Dr. Grandin is autistic, and much of the article is about the contrast between how "normal" people and autistic people perceive the world. According to Doctor Grandin, animals and autistic people perceive the world in much the same way.Grandin uses an awkward but powerful word to describe the perceptual fog that normal humans live in. She calls it “abstractification.” It means the ability to live in our thoughts, surrounded by “our ideas of things.” “Normal human beings,” she writes, “are abstractified in their sensory perceptions as well as their thoughts.” This is partly what makes us human. But one of the things Grandin worries about is the increasing tendency of humans to live utterly abstractified lives, cut off from tactile participation in the real, physical world. She laments the way schools have dropped classes like wood shop and metal shop and drafting—the kinds of classes that saved her when she was going to school and failing classes like algebra.
William
