"However, cross-cultural studies revealed something surprising: perception of the illusion varies widely—and Westerners are outliers. When scientists measured how different the segments appeared to different groups of people, they found that Westerners saw the greatest distortion. The Zulu, Fang, and Ijaw people of Africa observed half as much. The San foragers of the Kalahari didn’t perceive the illusion at all: they recognized right away that a and b were the same length. People raised in Western countries literally don’t see things the same way as the foragers of the Kalahari. Your experience of the world changes what you take to be true, and vision is no exception."

The central KC, though:

"Scientists have struggled to find universals that permanently link our species. Although we come to the table with biological predispositions, a million years of bending, breaking and blending have diversified our species’ preferences. We are the products not only of biological evolution but also of cultural evolution. Although the idea of universal beauty is appealing, it doesn’t capture the multiplicity of creation across place and time. Beauty is not genetically preordained. As we explore creatively, we expand aesthetically: everything new that we view as beautiful adds to the word’s definition. That is why we sometimes look at great works of the past and find them unappealing, while we find splendor in objects that previous generations wouldn’t have accepted. What characterizes us as a species is not a particular aesthetic preference, but the multiple, meandering paths of creativity itself."

Maybe a link to the "uniformities" PT (this article arguing there are none in AOK Arts)?

How did Mendeleev learn how to organize the Periodic Table? What insights did he stumble upon and how did it come to him? How did Mendeleev's breakthrough reshape our understanding of the elements and turn the proto-science of alchemy into an actual science: Chemistry? Finally, should a I.B. student consider Mendeleev a role model of the Learner Profile. Make a case for or against.