Too little
Let the label listen
It has the same title, so there is nothing more to hear.
Recognition stands in for attention to the particular recording.
Attentiveness
Look at what is there before naming it.
A considerate readiness to notice what merits attention.
Attentiveness brings your awareness to the thing actually before you. A familiar label, theory or melody can guide perception, but it can also hurry you past a detail. Looking or listening again gives that detail a chance to alter what you understand.
Attentiveness gives contact with the subject beneath the label
Two recordings of a favorite game score are filed under the same tune. On the second listening, you hear a pause before the final phrase. You tap the rhythm again. That tiny space changes the shape of the ending. The catalog label was useful, but it could not do the listening for you.
Finding the balance in Attentiveness
Attend to a detail that an established label encourages you to overlook.
A fitting response
Return to the detail
There is a pause before that phrase. I will listen once more.
A concrete observation precedes the interpretation of what changed.
Pursued too far
Assign meaning to every variation
Every tiny noise must reveal a hidden intention.
Attention becomes speculation when imagined significance outruns what can actually be observed.
Listen closely enough to notice a difference, then give its meaning time to emerge. Observation supplies the material for an interpretation you can check.
What Attentiveness makes possible
A pause, worn edge or unusual word can become the hinge of a better question. Close attention enriches the interest before you know what the observation will explain. You begin to encounter particular things instead of merely recognizing their categories.
Attentiveness in ordinary life
A familiar edition
Notice a footnote or image caption you have repeatedly passed over.
A model demonstration
Watch the whole movement once before describing how you think it works.
Nearby virtues, different work
Curiosity
Attentiveness stays with what is present; Curiosity pursues the question it raises.
Exactitude
Attentiveness notices the distinction; Exactitude preserves it in a claim or explanation.
Attentiveness and its counterfeits
Prestige detail
Mentioning an obscure feature only to display expertise counterfeits Attentiveness. Ask what the feature contributes.
Premature pattern
A detail deserves consideration without automatically proving an elaborate theory.
How to cultivate Attentiveness
Describe before interpreting.
Use a pace at which you can notice a difference.
Check whether the detail repeats or occurs only once.
Try it today
Return to a familiar item in your interest using a form you can comfortably examine: a recording, score, image, object or description. Note one observable detail before interpreting it.
Questions worth returning to
- What did the label lead me to overlook?
- What is observed, and what have I added in interpretation?
Quotations and further reading
Seven selections to return to through the week. Follow a source link to read the surrounding passage.
I am just learning to notice the different colors of the stars, and already begin to have a new enjoyment.
Learning to notice color gives Mitchell a new pleasure in familiar stars. Hearing a pause in a familiar tune can change what there is to enjoy.
Besides learning to see, there is another art to be learned,—not to see what is not.
Maria Mitchell · Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals · Chapter XI, Colors of Stars
Mitchell pairs observation with restraint about what expectation supplies. The second recording deserves a hearing before the familiar label decides what must be there.
Observation is exploration, inquiry for the sake of discovering something previously hidden and unknown, this something being needed in order to reach some end, practical or theoretical.
John Dewey · How We Think · Observation and Information in the Training of Mind
Observation is an active search for what has not yet been noticed. That is different from merely confirming the name already attached to a familiar recording.
“No use to them,” said Alice; “but it’s useful to the people who name them, I suppose. If not, why do things have names at all?”
Lewis Carroll · Through the Looking-Glass · Chapter III, Looking-Glass Insects
Alice’s reply to the Gnat makes a name useful to an observer without confusing the name with the creature. A catalog label can organize recordings while leaving their audible differences to be noticed.
We cease to seek resemblances; we devote ourselves above all to the differences, and among the differences are chosen first the most accentuated, not only because they are the most striking, but because they will be the most instructive.
Poincaré describes a stage of investigation after a regularity has been established. Looking for differences then becomes informative; this does not advise ignoring similarities before a pattern is known.
He has not seen the burglars; their presence is not a fact of observation, but is a thought, an idea.
John Dewey · How We Think · Systematic Inference: Induction and Deduction
Dewey separates what is observed from the explanation inferred from it. The hobbyist likewise keeps the heard pause distinct from an assumption about why the performer used it.
You see now why you would have had such a bad result if you were to burn these beautiful candles that I have shewn you, which are irregular, intermittent in their shape, and cannot therefore have that nicely-formed edge to the cup which is the great beauty in a candle.
Michael Faraday · The Chemical History of a Candle · Lecture I, The Flame
Faraday connects a visible difference in candle shape with its effect. The passage invites a question about function: what does a detail contribute to the way the whole thing works?
Continue through the catalog
Practice this collection
Choose this approved collection as an optional workbook program, or select individual virtues in My Virtues.