I'm a savant, or more precisely, a high-functioning autistic savant. It's a rare condition. And rarer still when accompanied, as in my case, by self-awareness and a mastery of language. Very often when I meet someone and they learn this about me, there's a certain kind of awkwardness. I can see it in their eyes. They want to ask me something. And in the end, quite often, the urge is stronger than they are and they blurt it out: "If I give you my date of birth, can you tell me what day of the week I was born on?" (Laughter) Or they mention cube roots or ask me to recite a long number or long text. I hope you'll forgive me if I don't perform a kind of one-man savant show for you today. I'm going to talk instead about something far more interesting than dates of birth or cube roots -- a little deeper and a lot closer, to my mind, than work.
Men savantman (ko'p narsa biluvchi, autismning bir turi) yoki aniqrog'i, yuqori faoliyatli autistik savantman. Bu noyob holat. Mening holatimdagiek o'zlikni anglash va tilni mukammal egallash qobiliyati bilan birga kelganda yanada noyobroq holatdir. Ko'pincha, men biror kimsa bilan uchrashganimda, ular mening bu holatimni bilishadi va ularda ma'lum bir turdagi noqulaylik bo'ladi. Men buni ularning ko'zlarida ko'ra olaman. Ular mendan nimanidir so'rashni xohlaydilar. Va nihoyat, juda ko'p holatda, ishtiyoq odatdagidan kuchliroq va ular darrov o'ylamasdan gapirib yuboradilar: "Agar men sizga tug'ilgan sanamni aytsam, haftaning qaysi kunida tug'ilganligimni aytib bera olasizmi?" (Kulgi) Yoki kub ildizlarni yoki uzun raqam yoki matnni yoddan aytib berishimni so'raydilar. Agar men bugun sizlarga bir savant kishining ko'rsatuvini ijro etmasam meni kechirasizlar deb umid qilaman. Uning o'rniga men tug'ilgan sanalar yoki kub ildizlaridan ancha qiziqarliroq, mening ishimdan ko'ra ongimga biroz chuqurroq va ancha yaqinroq narsa haqida gapiraman.
I want to talk to you briefly about perception. When he was writing the plays and the short stories that would make his name, Anton Chekhov kept a notebook in which he noted down his observations of the world around him -- little details that other people seem to miss. Every time I read Chekhov and his unique vision of human life, I'm reminded of why I too became a writer. In my books, I explore the nature of perception and how different kinds of perceiving create different kinds of knowing and understanding.
Men sizlarga ong, tushuncha haqida qisqagina gapirib bermoqchiman. U o'zining ismini mashhur qiladigan pyesa va qisqa hikoyalar yozayotganida, Anton Chekhov o'z atrofidagi dunyoni kuzatganlarini yozib boradigan kundalik daftari bo'lgan edi -- boshqa kishilar e'tibor bermay qoladigan kichkina parchalarni, qismlarni yozib borar edi. Har safar Chekhovni va uning inson hayotining o'ziga xos tasavvurini o'qiganimda, bu menga mening ham nima sababdan yozuvchi bo'lganligimni eslatadi. Men kitoblarimda ong tabiatini o'rganaman ongning har xil turlari qanday qilib bilish va tushunishning har xil turlarini paydo qilishini o'rganaman.
Here are three questions drawn from my work. Rather than try to figure them out, I'm going to ask you to consider for a moment the intuitions and the gut instincts that are going through your head and your heart as you look at them. For example, the calculation: can you feel where on the number line the solution is likely to fall? Or look at the foreign word and the sounds: can you get a sense of the range of meanings that it's pointing you towards? And in terms of the line of poetry, why does the poet use the word hare rather than rabbit? I'm asking you to do this because I believe our personal perceptions, you see, are at the heart of how we acquire knowledge. Aesthetic judgments, rather than abstract reasoning, guide and shape the process by which we all come to know what we know. I'm an extreme example of this.
Mening ishimdan kelib chiqqan mana bu uchta savol. Bularga javobni o'ylab o'tirgandan ko'ra, Sizlarga iltimosim bor, siz bu savollarga qarashingiz bilan boshingiz va yuragingizda sodir bo'layotgan sezgi va chuqur ichki sezgiga bir soniya mobaynida e'tibor bering Masalan, hisoblash. Yechimi raqamlar chizig'ining qayerida joylashishini seza olasizmi? Yoki chet tilidagi so'zga va tovushlarga e'tibor bering. Bu zo'zlarning nimaligini anglash uchun bir necha ma'nolarni ayta olasizmi? Shoirlik sohasida esa, nima uchun shoir 'uy quyoni' o'rninga 'yovvoyi quyon' so'zini ishlatadi. Men sizlarning shu narsani bajarishingizni xohlayman, chunki ishonamanki, bizning shaxsiy tushunchamiz ilmni qanday egallashimizning eng asosidir. Mavhum fikr mulohazalardan ko'ra estetik fikr mulohazalar biz hammamiz biladigan narsani bilishimizdagi jarayonni boshqarib, shakllantiradi. Men buning juda yaqqol misoliman.
My worlds of words and numbers blur with color, emotion and personality. As Juan said, it's the condition that scientists call synesthesia, an unusual cross-talk between the senses. Here are the numbers one to 12 as I see them -- every number with its own shape and character. One is a flash of white light. Six is a tiny and very sad black hole. The sketches are in black and white here, but in my mind they have colors. Three is green. Four is blue. Five is yellow.
Mendagi so'z va raqamlar dunyosi rang, his-tuyg'u va shahsiyat bilan aralashadi. Huanning (Juan) aytishicha, bu olimlar sinesteziya deb ataydigan holat, ya'ni, his-tuyg'ular orasida o'zaro g'ayrioddiy suhbatdir. Mana birdan 12 gacha bo'lgan raqamlar, mening ko'rishimcha -- har bir raqamning o'ziga hos shakli va hususiyatlari bor. Bir - oppoq yorug'likning cho'g'i. Olti - juda kichkina va juda g'amgin qora teshik. Bu chizmalar bu yerda qora va oq rangda, lekin mening ongimda ularning rangi bor. Uch - yashil. To'rt - ko'k. Besh - sariq.
I paint as well. And here is one of my paintings. It's a multiplication of two prime numbers. Three-dimensional shapes and the space they create in the middle creates a new shape, the answer to the sum. What about bigger numbers? Well you can't get much bigger than Pi, the mathematical constant. It's an infinite number -- literally goes on forever. In this painting that I made of the first 20 decimals of Pi, I take the colors and the emotions and the textures and I pull them all together into a kind of rolling numerical landscape.
Men rasm ham chizaman. Mana bu rasmlarimdan bittasi. Bu ikkita tub sonning ko'paytmasi. Uch o'lchamli shakllar va o'rtada ular hosil qiladigan bo'shliq yangi shaklni hosil qiladi, bu esa ko'paytmaning javobi. Kattaroq raqamlarchi? Matematik konstanta - Pi dan ancha kattaroq sonni bunday tasavvur qila olmaysiz. Bu cheksiz son -- cheksiz davom etaveradi, Pi ning birinchi 20ta o'nlik kasrini chizgan mana bu rasmimda ranglar, hissiyotlar va yuzasi, ya'ni tuzilishini olib, ularning hammasini past-tepalik raqamli landshaft kabi birga tasvirladim.
But it's not only numbers that I see in colors. Words too, for me, have colors and emotions and textures. And this is an opening phrase from the novel "Lolita." And Nabokov was himself synesthetic. And you can see here how my perception of the sound L helps the alliteration to jump right out. Another example: a little bit more mathematical. And I wonder if some of you will notice the construction of the sentence from "The Great Gatsby." There is a procession of syllables -- wheat, one; prairies, two; lost Swede towns, three -- one, two, three. And this effect is very pleasant on the mind, and it helps the sentence to feel right.
Lekin, men rangli ko'radiganim, faqatgina raqamlar emas. Men uchun so'zlar ham ranglar va hissiyotlar va tuzilishga ega. Mana bu "Lolita" romanidan eng avvalgi ibora. Nabokovning o'zi ham synestetik edi. Ko'rib turibsizki, mening L tovushini tushunishim alliteratsiyani ajratishimga darrov yordam beradi. Boshqa bir misol: bu biroz matematikaga hos. Orangizda kimdir "The Great Gatsby" ("Buyuk Getsbi") dan olingan gapning tuzilishini sezarmikansiz. Bu yerda bo'g'inlarning bir biriga moslashib kelishi bor -- wheat - bir bo'g'in; prairies, ikki bo'g'in; lost Swede towna, uch bo'gin -- bir, ikki, uch. Bu ongga yoqimli ta'sir ko'rsatadi va gapning to'g'ri bo'lib tuyulishiga yordam beradi.
Let's go back to the questions I posed you a moment ago. 64 multiplied by 75. If some of you play chess, you'll know that 64 is a square number, and that's why chessboards, eight by eight, have 64 squares. So that gives us a form that we can picture, that we can perceive. What about 75? Well if 100, if we think of 100 as being like a square, 75 would look like this. So what we need to do now is put those two pictures together in our mind -- something like this. 64 becomes 6,400. And in the right-hand corner, you don't have to calculate anything. Four across, four up and down -- it's 16. So what the sum is actually asking you to do is 16, 16, 16. That's a lot easier than the way that the school taught you to do math, I'm sure. It's 16, 16, 16, 48, 4,800 -- 4,800, the answer to the sum. Easy when you know how.
Bir oz avval men sizlarga bergan savollarga qaytaylik. 64 ni 75 ga ko'paytirish. Agar ba'zilarining shaxmat o'ynasangiz, 64 kvadrat raqam ekanligini bilasiz, va shaxmat doskasida sakkizga sakkiz, ya'ni 64 kataklar bor. Hullas, bu bizga biz tasavvur qila oladigan, his qila oladigan shaklni beradi. 75 chi? Ho'sh, agar 100, agar biz yuzni kvadratdek tasavvur qilsak, 75 mana bunga o'xshaydi. Endi qiladigan ishimiz esa ana o'sha ikkita rasmni ongimizda mana bunday birga qo'yishdir. 64 -- 6400 bo'ladi. O'ng burchakda hech narsani hisoblashning keragi yo'q. bu tomonlama to'rt, tepaga va pastga to'rt -- 16 bo'ladi. Natijasini topish ucun 16, 16 va 16 ni olish kerak. Bu esa maktabda sizga matematik hisoblashni o'rgatgandan ancha osonroq. Bunga ishonchim komil. Bu 16 + 16 + 16 = 48, 4800 -- 4000 misolni javobi. Qanday bajarishni bilsangiz oson.
(Laughter)
(Kulgi)
The second question was an Icelandic word. I'm assuming there are not many people here who speak Icelandic. So let me narrow the choices down to two. Hnugginn: is it a happy word, or a sad word? What do you say? Okay. Some people say it's happy. Most people, a majority of people, say sad. And it actually means sad. (Laughter) Why do, statistically, a majority of people say that a word is sad, in this case, heavy in other cases? In my theory, language evolves in such a way that sounds match, correspond with, the subjective, with the personal, intuitive experience of the listener.
Ikkinchi savol Islandcha so'z edi. Bu yerda Islandcha gapiradigan odamlar ko'p emas deb o'ylayman. Shunday ekan, javob turini ikkitaga keltiray. Hnuggin: Bu quvnoq so'zmi, yoki g'amgin so'zmi? Nima deysiz? Ho'p. Ba'zi odamlar buni quvnoq so'z deydilar. Ko'p odamlar, ko'pchiligi, buni g'amgin so'z deydilar. Aslida, bu g'amgin degan ma'noni anglatadi. (Kulgi) Statistik jihatdan, nimaga ko'pchilik odamlar so'zni bu holatda g'amgin deb aytadilar, boshqa holatlarda esa og'ir deydilar? Mening nazariyotim bo'yicha, til shunday usulda paydo bo'ladi: tovushlar tinglovchining subyektiv, shaxsiy, ichki sezish tajribalari bilan moslashadi, moyil keladi.
Let's have a look at the third question. It's a line from a poem by John Keats. Words, like numbers, express fundamental relationships between objects and events and forces that constitute our world. It stands to reason that we, existing in this world, should in the course of our lives absorb intuitively those relationships. And poets, like other artists, play with those intuitive understandings. In the case of hare, it's an ambiguous sound in English. It can also mean the fibers that grow from a head. And if we think of that -- let me put the picture up -- the fibers represent vulnerability. They yield to the slightest movement or motion or emotion. So what you have is an atmosphere of vulnerability and tension. The hare itself, the animal -- not a cat, not a dog, a hare -- why a hare? Because think of the picture -- not the word, the picture. The overlong ears, the overlarge feet, helps us to picture, to feel intuitively, what it means to limp and to tremble.
Keling, uchinchi savolni ko'raylik. Bu John Keatsning she'ridan bir misra. So'zlar, huddi sonlar kabi, bizning olamimizni tashkil qiladigan narsalar, voqealar va kuchlar o'rtasidagi eng asosiy aloqalarni ifodalayadi. Biz, bu dunyoda yashab turib, hayotimiz davomida ana o'sha aloqalarni ichki hissiyot bilan sezishimiz kerakligi odatiy tuyuladi. Shoirlar, huddi boshqa rassomlar kabi, ana o'sha ichki sezgi tushunadigan narsalar bilan o'ynaydi. Inglizcha "hare" so'zi ingliz tilida noaniq tovushdir. Bu boshimizda o'sadigan soch tolalarni ham anglatishi mumkin. Agar biz bu haqida o'ylaak -- rasmini sizlarga ko'rsatay -- tolalar noziklikni tasvirlaydi. Ular yengilgina harakat, qimirlash yoki hissiyotga ta'sirchan, harakatga keluvchi bo'ladi. Hullas, noziklik (ta'sirchanlik) va taranglik holati paydo bo'ladi. "Hare" so'zi - quyon, hayvon -- mushuk emas, it emas, "hare"-quyon -- nimaga "hare"-quyon? Sababi, rasmni hayolingizga keltiring, so'zni emas, rasmni. Juda uzun quloqlar, juda katta oyoqlar "limp" - oqsoqlanish va "tremble" - qaltirash nimaligini ko'z oldimizda tasavvur qilishimizga, ichki hissiyot bilan sezishimizga yozrdam beradi.
So in these few minutes, I hope I've been able to share a little bit of my vision of things and to show you that words can have colors and emotions, numbers, shapes and personalities. The world is richer, vaster than it too often seems to be. I hope that I've given you the desire to learn to see the world with new eyes.
Mana shu oz daqiqalar davomida mening narsalar haqidagi nazarimni sizlarga tushuntirib bera oldim va so'zlar ham rang va hissiyotga, raqamlar, shakllar va shaxsiy xarakter, hususiyatlarga ega ekanligini sizlarga ko'rsata oldim deb umid qilaman. Dunyo bizga sezilganidan ko'ra boyroq va ulkanroqdir. Sizlarda dunyoni yangi ko'zlar bilan ko'rishni o'rganish xohishini uyg'otdim deb umid qilaman.
Thank you.
Rahmat.
(Applause)
(Qarsaklar)