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Where do correct ideas come from? Do they drop from the skies? No. Are they innate in the mind? No. They come from social practice, and from it alone; they come from three kinds of social practice, the struggle for production, the class struggle and scientific experiment. Where Do Correct Ideas Come from? (May 1963)…
Unlike religion, Science can never weary the mind: the dreary monotony of the former is a perfect contrast to the life-inspiring power of the latter. Every step you take in Science, stimulates you to further pursuit. The vast volume of nature, that book of books, that only revelation worthy the attention of man, is…
We must take our sensory experiences seriously but not literally. This is one place where the concept of a sensory desktop is helpful. We take the icons on a graphical desktop seriously; we won’t, for instance, carelessly drag an icon to the trash, for fear of losing a valuable file. But we don’t take the colors…
In sensory perception, multisensory integration is the rule, not the exception. In audition, we don’t just hear with our ears, we use our eyes to locate the apparent sources of sounds in the cinema where we “hear” the voices coming from the actors’ mouths on the screen, although the sounds are coming from the sides of…
It can be hard to generalize what people consider jaw-dropping, but Vohs says research demonstrates what consistently creates an awesome experience. Travel ranks high. So does gazing at the cosmos on a clear night or watching a sensational film, as well as anytime we encounter massive quantities: colorful tulips in…
All universities have been progressively organized for ever finer specialization. Society assumes that specialization is natural, inevitable, and desirable. Yet in observing a little child, we find it is interested in everything and spontaneously apprehends, comprehends, and co-ordinates an ever expending inventory of…
Prior experimental investigation of the cognitive consequences of video gaming provides evidence that cognitive and perceptual changes occur in those who transition from non-gamers to gamers. Specifically, training on action games (e.g., first-person, fast paced, kill-or-be-killed situations) has been linked to…
1. Keep learning Learning new things is a pretty obvious way to pass your brain new information on a regular basis. If you’re constantly reading, trying new activities or taking courses to learn new skills, you’ll have a wealth of ‘newness’ at your fingertips to help you slow down time. 2. Visit new places A new…
The more detailed the memory, the longer the moment seems to last. “This explains why we think that time speeds up when we grow older,” Eagleman said—why childhood summers seem to go on forever, while old age slips by while we’re dozing. The more familiar the world becomes, the less information your brain writes down…
It is perhaps premature to attempt an exact definition of happiness. However, despite the fact that formal diagnostic criteria have yet to be agreed, it seems likely that happiness has affective, cognitive and behavioural components. Thus, happiness is usually characterised by a positive mood, sometimes described as…
This fortunate circumstance, still more than political freedom, wrought in the human mind, among the Greeks, an independance, the surest pledge of the rapidity and greatness of its future progress. In the mean time their learned men, their sages, as they were called, but who soon took the more modest appellation of…
When we want to engage, believe me, we can. And not only will we then make fewer mistakes of perception, but we will become the types of focused, observant people that we may have thought we were incapable of becoming. Even children who have been diagnosed with ADHD can find themselves able to focus on certain things…
In 1927, Gestalt psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik noticed a funny thing: waiters in a Vienna restaurant could remember only orders that were in progress. As soon as the order was sent out and complete, they seemed to wipe it from memory. Zeigarnik then did what any good psychologist would do: she went back to the lab and…
We base our understanding of the world on what we can perceive with our senses and comprehend with our minds. Anything that is said to make sense should make sense to us as humans; else there is no reason for it to be the basis of our decisions and actions. Supposed transcendent knowledge or intuitions that are said…
The design of a book is the pattern of reality controlled and shaped by the mind of the writer. This is completely understood about poetry or fiction, but it is too seldom realized about books of fact. And yet the impulse which drives a man to poetry will send a man into the tide pools and force him to report what he…
I myself, a professional mathematician, on re-reading my own work find it strains my mental powers to recall to mind from the figures the meanings of the demonstrations, meanings which I myself originally put into the figures and the text from my mind. But when I attempt to remedy the obscurity of the material by…
The next care to be taken, in respect of the Senses, is a supplying of their infirmities with Instruments, and, as it were, the adding of artificial Organs to the natural; this in one of them has been of late years accomplisht with prodigious benefit to all sorts of useful knowledge, by the invention of Optical…
The fact is that there are few more 'popular' subjects than mathematics. Most people have some appreciation of mathematics, just as most people can enjoy a pleasant tune; and there are probably more people really interested in mathematics than in music. Appearances may suggest the contrary, but there are easy…
Human perception is rife with ways of getting things wrong. We don't like to admit it, because we have a high opinion of our biology, but it's true. Here's an example: We've all seen drawings that create optical illusions. They're lots of fun, but they should actually be called "brain failures." That's what's…
We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their…