sensory limitations Quotes

Our five senses are faulty data-taking devices, and they need help.

Imagination is the Discovering Faculty, pre-eminently ... It is that which feels & discovers what is, the REAL which we see not, which exists not for our senses... Mathematical science shows what is. It is the language of unseen relations between things... Imagination too shows what is ... Hence she is or should be especially cultivated by the truly Scientific, those who wish to enter into the worlds around us!

Seeing is limited by two borders: Strong light, which blinds, and total darkness.

Eighty percent of the information we receive comes through our eyes. And if you compare light energy to musical scales, it would only be one octave that the naked eye can see, which is right in the middle.

If toes had eyes, then I could see how my feet know where to go, but toes are blind. And how is it that my tongue speaks words it cannot hear? Because for all its eloquence, the tongue itself is deaf, and flaps in soundlessness.

Never tell the box-office man that you can't hear well or he will sell you a seat where you can't see either.

Our senses enable us to perceive only a minute portion of the outside world.

People assume that they perceive reality as it is, that our senses accurately record the outside world. Yet the science suggests that, in important ways, people experience reality not as it is, but as they expect it to be.

We must doubt the certainty of everything which passes through the senses, but how much more ought we to doubt things contrary to the senses, such as the existence of God and the soul.

'Tis certain that our senses are extremely disproportioned for comprehending the whole compass and latitude of things.

Though most of us don't hunt, our eyes are still the great monopolists of our senses. To taste or touch your enemy or your food, you have to be unnervingly close to it. To smell or hear it, you can risk being further off. But vision can rush through the fields and up the mountains, travel across time, country, and parsecs of outer space, and collect bushel baskets of information as it goes. Animals that hear high frequencies better than we do

The most happy marriage I can picture or imagine to myself would be the union of a deaf man to a blind woman.

Okay, you were probably taught there are five senses," he said. "We see, hear, touch, smell and taste. But how do we know those are the only five? What are the senses that we don't have? What are we failing to perceive?

We open our eyes and we think we're seeing the whole world out there. But what has become clear—and really just in the last few centuries—is that when you look at the electro-magnetic spectrum we are seeing less than 1/10 Billionth of the information that's riding on there. So we call that visible light. But everything else passing through our bodies is completely invisible to us. Even though we accept the reality that's presented to us, we're really only seeing a little window of what's happening.

The limits of sensory evolution in fish are defined very largely by their habitat. Water is physically supportive, carries some kinds of odour well, and is kind to sound - letting it travel several times faster than air will allow, but it inhibits other more personal kinds of communication.

The world which we perceive is a tiny fraction of the world which we can perceive, which is a tiny fraction of the perceivable world.

There are many who stumble in the noon-day, not for want of light, but for want of eyes.

Think you of the fact that a deaf person cannot hear. Then, what deafness may we not all possess? What senses do we lack that we cannot see and cannot hear another world all around us?

Our senses enable us to perceive only a minute portion of the outside world. Our hearing extends to a small distance. Our sight is impeded by intervening bodies and shadows. To know each other we must reach beyond the sphere of our sense perceptions. We must transmit our intelligence, travel, transport the materials and transfer the energies necessary for our existence.

How do you know but ev’ry Bird that cuts the airy way, Is an immense world of delight, clos’d by your senses five?

Our physical senses and our embodied brains allow us to perceive only a small fraction of reality. We cannot see microbes or untraviolet light, for example. We can hear only a small range of sounds. When we try to describe the otherworld of energies and spirits, we are limited not only by our bodily constraints but by the expectations, assumptions, and language patterns ingrained in us by the culture we were raised in.

Everything you see is filtered through your visual system (imperfect) and your brain (also imperfect, despite what your mom told you). Witness testimony is the worst kind of evidence in science.

It should not be expected that what is spiritual can be brought before the eyes, before the senses. It must be experienced inwardly and spiritually.

But by far the greatest hindrance and aberration of the human understanding proceeds from the dullness, incompetency, and deceptions of the senses; in that things which strike the sense outweigh things which do not immediately strike it, though they be more important. Hence it is that speculation commonly ceases where sight ceases; insomuch that of things invisible there is little or no observation.