“It is the historical mind, rather than the scientific (in the physicist's sense), that destroyed the mythical orientation of European culture; the historian, not the mathematician, introduced the "higher criticism," the standard of actual fact. It is he who is the real apostle of the realistic age.” MindRealFactsAgeCultureHigherStandardsCriticismHistoricalDestroyedRealisticHistorianMathematicianPhysicistApostlesOrientation Author:Susanne Katherina Langer
“Real thinking is possible only in the light of genuine language, no matter how limited, how primitive.” ThinkingRealMatterLightLanguageGenuinePrimitive 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
