“I am using the word image in a wide meaning, which does not restrict it to the mind's eye as a visual organ. An image in my usage is what Charles Pierce called a sign…”

— Jacob Bronowski

"The Reach of Imagination" (1967)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I am using the word image in a wide meaning, which does not restrict it to the mind's eye as a visual organ. An image i…" by Jacob Bronowski?

Jacob Bronowski 79

Polish-born British mathematician 1908–1974

Jan Zwicky (1955) Canadian philosopher

'Perfect Fluency' interview with Scott Rosenberg, University of Wyoming Campus, Oct. 2010.
Other

“The word, although prevalent in our day, has lost its reasoning value, and has value only as an accessory to images. In turn, the word actually evokes images. But it does not evoke the direct images related to my personal experience. Rather, it calls up images from the newspaper or television. The key words in our modern vocabulary, thanks to propaganda and advertising, are words that relate to visual reproduction. They are stripped of all rational content, so they evoke only visions that whisk us away to some enchanted universe. Saying "fascism," "progress," "science," or "justice" does not suggest any idea or produce any reflection. It only causes a fanfare of images to explode within us: a sort of fireworks of visual commonplaces, which link up very precisely with each other. These related images provide me with practical content: a common truth that is especially easy to swallow because the ready-made images that showed it to me had been digested in advance. Make no mistake here: this is how modern people usually think. We are arriving at a purely emotional stage of thinking.”

Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) French sociologist, technology critic, and Christian anarchist

J. Hanks, trans. (1985), p. 210
The Humiliation of the Word (1981)

“Graphic representation constitutes one of the basic sign-systems conceived by the human mind for the purposes of storing, understanding, and communicating essential information. As a "language" for the eye, graphics benefits from the ubiquitous properties of visual perception. As a monosemic system, it forms the rational part of the world of images.”

Jacques Bertin (1918–2010) French geographer and cartographer

Source: Semiology of graphics (1967/83), p. 2

“Well, I was interested in a subjective image [in the 1940's].... stemming perhaps from the subconscious. Because the external world as far as I was concerned had been totally explored in painting and there was a whole ripe new area in the inner world that we all have. Now in order to externalise this you have to use visual means and so the visual means may have some relation tot the external world. However what I was trying to focus on was what I experienced within my mind, within my feelings, rather than on the external world which I can see.”

Adolph Gottlieb (1903–1974) American artist

Source: 1960s, Interview with Dorothy Seckler, 1967, p. 55-59.

“I am using the word "perceive". I am using it here in such a way that to say of an object that it is perceived does not entail saying that it exists in any sense at all. And this is a perfectly correct and familiar usage of the word.”

Alfred Jules Ayer (1910–1989) English philosopher

The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge (1940). 
Context: I am using the word "perceive". I am using it here in such a way that to say of an object that it is perceived does not entail saying that it exists in any sense at all. And this is a perfectly correct and familiar usage of the word. If there is thought to be a difficulty here, it is perhaps because there is also a correct and familiar usage of the word "perceive", in which to say of an object that it is perceived does carry the implication that it exists.

“Those things are inextricable bound up in my mind, with words I make an image and vice versa.”

Jan Theuninck (1954) painter, poet

As quoted in Boekgrrls (8 March 2004) http://www.boekgrrls.nl/BgDiversen/Onderwerpen/gedichten_over_schilderijen.htm

“The revolutionary artist is born into a world of clichés, of stale images and signs which no longer pierce the consciousness to express reality. He therefore invents new symbols, perhaps a whole new symbolic system.”

Herbert Read (1893–1968) English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art

The Philosophy of Modern Art: Collected Essays (1971).
Other Quotes

“The image of myself which I try to create in my own mind in order that I may love myself is very different from the image which I try to create in the minds of others in order that they may love me.”

W. H. Auden book The Dyer's Hand

"Hic et Ille", p. 104
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

“My suggestion is that at each state the proper order of operation of the mind requires an overall grasp of what is generally known, not only in formal logical, mathematical terms, but also intuitively, in images, feelings, poetic usage of language, etc.”

David Bohm book Wholeness and the Implicate Order

Wholeness and the Implicate Order (1980)
Context: My suggestion is that at each state the proper order of operation of the mind requires an overall grasp of what is generally known, not only in formal logical, mathematical terms, but also intuitively, in images, feelings, poetic usage of language, etc. (Perhaps we could say that this is what is involved in harmony between the 'left brain' and the 'right brain'). This kind of overall way of thinking is not only a fertile source of new theoretical ideas: it is needed for the human mind to function in a generally harmonious way, which could in turn help to make possible an orderly and stable society. <!-- p. xi

“The symbol is the tool which gives man his power, and it is the same tool whether the symbols are images or words, mathematical signs or mesons.”

Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974) Polish-born British mathematician

"The Reach of Imagination" (1967)

“I am using the word image in a wide meaning, which does not restrict it to the mind's eye as a visual organ. An image in my usage is what Charles Pierce called a sign…”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Jacob Bronowski 79

Related quotes

Related topics