Re: VMs: Viola tricolor

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi William,

At 17:52 24/05/2004 +0100, you wrote:
> I looked at the wild pansies in my garden, and at a couple of reference 
> books on wild flowers.
>
> The image on f9v is hopelessly wrong for a pansy.
>
> The leaf shapes are wrong, the nodal stalkless leaflets are not shown, the 
> flower stems should not have any leaves at all, the sequential arrangement 
> of flower stems off the main stem is not shown, the flowers are incorrect 
> (upsidedown but also distorted), the emergence of multiple stems from the 
> base is not shown.
>
> I didn't pull mine out of the ground - but the root looks implausible.
>
> It is just too wrong.  It may be reminiscent of a pansy, but that's about it.

There are plenty of assumptions hiding behind this ultra-dismissive 
conclusion:-
(a) wild viola tricolor hasn't changed in 500 years (are you sure?)
(b) upside flowers are inherently incorrect (why?)
(c) the roots are the least important part (why?)
(d) that an exact, 21st century scientific match is the only raison d'etre 
for f9v's existence
(e) etc etc

Without understanding what the artist was trying to do, "reminiscent of" is 
probably as good as it gets - we have no grounds for concluding 
incompetence or sloth (etc). Nearly all people are rational - it's just 
that some minds are so far removed from ours that we have to work hard to 
bridge the gap. As yet, the mind(s) behind the VMs remain very distant... :-o

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling..... 


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