Quotes by Susanne K. Langer

“The world of physics is essentially the real world construed by mathematical abstractions, and the world of sense is the real world construed by the abstractions which the sense-organs immediately furnish. To suppose that the "material mode" is a primitive and groping attempt at physical conception is a fatal error in epistemology.””

“Real thinking is possible only in the light of genuine language, no matter how limited, how primitive;””

“Even the subjective record of sense experience, the "sense-image," is not a direct copy of actual experience, but has been "projected," in the process of copying, into a new dimension, the more or less stabile form we call a picture. It has not the protean, mercurial elusiveness of real visual experience, but a unity and lasting identity that makes it an object of the mind's possession rather than a sensation. Furthermore it is not firmly and fixedly determined by the pattern of natural phenomena, as real sensations are, but is "free," in the same manner as the little noises which a baby produces by impulse and at will. We can call up images and let them fill the virtual space of vision between us and real objects, or on the screen of the dark, and dismiss them again, without altering the course of practical events. They are our own product, yet not part of ourselves as our physical actions are; rather might we compare them with our uttered words (save that they remain entirely private) , in that they are objects to us, things that may surprise, even frighten us, experiences that can be contemplated, not merely lived.In short, images have all the characteristics of symbols. If they were weak sense-experiences, they would confuse the order of nature for us. Our salvation lies in that we do not normally take them for bona fide sensations, but attend to them only in their capacity of meaning things, being images of things”

“Sheer self-expression requires no artistic form. A lynching-party howling round the gallows-tree, a woman wringing her hands over a sick child, a lover who has just rescued his sweetheart in an accident and stands trembling, sweating, and perhaps laughing or crying with emotion, is giving vent to intense feelings; but such scenes are not occasions for music, least of all for composing. Not even a theme, "translating an impression of keenest sorrow," is apt to come to a man, a woman, or a mob in a moment when passionate self-expression is needed. The laws of emotional catharsis are natural laws, not artistic. Verbal responses like "Ah!" "Oh-oh!" are not creations, but speech-habits ; even the expressiveness of oaths rests not on the fact that such words were invented for psycho-cathartic purposes, but that they are taboo, and the breaking of a taboo gives emotional release. Breaking a vase would do better still.””