“Physically, we transmit signals or signs -- audible, visual, tactual. But the mere transmission and reception of a physical signal does not constitute communication. A sign, if it is perceived by the recipient, has the potential for selecting responses in him. Physically, when we communicate, we make noises with our mouths, or gesticulate, or exhibit some token or icon, and these physical signals set up a response behavior.”

—  Colin Cherry

Source: On Human Communication (1957), What Is It That We Communicate?, p. 10

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 "Physically, we transmit signals or signs -- audible, visual, tactual. But the mere transmission and reception of a phys…" by Colin Cherry?
Colin Cherry photo
Colin Cherry 12
British scientist 1914–1979

Related quotes

Hans Reichenbach photo

“Occasionally one speaks… of signals or signal chains. It should be noted that the word signal means the transmission of signs and hence concerns the very principle of causal order…”

Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953) American philosopher

The Philosophy of Space and Time (1928, tr. 1957)

“The theory of communication is partly concerned with the measurement of information content of signals, as their essential property in the establishment of communication links. But the information content of signals is not to be regarded as a commodity; it is more a property or potential of the signals, and as a concept it is closely related to the idea of selection, or discrimination. This mathematical theory first arose in telegraphy and telephony, being developed for the purpose of measuring the information content of telecommunication signals. It concerned only the signals themselves as transmitted along wires, or broadcast through the aether, and is quite abstracted from all questions of "meaning." Nor does it concern the importance, the value, or truth to any particular person. As a theory, it lies at the syntactic level of sign theory and is abstracted from the semantic and pragmatic levels. We shall argue … that, though the theory does not directly involve biological elements, it is nevertheless quite basic to the study of human communication -- basic but insufficient.”

Colin Cherry (1914–1979) British scientist

Source: On Human Communication (1957), What Is It That We Communicate?, p. 10

Harry Chapin photo

“And if our future
Lies on the final line
Are we brave enough
To see the signals and the signs?”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

I Wonder What Would Happen to this World
Song lyrics, Living Room Suite (1978)

Francis Escudero photo

“The cataclysmic force that hit our country requires serious response to influence significant rehabilitation and reconstruction of the communities barreled by catastrophes. We need to infuse major financial foundation to recoup and retain the physical, economic and social viability of these communities.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Interaksyon http://www.interaksyon.com/article/75681/senate-approves-2014-national-budget-on-third-and-final-reading
2013

“An information system is an organisation of people, materials and machines that serves to facilitate the transfer of information from one person to another. Its function is social: to aid human communication. If we take this to mean all reception of signals by the human senses (sight, sound, small, touch, taste,…)- then communication is an incessant and essential accompaniment of all human activity. If we restrict the meaning of signals to flowing between people, much of the daily life of most of us is occupied by such interpersonal acts.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

Source: Information Systems (1973), p. 1.

“Transmission through space (typically signaling) is the same as transmission through time”

Richard Hamming (1915–1998) American mathematician and information theorist

storage
The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn (1991)

Hans Reichenbach photo

“Perceptual space is not a special space in addition to physical space, but physical space which we endow with a special subjective metric. …apart from the definition of congruence in physics and that based on perception, there is no third one derived from pure visualization. Any such third definition is nothing but the definition of physical congruence to which our normative function has adjusted the subjective experience of congruence.”

Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953) American philosopher

The Philosophy of Space and Time (1928, tr. 1957)

John William Dunne photo

“Now, when we say of any occurrence that it is 'physical', we mean thereby that it is potentially describable in physical terms. (Otherwise the expression would be wholly meaningless.) So it is perfectly correct, to state that, in every happening with which our sensory nerves are associated, we find, after we have abstracted therefrom every known or imaginable physical component, certain categorically nonphysical residue.”

John William Dunne book An Experiment with Time

Source: An Experiment with Time (1927), p. 5

Lewis M. Branscomb photo

“God loves the noise as much as the signal.”

Lewis M. Branscomb (1926) physicist and science policy advisor

Source: Confessions of a Technophile (1994), p. 42: Quote inspired on Branscomb's 1980 essay "God loves the noise"

Related topics