FIGURE AND GROUND STRATEGY OR GUIDANCE BY EXCEPTION

The Figure and Ground Strategy is very powerful in Science and very common everyday.

We, of course, need it everyday for "seeing". Suppose you wish to focus on an object. Say, a needle or dark button or thread or string or whatever, but the background has a texture too similar to the search-object. This makes your search difficult. You need a contrasting background to make the "figure" stand out.

Although few may realize it, weighing objects by balance is a case of figure and ground. If nothing is placed on the balance pans, the scales remain horizontal in equilibrium. But an object of scant weight placed on one pan may make it tip noticeably out of balance. The equilibrium state is homologous to a white background to "show up" darker figures.

A tiny stream of water "inching" across the carpet may remind you that you left the bathtub faucets running. The equlibrium case is, of course, keeping your carpet clean.

A smidge of smoke in the otherwise clear atmosphere of a room may warn of unintended burning. The equilibrium case is, of course, ....

You may be able to think of other daily and "pedestrian" examples of figure and ground.

This becomes a strategy for discovery or research by your active creation of an effective background and watching to see what "stars on its stage".

Some students and members of the general public cannot understand the assignment of equiprobability to a set of independent possible events. This is homologous to an equilibrium balance for weighing. Any departure from it appear significant.

Engineers use this forquality control by exception.

Clever managers homologously developed "management by exception":

This suggests how you might implement the figure and ground strategy. Arrange homogeneity about you in various ways. Then any hetereogeneity is exceptional and can be observed.

A general TACTIC for the FIGURE&GROUND STRATEGY is to IMPOSE SYMMETRY AS FIGURE. Then ASYMMETRIES of the environment or all Reality will be exposed. Conversely, use SYMMETRY as GROUND. Thus, REALITY BY EXCEPTION.

Much of his relates to the "negative" aspect of this stategy. The "positive" aspect can be illustrated by esthetic examples from the arts.

In poetry, although many many meter schemes have been developed and applied, including free verse, some of the greatest verse-rhythm surprises have occurred against the background of the iambic pentameter of the blank verse in plays of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson, Tourneur, Webster, etc.. My wife, a French major, tells me that the effect is the same in some of the great French dramas written in Alexandrines.

In jazz, you notice "bends of beat" against the steady background laid down by drums and string bass.

Atonal music has had many developments since the works of Schöberg, Webern, Berg, and others. But some of the great harmonic felicities occur in tonal music, as Leonard Bernstein, Virgil Thompson, Aaron Copland, Ralph Vaughn-Williams, SamuelBarber, Howard Hanson, and other 20th century composers have shown us. In fact, moving away from a key is a move toward symmetry, rather than the breaking of "global" symmetry to achieve "local" symmetries.

Thus, you might achieve more esthetic and stylistic effects by laying down a uniform pattern as figure and as ground. This prosethically supports you and might provide wanring signs of impending disturbance or oppotunity for creative change.