"All the model-boundedness of human encounter with the world as well as the interhuman communication is equally involved already in the modeling character of the perception process. […] The modeling character of perception forms is also not changed by the circumstance that the access to the original-side, i.e. to the properties of signal constellations from the external world, it is only always possible via the building of internal models of the external world." (Herbert Stachowiak, "Allgemeine Modelltheorie", 1973)"
"In the absolute universe all events can be regarded as absolutely deterministic, and if we can’t perceive the greater structures, it’s because our vision is faulty. If we had a real grasp of causality down to the molecular level, we wouldn’t need to rely on mathematical approximations, on statistics and probabilities, in making predictions. If our perceptions of cause and effect were only good enough, we’d be able to attain absolute knowledge of what is to come. We would make ourselves all-seeing." (Robert Silverberg, "The Stochastic Man", 1975)
"If mankind were to continue in other than the present barbarism, a new path must be found, a new civilization based on some other method than technology. Space is an illusion, and time as well. There is no such factor as either time or space. We have been blinded by our own cleverness, blinded by false perceptions of those qualities that we term eternity and infinity. There is another factor that explains it all, and once this universal factor is recognized, everything grows simple. There is no longer any mystery, no longer any wonder, no longer any doubt; for the simplicity of it all lies before us [...]" (Clifford D Simak,"A Heritage of Stars", 1977)
"[I]t seems" (to many) that we cannot account for perception unless we suppose it provides us with an internal image" (or model or map) of the external world, and yet what good would that image do us unless we have an inner eye to perceive it, and how are we to explain its capacity for perception? It also seems" (to many) that understanding a heard sentence must be somehow translating it into some internal message, but how will this message be understood: by translating it into something else? The problem is an old one, and let’s call it Hume’s Problem, for while he did not state it explicitly, he appreciated its force and strove mightily to escape its clutches." (Daniel Dennett, Brainstorms: Philosophical essays on mind and psychology", 1978)
"Science sometimes improves hypothesis and sometimes disproves them. But proof would be another matter and perhaps never occurs except in the realms of totally abstract tautology. We can sometimes say that if such and such abstract suppositions or postulates are given, then such and such abstract suppositions or postulates are given, then such and such must follow absolutely. But the truth about what can be perceived or arrived at by induction from perception is something else again." (Gregory Bateson, "Mind and Nature, a Necessary Unity", 1979)
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