets without giving. If someone was going to give Robbie three groups of two blocks, Robbie must cede his rights to his own blocks, or the block grouping would not take place.

Harold thought that Robbie’s reaction to multiplication problems was somewhat curious, and thus devised this game. He laid out the two problems:

2 + 3 = 5

and

2 x 3 = 6

And then he asked Robbie to explain the difference between the cards.

Robbie considered. There were many obvious differences. The action symbol, “+” or “x”, on each card was different—or, at least, positioned in a different way. Just as obviously, the third number on the first card was different from the third number on the second card. It seemed, then, that the action symbols were responsible for all the differences, and Robbie was about to say so when he was struck by a sudden intuition.

It wasn’t the action symbols’ responsibility to determine differences or similarities; on each card, the second symbol, the “equal” sign, held the responsibility. The sign was the same on both cards, yet because of the variation in the action symbols, the equal sign demanded a different third number. Without “=” nothing mattered at all. In fact, without “=” there would be no action in the first place. (2 + 3) meant nothing until you wanted to know its value. You needed to have a desire for knowledge before the knowledge could exist.

Then Robbie considered every question that had been asked of him in the months following the sudden awakening of his own brain, and he realized his mathematics intuition was correct. When a doctor asked him, “how does this picture make you feel?” the doctor could just as easily have asked him to explain the equation (picture) = (Robbie’s thoughts).

But was that an explainable equation? What if, instead, Robbie had asked for a similar explanation from the doctor—would it be the same thing to say (picture) = (doctor’s thoughts)?

And if it was the same, then (Robbie’s thoughts) would equal (doctor’s thoughts), and Robbie wasn’t sure that this was true.

In that moment of doubt, Robbie understood the answer to Harold’s question.

“Okay, I get it,” Robbie said.

“Excellent. Please explain.”

“All right,” Robbie agreed. “First, I need to know what you think the difference is between these problems.”

Harold, as always, took the response seriously. “You do? I will agree to tell you what I think, after you tell me what you think. Do we have a deal?”

“But I can’t tell you what the difference is, until you tell me what you think.”

“And why is that, Robbie?”

“Because that’s the difference!”

“Please explain.”

“Before lunch you asked me to tell you what I saw in those pictures. And I told you they made me think of spiders holding hands in a circle while crawling across the surface of a mirror.”

“Yes, I remember.”

“Well, what did the pictures mean to you?”

“I wasn’t thinking about the pictures, Robbie. I was thinking about what you were thinking.”

“But would those pictures make you think about spiders?”

“I don’t know—it’s a good question. Everyone looks at a picture and thinks different things.”

“Even though they are the exact same pictures?”

“Yes . . . Isn’t that interesting?”

“When you asked me what I saw in those pictures, you were really asking yourself the question, “why does Robbie see spiders in these pictures, and how is this different from what someone else might see?” But you could have asked, “who are you, Robbie?” while showing me the picture, or any picture, or without showing me any picture at all?”

Harold spent a moment thinking, and then replied, “I’m impressed, Robbie—though you have avoided telling me why these two mathematics problems are different. Let me say this one thing about the pictures before I redirect you back to the mathematics. Those pictures I show you are not images of anything particular. They are only hints, or clues—or a frame for you to fill, and the way you fill the frame will help me understand how your thoughts are working.

“Some doctors think, for example, if a person looks at these pictures and sees a single, large object—like a spider—then the person is feeling lonely, or depressed; other doctors believe that a person who sees a single spider has a strong sense of self, because the person is able to identify an object both separate and distinct from his own self-identity.

“On the other hand, a person who sees many, interrelated shapes, such as a community of spiders holding hands, might be a well-connected human being, who feels himself to be part of something more universal. Doctors aren’t looking for the specific images that you might see, Robbie. They want to know the way you see things. Do you understand?”

“Yes!” Robbie said. “That’s exactly what I’m saying, Harold. These two number cards are completely different—one of them is you, and one of them is me.”

“Then you don’t recognize any similarities?” Harold asked.

“If you chop them up into little pieces, then you could say that both cards have a ‘two’ and a ‘three’ and an ‘equal’ sign—but as a whole, those differences don’t really mean anything.

“The ‘equal’ demands that the first card means ‘five,’ that the second card means ‘six.’ ‘Five’ and ‘six’ are different, the way ‘Robbie’ is different from ‘Harold.’

“My first thought was that the action of each card, the ‘+’ and the ‘x,’ was the difference, but then I realized that ‘+’ and ‘x’ aren’t different at all until ‘=’ demands a difference. None of the numbers, actions, or symbols mean anything without ‘=’. You must want to know something for it to mean anything.

“So,” Robbie continued, “the answer to your question is that nothing is different until we both look at the cards, and both try to answer the problems. Because, if it’s just me thinking, then it’s like having just one card. When you start thinking, as well, then we have two cards.

“But even if we both look at the same cards, if we both think about the same questions and the same answers, it’s still exactly like those pictures you showed me. It’s not the answer we find, is it? The answer never matters. The real problem is that we demand to know the difference, even when the meaning of both of the cards is exactly the same.”

Taboo's Ezine Navigator: Article Index
Copyright ©2004, ©2005, ©2006 Joshua Suchman. All rights reserved.
Taboo Tenente: A Thinker's MFA Journey - Home