RT Journal
A1 Hoke B
T1 BIshop berkeley and the corporeal world
JF JAMA
JO JAMA
YR 1969
FD December 1
VO 210
IS 9
SP 1765
OP 1765
DO 10.1001/jama.1969.03160350077026
UL http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jama.1969.03160350077026
AB To the Editor:— 
    It was a pleasure to see George Berkeley quoted in Dr. L. I. Gardner's letter, (209:1528, 1969) because some of Berkeley's ideas are still relevant. Turbayne has pointed out that Berkeley's theory of vision was much more than that. It was also a metaphor for explaining how we exist in the world.1 In contrast to Cartesian mechanism, Berkeley clearly regarded natural phenomena as a language or discourse to be studied and interpreted. For him, what Dr. Gardner called a "more sophisticated perception of the world" would be a more sophisticated interpretation because the world existed as a visual language needing interpretation rather than as a picture to be perceived.Sense data act as "signs by means whereof things not actually perceived by sense are signified or suggested to the imagination which alone perceives them. All signs suggest the things signified. A great number of arbitrary signs,