I wish to suggest here that order is not a purely subjective quality and that, on the contrary, judgements concerning it can have just as objective a basis as those concerning, for example, distance, time, mass, or anything else of this nature. For, as I shall try to explain presently in more detail, such judgements are based on the perceptual discrimination of similar differences and different similarities, which can be defined and communicated just as well as can be done with other qualities that are commonly recognized to be capable of an objective description.
p 18
It is not only in science that perception of relevant differences is the basic step. Actually, all perception begins with the perception of such differences.
[...] insight, which is of the essential quality of intelligence, cannot ultimately be a mere product of memory and training [...] Rather it is an act of perception through the mind [...]
p 69
[...] a skilled mathematician has a great deal of his knowledge "at his fingertips" in a form that requires little or no conscious attention. So, in all these ways, man's thinking process slowly came into being and formed itself into what may be called reactive thought.
p 70
[...] the outgoing energy is held back and directed inwards. It is such a reversal of energy direction that is the beginning of a process of reflective thought.
p 72-73
[...] when reflective thought is dominated by the attempt to find a solution that would fit in with the background of existing reactive thought, it inevitably commits itself to imitating these crude and gross patterns of response. The main way in which it does this is overemphasizing the hard and fast definition of logical categories.
p 75
It cannot be too strongly emphasized that what is being suggested here is that intelligence does not thus arise primarily out of thought. [...] the deep source of intelligence is the unknown and indefinable totality from which all perception originates.
[...] what is required is a general alertness which makes us aware, from moment to moment, of how the process of thought is getting caught in fixed sets of categories.
[...] the notion of the necessary incompleteness of our knowledge runs counter to the commonly accepted scientific tradition, which has generally taken the form of supposing that science seeks to arrive ultimately at absolute truth, or at least at a steady approach to such truth, through a series of approximations.
p 113
There is indeed no good reason for the traditional view, in which this whole is fragmented into two disjoint parts—one of which is taken to be the rational fitting of function, considered to be public, impersonal, and objective, while the other of which is taken to be the response through aesthetic sensibilities and feelings, considered to be private, personal, and a matter of purely subjective tastes and preferences.