[-empyre-] form constants

[Nancy Paterson <Nancy.Paterson@senecac.on.ca>]

Jim, I liked your earlier comment that
>But mostly, what I'm trying to say is that the study of data structures was
>exciting to me because it seemed like I was studying the building blocks of
>mental and creative process, not simply bland widgetry.

It's interesting that you mention building blocks, because at one time it was thought that certain types of synesthesia could be attributed to simple conditioning - and the example used was: that adults who associated particular colours with certain letters, must have used coloured alphabet blocks as children.
I actually came across this example *after* I had decided to incorporate cubes, based on Froebel's wooden children's blocks, into my MULTI project.

I'm also very interested in Kluver's subdivision of hallucination patterns into four classes, called "form constants", 
This research, based in the field of psychopharmacology and the subjective visions of those undergoing altered states of consciousness induced by psychoactive drugs such as LSD. Subjects report seeing geometric forms in their hallucinations - and there are clear and obvious  commonalities between such forms irrespective of the particular psychoactive drug involved, so they are termed "form constants". 

The four basic geometric forms: 
- tunnel
- spiral
- cobweb 
- lattice (grid)