Home / Quotes / Quote by Susanne Katherina Langer

Quote by Susanne Katherina Langer

“The faith of scientists in the power and truth of mathematics is so implicit that their work has gradually become less and less observation, and more and more calculation.... But the facts which are accepted by virtue of these tests are not actually observed at all.”

Quote by Susanne Katherina Langer

Author

Susanne Katherina Langer

Susanne Katherina Langer was an American philosopher of German birth, renowned for her work in aesthetics, semiotics, cognitive psychology, and philosophical anthropology. Her contributions have had a profound impact on 20th-century philosophy. more

You May Also Like

“The historian does not locate known facts in a hypothetical, general pattern of processes; his aim is to link fact to fact, one unique knowable event to another individual one that begot it.”

Doe Facts Individual Process Known Events Unique Aim Patterns Links Historian Hypothetical

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".”

“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.”

World Real Materials Errors Physics Mathematical Conception Real World Organs Primitive Abstraction Epistemology

Author:Susanne Katherina Langer

“To trace the development of mind from earliest times ... requires ... not a categorical concept, but a functional one.... The most promising operational principle for this purpose is the principle of individuation.”

Mind Purpose Principles Development Concepts Individuation

Author:Susanne Katherina Langer

“We have no physical model of this endless rhythm of individuation and involvement, we do have its image in the world of art, most purely in dance.”

World Art Models Endless Rhythm Involvement Individuation

Author:Susanne Katherina Langer

“What is artistically good is whatever articulates and presents feeling to our understanding.”

Feelings Understanding

Author:Susanne Katherina Langer

“A free press is not a privilege but an organic necessity in a great society. Without criticism and reliable and intelligent reporting, the government cannot govern. For there is no adequate way in which it can keep itself informed about what the people of the country are thinking and doing and wanting.”

People Thinking Way Country Government Criticism Intelligent Presses Privilege Adequate Free Press Great Society

Author:Walter Lippmann

“Free institutions are not the property of any majority. They do not confer upon majorities unlimited powers. The rights of the majority are limited rights. They are limited not only by the constitutional guarantees but by the moral principle implied in those guarantees. That principle is that men may not use the facilities of liberty to impair them. No man may invoke a right in order to destroy it.”

Source: The Essential Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for Liberal Democracy

“Here lay the political genius of Franklin Roosevelt: that in his own time he knew what were the questions that had to be answered, even though he himself did not always find the full answer.”

Political Answers Genius Lays Franklin

Book:The Essential Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for Liberal Democracy

Source: The Essential Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for Liberal Democracy

“In the end, advertising rests upon the fact that consumers are a fickle and superstitious mob, incapable of any real judgment as to what it wants or how it is to get what it thinks it likes.”

Thinking Want Real Ends Facts Judgment Likes Advertising Consumers Incapable Superstitious Fickle

Book:Drift and Mastery: An Attempt to Diagnose the Current Unrest

Source: Drift and Mastery: An Attempt to Diagnose the Current Unrest