We are always dominated by the indirect and the immediate. We exist between our consciousness, thinking, perception and communication with the outside world …
Definition
The word "mediate" is a verb that denotes the execution of an action not directly, but through an intermediary, obtaining a result by transferring a function from one object to another. Anything can appear to them: an object, an action, knowledge, a person, etc. An object receives a result without performing a direct action for this - indirectly.
The opposite meaning is directly. That is, you can find out what time it is (directly) by looking at the clock or (indirectly) by asking someone.
We obtain information about the environment through the skin (temperature, humidity, material characteristics, etc.), eyes (light, color, movement, etc.), ears (volume, vibration, etc.). But this perception itself is considered direct, because it gives us answers directly. He put his hand under a stream of water and determined, wet and cold, wiped with a towel - warm and dry, and the towel itself is soft and fluffy. The power of our vision is not enough to make out distant stars and planets - we take a telescope as a mediator and study them already indirectly.
Indirect knowledge
It is based precisely on the perception that we receive using our senses and receptors.
You can find out about the temperature of the water by touching it (directly) or by lowering a thermometer into it (indirectly). And we do not really need accurate knowledge of physical laws, obeying which a column of mercury rises or falls. Enough general ideas about this phenomenon.
So people learn about the composition of distant stars and planets, without using their substances for direct laboratory experiments. About the height of various objects without climbing them. We obtain this data through knowledge of the necessary laws, phenomena, facts. Our thinking allows us to mediate this knowledge for another object. That is, through the theory of planetary motion, we can find out the mass of Uranus without weighing it.
Indirect thinking
Life often poses before us such tasks that it is impossible to solve directly, directly. Being able to find the answer (to perform a certain algorithm of actions) in similar, but simpler situations, we can mediate this knowledge for situations that are not directly subject to us (as with planets).
When any law, tested and reliably proven on elementary objects, we apply for complex, abstract objects and get new knowledge, new results, our indirect thinking works.
We apply it when:
- working with an object directly is impossible due to the underdevelopment or lack of necessary reflexes, sensory organs, etc. (ultrasound, radiation);
- direct knowledge is possible, but not in real time (history, archeology);
- indirect knowledge, the study of objects is more rational (measuring the mass, volume, height of large objects).
