Entropy theory is indeed a first attempt to deal with global form; but it has not been dealing with structure. All it says is that a large sum of elements may have properties not found in a smaller sample of them.

Good art theory must smell of the studio, although its language should differ from the household talk of painters and sculptors.

Now the work of art also represents a state of final equilibrium, of accomplished order and maximum relative entropy, and there are those who resent it. But art is not meant to stop the stream of life. Within a narrow span of duration and space the work of art concentrates a view of the human condition; and sometimes it marks the steps of progression, just as a man climbing the dark stairs of a medieval tower assures himself by the changing sights glimpsed through its narrow windows that he is getting somewhere after all.

What, then, is the basic difference between today's computer and an intelligent being? It is that the computer can be made to seebut not to perceive. What matters here is not that the computer is without consciousness but that thus far it is incapable of the spontaneous grasp of pattern--a capacity essential to perception and intelligence.

When the thing observed... is seen as an agglomeration of pieces, the details lose their meaning and the whole becomes unrecognizable. This is often true of snapshots in which no pattern of salient shapes organizes the mass of vague and complex nuances.

The arts are neglected because they are based on perception, and perception is disdained because it is not assumed to involve thought.

Seeing consists of the grasping of structural features rather than the indiscriminate recording of detail.