#1 Recognition vs. Realization

At first, I wrote this blog post's title as "Recognition +/vs. Recognition" to examine the similarities and differences between recognition and realization. But now that I think of it, there isn't much to say on the matter of convergence because recognition and realization are very discrete in meaning and application. The idea that the two are similar is true--both exercise cognition in retrieving a thought of minimal to considerable familiarity from any stimulus that houses itself in the brain longer than thirty seconds (i.e. long-term memory)--though it is of a very common understanding that doesn't quite register the depth in each word's meaning.

Recognition is closely associated with "acknowledgement," which is a simple act of noticing, quite on par with the first tier of Bloom's Taxonomy, remembering, and possibly even the second, understanding. It is largely external--you recognize certain appearances, or even less physically, character traits in someone or something, and when a person is recognized, he or she is put on exhibition for a certain viewable quality. For example, Sanger Rainsford of Richard Connell's "The Most Dangerous Game" notices several curiosities: markings that show disturbance in Zaroff's forest, blood stains on trees, and a death cry that is unfamiliar to his ears. He loosely recognizes them as products of hunting but not specifically what and why.

Realization is a dawning-upon of meaning, nearly requiring a context of more complexity and even confusion than recognition normally finds itself in. It expects reflection upon previous actions, events, and ideas and the realizer's rearrangement of thoughts--imagine these creating a "path" leading up to the realization--to integrate the epiphany with his or her understanding of self or others before moving forward. Continuing in Rainsford's thoughts again, he eventually realizes that the hunt was for a very sophisticated animal--the human--after conversing with the General and "backtracking" to what he had seen earlier. There is also the archetypal hero who gains some sort of meaning after embarking on his or her most salient adventure yet, as with Katniss Everdeen in Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games, who after so long recognizing her enemy as her war opponent, the totalitarian society of Panem, comes to realize that both Panem and District 13 are her enemies, with different goals but startlingly identical characters in government. Since there seems to be a pattern formed by recognition preceding realization, it then would make sense for realization to cross to the upper tiers of Bloom's: applying, analyzing, evaluating, creating.

So there you have it--a moment out of context may occur with recognition, but when one synthesizes this exclusive thought with a wider web of ideas does realization truly arise in oneself. I would think we all innately use these terms in acknowledgement of their boundaries, but we wouldn't easily recognize their causal relationship if not for this willful juxtaposition.