I'm currently relearning Taylor series and yersterday I thought about something that left me puzzled. As far as I understand, whenever you take the Taylor series of any function $f(x)$ around a point $x = a$, the function is exactly equal to its Taylor series, that is:
$$ f(x) = \sum_{n=0}^{\infty} \frac{f^{(n)}(a)}{n!}(x-a)^n $$
For example, if we take $f(x) = e^x$ and $x = 0$, we obtain: $ e^x = \sum_{n=0}^{\infty} \frac{x^n}{n!} $
My doubt is: the only variables in the Tayor series formula are $f(a), f'(a), f''(a),$ etc., that is, the successive derivatives of the function $f$ evaluated in one point $x = a$. But the Taylor series of $f(x)$ determine the whole function! How is it possible that the successive derivatives of the function evaluated in a single point determine the whole function? Does this mean that if we know the values of $f^{(n)}(a)$, then $f$ is uniquely determined? Is there an intuition as to why the succesive derivatives of $f$ on a single point encode the necessary information to determine $f$ uniquely?
Maybe I'm missing a key insight and all my reasoning is wrong, if so please tell where is my mistake.
Thanks!