A rose loses its "roseness" when perceived only through the Left Hemisphere perspective.
The man who mistook his wife for his hat had trouble identifying a rose. When Oliver Sacks presented him with a rose, Dr.P described it as "About six inches in length. A convoluted red form with a linear green attachment." He went on to observe that the perplexing object "lacks the simple symmetry of the Platonic solids, although it may have a higher symmetry of its own."
Dr. P suffered from a Right Hemisphere (RH) dysfunction that forced his mind to rely almost exclusively on his Left Hemisphere (LH) . Robbed of the unifying and organic perspective of the RH, Dr. P saw the world as a collection of abstractions, the LH perspective.
Our minds get muddled when our LH dominates and relate to the world through abstract representations of life, rather than on on direct experience.
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