“The acts of the mind, wherein it exerts its power over simple ideas, are principally these three: 1. Combining several simple ideas into one compound one, and thus all complex ideas are made. 2. The second is bringing two ideas, whether simple or complex, together and setting them by one another so as to take a view of them at once, without uniting them into one, by which way it gets all its ideas of relations. 3. The third is separating them from all other ideas that accompany them in their real existence. This is called abstraction and thus all its general ideas are made.”
— John Locke
Simplified Meaning:
Our brain can do three important things with thoughts. First, it can take different simple thoughts and put them together to create a new, more complicated thought, like how combining eggs, flour, and sugar makes a cake. Second, it can compare two thoughts side by side without mixing them, like comparing two different cars to see which one is better. Finally, it can focus on one thought and ignore everything else around it, like thinking about just the color of a leaf without caring about the tree it's on. These abilities help us understand and create new ideas. For example, when inventing something new, we combine different pieces of knowledge, compare our options, and focus on the important details, leading to innovation and problem-solving.
