Observations placeholder
Mach, Ernst - The limitations of memory and the 5 senses
Identifier
014183
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
The goal which it (physical science) has set itself is the simplest and most economical abstract expression of facts.
When the human mind, with its limited powers, attempts to mirror in itself the rich life of the world, of which it itself is only a small part, and which it can never hope to exhaust, it has every reason for proceeding economically.
In reality, the law always contains less than the fact itself, because it does not reproduce the fact as a whole but only in that aspect of it which is important for us, the rest being intentionally or from necessity omitted.
In mentally separating a body from the changeable environment in which it moves, what we really do is to extricate a group of sensations on which our thoughts are fastened and which is of relatively greater stability than the others, from the stream of all our sensations.
Suppose we were to attribute to nature the property of producing like effects in like circumstances; just these like circumstances we should not know how to find. Nature exists once only. Our schematic mental imitation alone produces like events.
The source of the experience
Mach, ErnstConcepts, symbols and science items
Concepts
Five senses systemMemory
Memory - the types of model in memory
Memory - traversing the database of facts
Memory and emotion
Memory and perceptions
Memory and subliminal models
Memory and systems
Memory recall