Redefining Reality - The Intellectual Implications of Modern Science

Psychology, which had begun as a search for the nature of the
create false realities within the mind for the sole purpose of
was not lost on the artistic community, which responded by shining
a light on the practice.
In the 1910s, Marcel Duchamp began a series of works he
termed Readymades. These works involved placing a massmanufactured
good, such as a urinal or a snow shovel, in a
gallery as a piece of art.
We had been conditioned to see these objects in certain ways by
their marketers. Now, they were being placed in an incongruous
context, forcing us to see them anew and to question why we
see them as we normally do.
Duchamp and other artists were pointing out that we had
become the white mouse in the psychologists’ maze. We had
been conditioned, manipulated. The hope was that we could
at least be reconditioned, given, as Skinner argued, that it
is not possible for us to regain our freedom and dignity as
autonomous individuals.
Bernays, Propaganda.
Huxley, The Doors of Perception.
Lawson, .
Skinner, .
Watson, .
Wolfe, .
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