Concept Quotes

“Abstraction”

“Conceptual model”

“Wikipedia: Concept”

“Wiktionary: Concept”

“Concepts*tanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy”

“All concepts, even those which are closest to experience, are from the point of view of logic freely chosen conventions.”

“Concepts, like individuals, have their histories, and are just as incapable of withstanding the ravages of time as are individuals.”

“Concepts have meaning only if we can point to objects to which they refer and to rules by which they are assigned to these objects.”

“Wikiversity: Collaboratively Building Concepts”

“The aim of science is... a comprehension, as complete as possible, of the connection between the sense experiences in their totality, and... the accomplishment of this aim by the use of the minimum of primary concepts and relations.”

“Often it is only after immense intellectual effort, which may have continued over centuries, that humanity at last succeeds in achieving knowledge of a concept in its pure form, by stripping off the irrelevant accretions which veil it from the eye of the mind.”

“There are three aspects of thinking as more or less complete stages of it. These are, conception, judgment, and reasoning. They are not to be considered three distinct acts; not even three successive stages. No one of them could occur without each of the others.”

“Concepts can only acquire content when they are connected, however indirectly, with sensible experience. But no logical investigation can reveal this connection; it can only be experienced. ...this connection ...determines the cognitive value of systems of concepts.”

“Kant says that concept without percepts are empty, percepts without concepts are blind; it would perhaps be truer to say that concepts and percepts are inseparable; and if torn asunder, they are nothing.”

“Conception is taking together into one idea the element of meaning common to a number of objects and things. ...Conception is... the simplest act of thinking; it is the apprehension of the universal, as perception is the apperception of the particular. We perceive this man; we conceive man. ...it is universal through its ideal element, or what it points to, not from its existence.”

“The belief in an external world independent of the percipient subject is the foundation of all science. But since our sense-perceptions inform us only indirectly of this external world, or Physical Reality, it is only by speculation that it can become comprehensible to us. From this it follows that our conceptions of Physical Reality can never be definitive; we must always be ready to alter them, that is, [to alter] the axiomatic basis of physics, in order to take account of the facts of perception with the greatest possible logical completeness.”

“A systematic revolution of basic concepts begins with Einsteinian science. In the very detail of its concepts a relativism of the rational and the empirical is established. Science then undergoes what Nietzche called "an upheaval of concepts," as if the earth, the universe, things, possessed a different structure from the fact that their explanation rests upon new foundations. All rational organization is "shaken" when the fundamental concepts undergo dialectical transformation.”

“[H]ow free are we in choosing the concepts for formulating our questions? Any scientific work can only be defined by formulating the questions... But in order to formulate the questions we need concepts by which we hope to get hold of the phenomena. These concepts are usually taken from the past history of science; they suggest already a possible picture of the phenomena. But if we are going to enter into a new realm of phenomena, these concepts may act as a collection of prejudices, which hamper progress... Even then we have to use concepts, and we can't help falling back on those given to us by tradition.”

“... mathematics is the science of skillful operations with concepts and rules invented just for this purpose. The principal emphasis is on the invention of concepts. Mathematics would soon run out of interesting theorems if these had to be formulated in terms of the concepts which already appear in the axioms. Furthermore, whereas it is unquestionably true that the concepts of elementary mathematics and particularly elementary geometry were formulated to describe entities which are directly suggested by the actual world, the same does not seem to be true of the more advanced concepts, in particular the concepts which play such an important role in physics.”

“I believe that the first step in the setting of a "real external world" is the formation of the concept of bodily objects... Out of the multitude of our sense experiences we take, mentally and arbitrarily, certain repeatedly occurring complexes of sense impressions... and we correlate to them a concept—the concept of a bodily object. Considered logically, this concept is not identical with the totality of sense impressions referred to; but it is a free creation of the human (or animal) mind. ...by means of such concepts and mental relations between them, we are able to orient ourselves in the labyrinth of sense impressions. These notions and relations, although free mental creations, appear to us stronger and more unalterable than the individual sense experience itself, the character of which... is never completely guaranteed.”