Colours, numbers one to ten, our ABCs, and shapes play a primary and fundamental role in how we understand and respond to our world. Shapes do shape our viewing of the world as toddlers. On paper, we turn a tree into a stick with circles. Birds become a horizontally-expanded ‘V’. We drew our parents using sticks with a circle on top. Thankfully, in reality they had more flesh and bone. I am glad that I later learnt that drawing is so much more fluid.
I like the fact that we associate basic shapes to complex or ambiguous forms. It shows that we still carry with us what we did as a toddler: To break down a larger thing into its smaller parts. Isn’t that the very function of problem-solving?
It’s like we see a shape in everything. Everything around us becomes geometric to some extent. A star is a spherical, celestial body made up mostly of hydrogen and helium. Stars are quite gassy and squeaky so to speak. Yet we learn to draw a star without leaving the paper. Essentially drawing an image that consists of a pentagon with five triangles attached. If that isn’t simplified enough, then I don’t know what is. Shapes just make things simpler. And that is a viable solution in itself.
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