“All men by nature desire to know – – this is indicated by the pleasure we take in our senses. This pleasure is independent of their utility: we delight in them for their own sake and particularly in the case of sight…. Sense represents the first stage. Next comes memory in the case of the animals which have it. In man memory leads up to experience; many memories of the same thing occurring come in the end to have the force of a single experience.”
—Aristotle, first chapter of Book A of the Metaphysics, as quoted by Thomas Heath in his book Mathematics in Aristotle.