Boris Sidis

“ What physics investigates is not light as sensation, but vibrations of ether which may or may not give rise to a sensation of sight. It is, however, just such facts as sensations, facts not spatial in their nature which constitute the subject matter of psychology.
"May not facts of consciousness be some kind of matter, some form of material substance the constitution of which we do not as yet know?" ”

“ No one will deny that mathematics is an exact science, but is it exact because it is reduced to mechanical terms? While mechanics must be logical, logic is not mechanical.
Within certain limits this generalization of the relation of scientific exactness to mechanical formulae may be fully granted, if it be restricted to the concrete physical sciences, but it cannot possibly hold good in case of psychology, as the latter does not fall within the circle of the physical sciences. ”

“ The proposition now before us, namely that atoms and their motion are ultimate realities, is bad metaphysics, because it is a blind unanalyzed postulate. How do we know that atoms and their motions are ultimate realities? Why not ask what is reality? Once we are on metaphysical ground, why not take it in real earnest? Why stop on atoms and motions? Atoms themselves are not ultimate simple units, they have shape, size, weight. ”

“ He who undertakes the examination and study of mental phenomena must bear in mind the simple and important, but frequently forgotten truth, that facts of consciousness are not of a physical, mechanical character. ”

“ Modern science has discovered that the heart is nothing but a hollow muscle, a blood pump at best, the place of mental processes is in the brain. This medical belief now circulating in the popular and semi-scientific literature of today differs but little from the ancient Greek belief, it is just as fallacious and superstitious. It is true that psychic life is a concomitant variable function of nervous processes and brain activity, but neurosis is not the cause of psychosis. The brain does not secrete thought as the liver secretes bile. ”

“ The reason why there is such a persistent tendency to reduce science to mechanical terms is based on the tacit understanding that atoms and motion are the only ultimate realities. We see at a glance that this consideration is at bottom purely metaphysical; it is a consideration which science has not to take into account. Nothing is so dogmatically metaphysical as just the common sense that has an abhorrence of metaphysics. ”

“ Motion is a mental product of what is known as muscular and retinal sensations. What is most ultimately known is only consciousness and its facts. The atom and its motions are after all nothing else but constructs of consciousness. From the standpoint of epistemology, or what the Germans call "Erkenntnisstheorie," we have only a double series of mental phenomena, one standing for the internal and the other for the external world, and not atoms, but mental life may be regarded as the ultimate reality. ”

“ Activity in mechanical or physical sciences means molar, molecular, or atomic movement of matter through space, while psychic activity is not a translation of matter through space, a thought is not a material mass having extension, weight and locomotion. ”

“ From a strictly scientific standpoint, however, we have no right to resolve matter into mind or still less mind into matter, because the two are presented to consciousness as different in kind, even though they both may belong to a general consciousness. ”

“ We must answer in the negative. The objects of the natural sciences of the physical world arc of a material and spatial nature. A physical body has weight, occupies a certain portion of space, so has the molecule, the atom. ”

“ Psychic life is no doubt the concomitant of nervous brain activity, and certain psychic processes may depend on definite local brain processes, but the given psychic process is not situated in a definite brain center, nor for that matter is it situated anywhere in space. ”

“ And if this be the case must not the facts of consciousness be ranged along with physical phenomena, be reduced to the manifestations and transformations of kinetic energy and thus really and ultimately fall within the domain of the mechanical sciences?"
Change certainly is manifested in the mutations of states of consciousness, but this change is not the physical change of translocation. Change in the states of consciousness may no doubt, be regarded as activity, and if you please as energy, but this activity is not the energy of mechanics. ”

“ A fallacy prevalent among the medical profession and now also extant among the populace is the placing of psychic life in the brain. The neurologist, the pathologist ridicule the old Greek belief that the place of the mind is in the heart. ”

“ They are so many resultants of masses of factual, visual and muscular sensations, which are as little ultimate as are the sensations of color or of pain. It is out of sensations, percepts and ideas that the concept "atom" is framed. Subtract from the atom its sensational, perceptual and ideational elements, abstract from it its shape, size, weight and the ultimate reality of the atoms will become a bare nothing. The atom therefore is ultimately resolved into terms of consciousness. ”

“ From a strictly psychological standpoint, the ugly and the beautiful, the good and the evil, the true and the false are of equal value. Psychologically they are all facts of consciousness and must be studied as such ”

“ To realize this truth, I think it a good preliminary psychological exercise for the reader to try to find how many grams, or grains his idea of beauty weighs, how many millimeters long, wide and high his feelings of love are ”