Explaining Difficult Things, page 3

Everything Is Difficult

Hammett has pretty succinctly described something that is fairly difficult to describe.

If you stop to think about it, the appearance of just about anything is a pretty difficult thing to describe either accurately, or in a way that conveys its essence. But things (physical objects) are easier to describe than concepts and processes.

A physical object--a watch, a box, a house, the Maltese falcon--can be described visually. It is tangible. It is there so you can study it. It can be measured. It probably is fairly static, does not have a temporal element, and does not change over time. It is not a nebulous thought, emotion, or feeling.

Since describing the appearance of a tangible object is relatively straightforward, we ought to be able to come up with a series of steps that can generally be used to describe the way objects look. At the very least, we ought to be able to come up with sets of procedures, each procedure resulting in a description of a family of related objects. If you know how to go about describing one house, you probably know how to describe another house.

This kind of procedure, in computer software terms, is called an algorithm. There are algorithms that let you describe the appearance of classes of objects, but there are several objections to these algorithms:

• They are very complicated and may require collateral material (for example, an elevation drawing or a blueprint of the floor plan of a house).

• The algorithms produce descriptions that are mechanical and wooden.

• While the algorithms may produce recognizable descriptions of the appearance of something, there’s no way to codify the creation of the description of an object’s essence.

Just think about the steps involved in creating a description of a wrapped birthday present. You need to say how big it is. You need to describe the colors and patterns printed on the paper used to wrap it. Is it decorated with ribbons? Does it have an attached card? What kind of noise does it make when you shake it? Is it heavy or light? Where is it sitting spatially when you describe it? How is it lit?

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