To mediate is Definition, usage, examples

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:55

We are always dominated by the indirect and direct. We exist between our consciousness, thinking, perception and communication with the outside world…

Definition

The word "mediate" is a verb that denotes the performance of an action not directly, but through an intermediary, obtaining a result by transferring a function from one object to another. Anything can act as it: an object, an action, knowledge, a person, etc. The object receives the result without performing a direct action for this - indirectly.

An opposite concept in meaning - directly. That is, you can find out what time it is (directly) by looking at the clock or (indirectly) asking someone.

We receive information about the environment through the skin (temperature, humidity, material characteristics, etc.), eyes (light, color, movement, etc.), ears (volume, vibrations, etc.).). But this perception itself is considered immediate, because it gives us answers directly. He put his hand under a stream of water and determined whether it was wet and cold, wiped it with a towel - warm and dry, and the towel itself was soft and fluffy. Our vision is not strong enough to seedistant stars and planets - we take a telescope as intermediaries and study them indirectly.

Mediated cognition

It is based precisely on the perception that we receive using the senses and receptors.

You can find out about the temperature of water by touching it (directly) or by lowering a thermometer into it (indirectly). And we do not need at all the exact knowledge of the physical laws, in obedience to which the column of mercury rises or falls. Enough general ideas about this phenomenon.

This is how 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 these data thanks to the 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.

Mediated thinking

Life often sets us tasks that cannot be solved directly, directly. Knowing how to find the answer (perform a certain algorithm of actions) in similar, but simpler situations, we can mediate this knowledge for situations that are not directly under our control (as with the planets).

When any law, verified and reliably proven on elementary objects, we apply to complex, abstract objects and get new knowledge, new results, our mediated thinking works.

We apply it when:

• working with the object directly is impossible due to underdevelopment or lack of necessary reflexes, sense organs, etc. (ultrasound, radiation);
• direct knowledge is possible, but not in real time (history, archeology);
• mediated cognition, the study of objects is more rational (measurement of mass, volume, height of large objects).

Mediated communication

This is a very common modern concept. Direct communication involves a dialogue "eye to eye", when the speaker immediately sees, feels the reaction to what was said. A conversation at a cafe table is face-to-face communication.

Everything that comes between the interlocutors makes communication indirect. The mute communicate information to each other through gestures. Most people today communicate through phone, email, video calls, etc.

In this context, to mediate is to convey some information using some means of communication (walkie-talkie, letters, gestures).

Direct communication is the main one, facial expressions, gestures, mutual arrangement of partners, touch are important in it - all this helps to convey information to the interlocutor without expressing them (mood, interest, irritation).

Mediated communication has few such opportunities, everything needs to be said.