Sensing+ Selecting+ Perceiving= Seeing

“It is clear from the behaviour of infants that we do not enter the world with full-fledged perceptions of objects. The newborn child starts by sensing a mass of vague, indeterminate sensa, which it does not even select, much less perceive as physical objects. Little by little, it learns to discriminate the sensa that have, for its particular purposes, the greatest interest and significance, and with these selected sensa it gradually comes, through a process of suitable interpretation, to perceive external objects. This faculty for interpreting sensa in terms of external physical objects is probably inborn; but it requires, for its adequate manifestation, a store of accumulated experiences and a memory capable of retaining such a store. The interpretation of sensa in terms of physical objects becomes rapid and automatic only when the mind can draw on its past experience of similar sensa successfully interpreted in a similar way.

In adults, the three processes of sensing, selecting and perceiving are for all intents and purposes simultaneous. We are aware only of the total process of seeing objects, and not of the subsidiary processes which culminate in seeing. It is possible, by inhibiting the activity of the interpreting mind, to catch a hint of the raw sensum, as it presents itself to the eyes of the new-born child. But such hints are very imperfect at the best, and of brief duration.”

Aldous Huxley, The Art of Seeing 1943, p.11