James J. Gibson Quotations

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.

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.