Perception

(from L. perceptio, from percipere, to grasp). Action and effect of apprehending a phenomenon through the senses, whether through the external senses or senses of the intrabody. The external senses comprise the senses of sight, hearing, taste, smell, and the external tactile sense; the internal senses are comprised of cenesthesia, kinesthesia, and the internal tactile sense. Atomistic psychology has sought to decompose perceptions into sensations and to view the consciousness as nothing more than the passive recipient of stimuli originating in the external world. Today, Humanist psychology (*) considers p. to be a dynamic structure of sensations in which the consciousness actively organizes the data received through the pathways of the senses. Humanist psychology distinguishes between p. of landscapes (*landscape) and simple perceptions. In every p. the phenomena of attitude, evaluation and preferences concerning a given stimulus are always present. This lets us view the p. of landscapes as interactive, moving beyond an exclusive attention to the cognitive and the experimental. In the social psychology of N.H. the concept of “landscape” allows the development and application of a method yielding a rich knowledge of different cultures and their modes of perceiving the world.