Are There Limits to Cognition? 123In the field of experimental physics, it is sometimes
necessary to speak not of elements that are immediately
perceptible, but of unobservable quantities such as lines
of electric or magnetic force. This can also distract us
from the unprejudiced observation of the relationship de-
scribed here between the percept and the concept worked
out in thinking. It canappear as if the elements of reality
that physics describes have nothing to do either with what
is perceptible or with the concept worked out in active
thinking. Yet such a view would be based on self-decep-
tion. We must realize, in the first place, thateverything
worked out in physics—except unjustified hypotheses
that ought to be excluded—is achieved with percepts and
concepts. A physicist’s accurate cognitive instinct trans-
poses what is apparently an unobservable content to the
field where percepts exist, where it is then thought out in
familiar concepts from that field. The strengths of electric
or magnetic fields, for example, are not obtained through
anessentially different cognitive process than that which
operates between percepts and concepts.
An increase or alteration in the human senses would
result in a different perceptual picture, an enrichment or
alteration of human experience. But real knowledge
must be achieved, even in regard tothisexperience, by
the interaction of concept and percept. Thedeepening of
cognition depends on the forces of intuition that live in
thinking (cf. p. 88). In theexperience of thinking, such
intuition can immerse itself either more or less deeply in
reality. The extension of the perceptual picture can stim-
ulate this immersion and so, indirectly, promote it. Yet