Mental Models XVII

"As infinite kinds of almost identical images arise continually from the innumerable atoms and flow out to us from the gods, so we should take the keenest pleasure in turning and bending our mind and reason to grasp these images, in order to understand the nature of these blessed and eternal beings." (Marcus TulliusCicero, "De Natura Deorum" ["On the Nature of the Gods"], 45 BC)

"The imagination is one of the highest prerogatives of man. By this faculty he unites, independently of the will, former images and ideas, and thus creates brilliant and novel results […] The value of the products of our imagination depends of course on the number, accuracy, and clearness of our impressions; on our judgment and taste in selecting or rejecting the involuntary combinations, and to a certain extent on our power of voluntarily combining them." (Charles Darwin, "The Descent of Man", 1874)

"That faculty which perceives and recognizes the noble proportions in what is given to the senses, and in other things situated outside itself, must be ascribed to the soul. It lies very close to the faculty which supplies formal schemata to the senses, or deeper still, and thus adjacent to the purely vital power of the soul, which does not think discursively […] Now it might be asked how this faculty of the soul, which does not engage in conceptual thinking, and can therefore have no proper knowledge of harmonic relations, should be capable of recognizing what is given in the outside world. For to recognize is to compare the sense perception outside with the original pictures inside, and to judge that it conforms to them.” (Johannes Kepler, “Harmonices Mundi” [“Harmony of the World”, 1619)

"The entire method consists in the order and arrangement of the things to which the mind's eye must turn so that we can discover some truth." (René Descartes, "Rules for the Direction of the Mind", 1628)

“[…] inner images are rather psychic manifestations of the archetypes which, however, would also have to put forth, create, condition anything lawlike in the behavior of the corporeal world. The laws of this world would then be the physical manifestations of the archetypes. […] Each law of nature should then have an inner correspondence and vice versa, even though this is not always directly visible today.” (Wolfgang Pauli, [letter to Markus Fierz] 1948)

“The process of understanding in nature, together with the joy that man feels in understanding, i.e., in becoming acquainted with new knowledge, seems therefore to rest upon a correspondence, a coming into congruence of preexistent internal images of the human psyche with external objects and their behavior. […] the place of clear concepts is taken by images of strongly emotional content, which are not thought but  are seen pictorially, as it were, before the minds eye.” (Wolfgang Pauli, “Der Einfluss archetypischer Vorstellungen auf die Bildung  naturwissenschaftlicher Theorien bei Kepler”, 1952)

“You cannot learn, through common sense, how things are you can only discover where they fit into the existing scheme of things.”  (Stuart Hall, 1977)

"Imagination is our means of interpreting the world, and it also is our means of forming images in the mind. The images themselves are not separate from our interpretations of the world; they are our way of thinking of the objects in the world. We see the forms in our mind’s eye and we see these very forms in the world. We could not do one of these things if we could not do the other" (Mary Warnock, "Imagination", 1978)

“[…] the human brain must work in models. The trick is to have your brain work better than the other person’s brain because it understands the most fundamental models: ones that will do most work per unit. If you get into the mental habit of relating what you’re reading to the basic structure of the underlying ideas being demonstrated, you gradually accumulate some wisdom."  (Charles T Munger, “Poor Charlie’s Almanack”, 2005)

“We know the world by a process of constantly transforming it into ourselves." (Alan Watts)