James J. Gibson Quotations

The perception of what a thing is and the perception of what it means are not separate, either.

I also assume that they are not simply the physical properties of things as now conceived by physical science. Instead, they are ecological, in the sense that they are properties of the environment relative to an animal.

There has been a great gulf in psychological thought between the perception of space and objects on one hand and the perception of meaning on the other.

But the object, place, substance, event, or animal that affords injury need not be encountered; it can be avoided, escaped or averted, if perceived.

At one extreme stands the fact that educated adults have a conception of space, i.e., mathematical or geometrical space, Euclidean, Cartesian, non-Euclidean, etc.

Psychology is still trying to explain the perception of the position of an object in space, along with its shape, size, and so on, and to understand the sensations of color.

The abstract analysis of the world by mathematics and physics rests on the concepts of space and time.

A mechanical encounter or other energy-exchange may cause tissue damage.

The meaning or value of a thing consists of what it affords.

Hence it is that the shape of something is especially meaningful.

The heart of the problem is not so much how we see objects in depth, as how we see the constant layout of the world around us. Space, as such, empty space, is not visible, but surfaces are.

What a thing is and what it means are not separate, the former being physical and the latter mental as we are accustomed to believe.

The hypothesis that things have affordances, and that we perceive or learn to perceive them, is very promising, radical, but not yet elaborated.

The human young must learn to perceive these affordances, in some degree at least, but the young of some animals do not have time to learn the ones that are crucial for survival.