Physical Objects Quotes

Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posits comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer . . . For my part I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer's gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise. But in point of epistemological footing, the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conceptions only as cultural posits.

The book is like the spoon, scissors, the hammer, the wheel. Once invented, it cannot be improved. You cannot make a spoon that is better than a spoon... The book has been thoroughly tested, and it's very hard to see how it could be improved on for its current purposes.

Just as the introduction of the irrational numbers ... is a convenient myth [which] simplifies the laws of arithmetic ... so physical objects are postulated entities which round out and simplify our account of the flux of existence... The conceptional scheme of physical objects is [likewise] a convenient myth, simpler than the literal truth and yet containing that literal truth as a scattered part.

A pin has a head, but has no hair

The Ideas of primary Qualities of Bodies, are Resemblances of them, and their Patterns do really exist in the Bodies themselves; but the Ideas, produced in us by these Secondary Qualities, have no resemblance of them at all. There is nothing like our Ideas, existing in the Bodies themselves. They are in Bodies, we denominate from them, only a Power to produce those Sensations in us: And what is Sweet, Blue or Warm in Idea, is but the certain Bulk, Figure, and Motion of the insensible parts in the Bodies themselves, which we call so.

Seeing and playing with physical objects can enable access to symbolic ideas. When I studied physics and math at university it was all done through equations and textbooks whereas artists go to art school and start making stuff; they fling paint at the walls, they dance and bash things together with giant bits of metal. Our society has come to think of science as being a very abstractified thing, and art as being a materialized thing.

Oh, I’m not a Berkeleian. I believe my back’s against this wall. I believe there’s a sten gun over there.

A trophy carries dust. Memories last forever.

Holding onto and manipulating physical objects is one of the things we learn earliest and do the most. It should not be surprising that object control is the basis of one of the five most fundamental metaphors for our inner life. To control objects, we must learn to control our bodies. We learn both forms of control together. Self-control and object control are inseparable experiences from earliest childhood. It is no surprise that we should have as a metaphor-a primary metaphor-Self Control is Object Control.

The fundamental peculiarity of the photographic medium; the physical objects themselves print their image by means of the optical and chemical action of light.

Theory may be deliberate, as in a chapter on chemistry, or it may be second nature, as in the immemorial doctrine of ordinary enduring middle-sized physical objects.

There's one uneasy borderline between what is external and what is internal, and this borderline is defined exactly by the sense organs and the skin and the introduction of external things within my own body. Consciousness is altered by physical events and physical objects, which impinge upon my sense organs, or which I introduce into my body. Now the name traditionally given to external objects or processes which change you internally is sacrament. Sacraments are the visible and tangible techniques for bringing you close to your own divinity.

Stop fixating on stuff you can touch and start caring about stuff that touches you.

The pure natural scientist is liable to forget that minds exist, and that if it were not for them he could neither know nor act on physical objects.

Everything that occupies space has form. The formless can only be infinite.

I believe that the first step in the setting of a real external world is the formation of the concept of bodily objects and of bodily objects of various kinds.

I like things you can touch and things you can keep, because every bit of communication we have is ephemeral in nature. You can just delete an e-mail and it's like it was never there.

I think that modern physics has definitely decided in favor of Plato. In fact the smallest units of matter are not physical objects in the ordinary sense; they are forms, ideas which can be expressed unambiguously only in mathematical language.

Objects are what matter. Only they carry the evidence that throughout the centuries something really happened among human beings.

I personally think intellectual property is an oxymoron. Physical objects have a completely different natural economy than intellectual goods.

Within this widest concept of object, and specifically within the concept of individual object, Objects and phenomena stand in contrast with each other.

I think that in an increasingly virtual world, lovingly produced artefacts are at a premium.

That body is heavier than another which, in an equal bulk, moves downward quicker.

For me, the most painful thing is the thought of shelves without books. This is the problem with the digital thing. I do not want to see it on electronic. I do not want to see all of those indices on Kindle. I don't want this physical object to disappear, because when it's there and it's present, it's continually suggesting new relationships in a way that an electronic index couldn't.

Common sense says that chairs and tables exist independently of whether anyone happens to perceive them or not.