EN
This paper is an attempt to outline an influential manner of thinking about the human mind and knowing, a scheme Karl Popper called the “bucket theory of mind”. This scheme is an immanent part not only of almost every scientific theory in epistemology, logic, neurobiology, cognitive science, psychology, and computer science, but also of many cultural stereotypes concerning man and the soul. The paper consists of four major parts: (1) the historical origin, which I locate in the Cartesian idea of mind, popularized by John Locke, (2) a systematization of the bucket theory of mind with an enumeration of the major arguments, (3) a criticism, analysis, and conclusion, and (4) an indication of the general philosophical inspirations the theory: the 17th-century fascination with geometry, the attempt to use Newtonian geometrical language in the human sciences, and indirectly, but more fundamentally, nominalism in perceiving man, the soul, and the mind.