Wednesday, July 27, 2005
Monday, July 25, 2005
Perception
Since the most ancient days mankind has been intrigued by the way human beings perceive the world surrounding them. That's through our sensitive mechanisms that we feel the world and makes us aware of our own existence. Aristotle made an attempt to explain all the perceptions mechanisms (seeing, hearing, touching, smelling and tasting) in his work "De Anima". He explained all those senses rather in purely physiological terms.
According to Aristotle the objects of senses might be divided into the following groups: the special (such as color which is the special object of sight, and sound of hearing), the common, or apprehended by several senses in combination (such as motion or figure), or the incidental or inferential (from immediate sensation of white we know the object we see is white). Among the five special senses, touch is the must rudimentary, hearing the most instructive, and sight the most ennobling. The organs of those senses never act directly, but rather through some sort of medium such as air. Even touch, which seems to act by direct contact, probably involves some vehicle of communication.
Aristotle believed the head to be the central organ of all senses. It recognizes the common qualities which are involved in all particular objects of sensation. At first there is a sense which brings us a consciousness of sensation, and then, in an act before the mind, it holds up the objects of our knowledge and enables us to distinguish and gather the different information reported by different senses.
The word Perception has its origin in the Latin language, it comes from the addition of the prefix 'per' to 'conceptum'. 'Conceptum' is the Latin word for concept, what is something conceived in mind, a mental image. The addiction of the prefix 'per' brings the meaning of through or complete. That's makes perception, a complete mental image, something conceived in our mind through our sensitive organs. From this statement we may infer that only animals provided with sensitive organs or human beings are able of something like perception.
According to Aristotle the objects of senses might be divided into the following groups: the special (such as color which is the special object of sight, and sound of hearing), the common, or apprehended by several senses in combination (such as motion or figure), or the incidental or inferential (from immediate sensation of white we know the object we see is white). Among the five special senses, touch is the must rudimentary, hearing the most instructive, and sight the most ennobling. The organs of those senses never act directly, but rather through some sort of medium such as air. Even touch, which seems to act by direct contact, probably involves some vehicle of communication.
Aristotle believed the head to be the central organ of all senses. It recognizes the common qualities which are involved in all particular objects of sensation. At first there is a sense which brings us a consciousness of sensation, and then, in an act before the mind, it holds up the objects of our knowledge and enables us to distinguish and gather the different information reported by different senses.
The word Perception has its origin in the Latin language, it comes from the addition of the prefix 'per' to 'conceptum'. 'Conceptum' is the Latin word for concept, what is something conceived in mind, a mental image. The addiction of the prefix 'per' brings the meaning of through or complete. That's makes perception, a complete mental image, something conceived in our mind through our sensitive organs. From this statement we may infer that only animals provided with sensitive organs or human beings are able of something like perception.
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