NP? beyond interpretation?

[Doug Millison]

http://www.nature.com/nsu/020923/020923-8.html

Neuroscience unlocks secrets of Zen garden 
500-year-old rock pattern suggests a tree to our
subconscious. 
26 September 2002 

KENDALL POWELL 

The beauty of one of Japan's most popular Zen gardens
has long eluded explanation. Now neuroscientists have
found that its minimalist design suggests a pleasing
picture to our subconcious.

The 500-year-old Ryoanji Temple garden in Kyoto
contains five outcroppings of rocks and moss on a
rectangle of raked gravel. Using symmetry calculations
the researchers have discovered that the objects imply
an image of a tree in the empty space between them
that we detect, without being aware of doing so1. 

The finding suggests that Japanese garden designers -
originally priests - "balanced forces from visual
science," says study leader Gert Van Tonder of Kyoto
University. 

The trunk of the hidden branched tree lines up with
the preferred garden-viewing spot of ancient temple
floorplans, Van Tonder found. Repeating the
calculations with random rock groups failed to
generate any similar patterns. 

Earlier work by Ilona Kovács, a visual scientist at
Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey, showed
that the human brain uses similar symmetry lines, like
those of a child's stick figure, to make sense of
shapes2. 

"In the Zen garden you have even less to go on with
just the best points, or rocks, along the symmetry
lines," says Kovács. She suggests the brain may
recognize the tree during meditation and other Zen
states.

Through the years people have come up with various
interpretations for the rock clusters themselves: a
mother tiger herding her cubs across a river,
mountaintops poking through the clouds, and strokes of
Chinese characters. 

These logical descriptions miss the point, says Philip
Cave, a London-based Japanese garden designer. He
thinks the suggestive symmetry explanation fits the
Zen mind better.

"It's always been thought that the priest-gardener's
layout was something that didn't come from the
conscious mind, but from a deeper level," says Cave.
"They could have easily intuitively developed that
kind of [tree] layout."

The garden, like Mona Lisa's smile, has intrigued
visitors for centuries. Tour guides bringing visitors
to the 'best' spot to view the garden stop exactly
where the symmetry lines converge.

References

1.	Van Tonder, G., Lyons, M.J. & Ejima, Y. Visual
structure of a Japanese Zen garden. Nature, 419, 359,
(2002). |Article| 
2.	Kovács, I. & Julesz, B. Perceptual sensitivity maps
within globally defined visual shapes. Nature, 370,
644 - 646 (1994). |Homepage| 



© Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2002
	



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