“A mind that is very selective to forms... is apt to use its images metaphorically, to exploit their possible significance for the conception of remote or intangible ideas.” MindIdeasUseFormSignificanceConceptionExploitsSelectiveIntangible Author:Susanne Katherina Langer
“The power of understanding symbols, i.e. of regarding everything about a sense-datum as irrelevant except a certain form that it embodies, is the most characteristic mental trait of mankind. It issues in an unconscious, spontaneous process of abstraction, which goes on all the time in the human mind: a process of recognizing the concept in any configuration given to experience, and forming a conception accordingly. That is the real sense of Aristotle's definition of Man as "the rational animal".” MenMindHumansRealFormCertainGivenProcessUnderstandingAnimalIssuesMankindGoes OnConceptsDefinitionsRationalSymbolsDataCharacteristicsUnconsciousHuman MindConceptionTraitsSpontaneousIrrelevantAbstractionRecognizingConfiguration Author:Susanne Katherina Langer
“The world of physics is essentially the real world construed by mathematical abstractions, and the world of sense is the real world construed by the abstractions which the sense-organs immediately furnish. To suppose that the "material mode" is a primitive and groping attempt at physical conception is a fatal error in epistemology.” WorldRealMaterialsErrorsPhysicsMathematicalConceptionReal WorldOrgansPrimitiveAbstractionEpistemology Author:Susanne Katherina Langer
“The limits of thought are not so much set from outside, by the fullness or poverty of experiences that meet the mind, as from within, by the power of conception, the wealth of formulative notions with which the mind meets experiences.” MindWealthPovertyLimitsNotionConceptionFullness Author:Susanne Katherina Langer
