Sense perception

Another NIMH scientist went out on a limb, saying that it was incredible that marijuana in any natural or synthetic form could serve as a chemical warfare agent. THC itself, he said, deteriorates rapidly and is too bulky and expensive for such use. LSD is cheaper, more stable, and packs a bigger punch in a smaller dose. He added that one could readily introduce an easily carried quantity of LSD into the food or water supply of a major city, enough to alter radically the sense perceptions of its population for 12 to 24 hours. 

The code used by the plumber for the bath taps is precisely opposite to the astronomer s rule of thumb. Between the artisan and the astronomer, Goethe chose the first. For him, and for all artists since the beginning of time, blue has been associated with what is spiritually cold. In his Theory of Colours Zur Farbenlehre, 1810), he wrote that blue expresses a purely empirical psychological impression of cold. Our own science places all sense perceptions such as sound, colour and heat firmly within the human sphere. Nothing outside the human being corresponds to these qualities. 

Further on, one realizes that Kandinsky s approach is actually synesthesia, a simultaneous blending of all the sense perceptions. According to the painter-theorist, the expression scented colors is frequently encountered. And finally the sound of colors is so definite that it would be hard to find anyone who would try to express bright yellow in the bass notes, or dark lake in the treble. Red lights stimulate and excite the heart while blue... 

Gradually, all sense perception became increasingly vivid—sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell all grew in intensity, and with this I noticed that things seemed distorted, especially if I became worried. 

Aristotle sometimes thinks of the soul as a set of capacities, such as the capacity for nutrition, the capacity of sense perception and the capacity for thought. These capacities are not a mere conglomeration, but are related to each other in intimate ways, so as to form a... 

To maintain that all things are at rest, and to disregard sense-perception and attempt to show the theory reasonable, would be an instance of intellectual weakness. .. Further, just as in arguments about mathematics objections that involve first principles do not affect the mathematician - and the other sciences are similar - so, too, objections involving the point that we have just raised do not affect the physicist for it is a hypothesis that nature is a principle of motion (Phys. 253a32-253b6). 

Cognitive Brain functions related to sense perception or understanding. 

Not only do we use instruments to give us fineness of detail inaccessible to direct sense perception, but we also use them to extend qualitatively the range of our senses into regions where our senses no longer operate... 

His premise is an ordered continuum of existence, which is governed by laws and is all embracing. This continuum lacks appearance —that is, it is not immediately accessible to sense perception. But through the dynamism inherent in existence, images are differentiated out of the continuum which by their structure and position partake of the laws of the continuum they are, in a sense, individuations of this continuum. On the one hand, these images—that is, the sixty-four situations of the Book... 

Since in his [De Volder s] opinion all events in the human body take place in accordance with the laws of mechanics, which we cannot understand without knowledge of mathematics, as is quite evident, so he declares, from the works of Huygens and Newton on the motion and forces by which bodies are governed in nature. De Voider holds that the success of the geometrical method in optics, architecture, and navigation should stimulate us to apply this method in medicine as well, although he admits that sense-perception cannot be dispensed with. 

Boerhaave not only disagreed with Descartes on the nature of body and soul, but he also opposed Spinoza s views. Boerhaave believed in the immaterial origin of the mind. Thus the mind is essentially different from the body, which means that an idea is necessary different from the object or sense perception exciting the idea. Spinoza on the contrary considered body and mind as modes of extension and thought, both of which he defined as attributes of God. They influence each other, but because they are both conceived in God it is unnecessary to define the exact nature of their relation. Since both body and mind are conceived in God, an idea and the object of the idea must be necessarily the same. 

The most striking element of the 1701 and 1703 orations is Boerhaave s constant referring to true principles upon which medicine should be built. These tme principles are revealed to man through sense-perception and only he who is free from aU sectarianism, unfettered by any preconceived ideas, devoid of all leanings towards prejudice he who merely learns, accepts... 

Whoever desires to discover these unknown facts, then, must deduce from the particular object he wants to study the conditions which strictly determine his otherwise unbridled freedom of reasoning in exploring the nature of the object in question. And surely nobody learns to know these conditions who has not discerned, by means of sense perception, the effects to be observed in every body. For these effects are related to the properties consequent upon the particular nature of the object which is studied every single effect therefore reveals one property and taken together they reveal, as it were, its complete nature, as far as it is open to the... 

A particularly good example of how the working of the body is related to God s divine will is Boerhaave s discussion of the Aristotelian concept of sen-sorium commune in explaining the connection between the body and the mind as well as the connection of man to God. It is the place in the brain where all sense perception and impressions of the nerves come together and cause ideas, emotions, passions and voluntary motions. Boerhaave localised the sensorium commune in the place where all sensations originate, i.e. in all the points where the cerebral cortex and spinal marrow transfer into nerves. Boerhaave is very particular in stating that once the sensorium commune has set the body into motion it functions automatically, which means that for instance when someone decides to walk from Leiden to Amsterdam and back, the body will automatically do so. 

It [observations] (...) should be written down with the same simplicity with which it was revealed by Nature to the sense-perception every modification of the facts derogates from this and the addition or omission of even the slightest detail is preju-dical to it. Everything which meets these requirements is clear, true, and eternally valid. 

You, man, may realise from this that you cannot understand anything at all about even the minutest particles of the ingenious structure of the body, apart from the knowledge for which you are indebted to Nature alone, in as far as she has granted to you to become acquainted with her by means of sense-perception. 

Pratyahara (withdrawing the mind from sense perception)... 

For Kant, there is a connection between sense perception and chemistry via what is now called neurophysiology, cf. (7 157 12 34). 

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