Neu :: Fernández-Armesto: Out of Our Minds. What We Think and How We Came to Think It

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„To imagine — to see what is not there — is the startling ability that has fueled human development and innovation through the centuries. As a species we stand alone in our remarkable capacity to refashion the world after the picture in our minds. Traversing the realms of science, politics, religion, culture, philosophy, and history, Felipe Fernández-Armesto reveals the thrilling and disquieting tales of our imaginative leaps — from the first Homo sapiens to the present day. Through groundbreaking insights in cognitive science, Fernández-Armesto explores how and why we have ideas in the first place, providing a tantalizing glimpse into who we are and what we might yet accomplish. Unearthing historical evidence, he begins by reconstructing the thoughts of our Paleolithic ancestors to reveal the subtlety and profundity of the thinking of early humans. A masterful paean to the human imagination from a wonderfully elegant thinker, Out of Our Minds shows that bad ideas are often more influential than good ones; that the oldest recoverable thoughts include some of the best; that ideas of Western origin often issued from exchanges with the wider world; and that the pace of innovative thinking is under threat.“ #Fernández-Armesto #mind

Fernández-Armesto, Felipe, Out of Our Minds. What We Think and How We Came to Think It. Berkeley: University of California Press 2019, ISBN 978-0-520-97436-4.

Berkeley: Number

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„Number is so visibly relative, and dependent on Mens Understanding, that it is strange to think how any one shou’d give it an absolute Existence without the Mind.“ (Of the Principles of Human Knowledge, §12) #Berkeley #number #mind

Berkeley: A Mind Perceiving Sensations or Ideas

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„That neither our Thoughts, nor Passions, nor Ideas formed by the Imagination, Exist without the Mind, is what every Body will allow. And to me it is no less evident that the various Sensations or Ideas imprinted on the Sense, however Blended or Combin’d together (that is whatever Objects they compose) cannot Exist otherwise than in a Mind perceiving them.“ (Of the Principles of Human Knowledge, §3) #Berkeley #mind

Berkeley: Obvious Truth

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„Some truths there are so near and obvious to the mind that a man need only open his eyes to see them.“ (Of the Principles of Human Knowledge, §6) #Berkeley #truth #mind

Spinoza: Idea

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„By idea, I understand a conception of the mind which the mind forms because it is a thinking thing.“ (Second Part, Chap. IX, III) #Spinoza #idea #mind