61 quotes found
"If everybody would agree that their current reality is a reality, and that what we essentially share is our capacity for constructing a reality, then perhaps we could all agree on a meta-agreement for computing a reality that would mean survival and dignity for everyone on the planet, rather than each group being sold on a particular way of doing things."
"There is a strong current in contemporary culture advocating ‘holistic’ views as some sort of cure-all... Reductionism implies attention to a lower level while holistic implies attention to higher level. These are intertwined in any satisfactory description: and each entails some loss relative to our cognitive preferences, as well as some gain... there is no whole system without an interconnection of its parts and there is no whole system without an environment."
"A diverse community is a resilient community, capable of adapting to changing situations. However, diversity is a strategic advantage only if there is a truly vibrant community, sustained by a web of relationships. If the community is fragmented into isolated groups and individuals, diversity can easily become a source of prejudice and friction. But if the community is aware of the interdependence of all its members, diversity will enrich all the relationships and thus enrich the community as a whole, as well as each individual member. In such a community information and ideas flow freely through the entire network, and the diversity of interpretations and learning styles-even the diversity of mistakes-will enrich the entire community."
"I’m a biologist who has been interested in the biological roots of cognitive phenomena"
"I hope I have seduced the reader to consider that we have in front of us the possibility of an open-ended quest for resonant passages between human experience and cognitive science. The price however is to take first-person accounts seriously as valid domain of phenomena. And beyond that, to build a sustained tradition of phenomenological examination that is almost entirely nonexistent today in our western science and culture at large."
"[T]he last 15 years have witnessed the ascent of an alternative view, that of embodied or enactive cognition. This new wave arose because the computationalist doctrine failed to account even for the most elementary coping with the world: walking, perceiving object in a natural setting, imagination. Slowly the cards turned into considering that the basis of mind is the body in coupled action, that is, the sensory-motor circuits establish the organism as viable in situated contexts. From this perspective the brain appears as a dynamical process (and not a syntactic one) of real time variables with a rich self-organizing capacity (and not a representational machinery). So in this sense the mind is not in the head since it is roots in the body as a whole and also in the extended environment where the organism finds itself."
"The emergence of a unified cognitive moment relies on the coordination of scattered mosaics of functionally specialized brain regions. Here we review the mechanisms of large-scale integration that counterbalance the distributed anatomical and functional organization of brain activity to enable the emergence of coherent behaviour and cognition. Although the mechanisms involved in large-scale integration are still largely unknown, we argue that the most plausible candidate is the formation of dynamic links mediated by synchrony over multiple frequency bands."
"It is actually by experience of our teleology – our wish to exist further on as a subject, not our imputation of purposes on objects – that teleology becomes a real rather than an intellectual principle... before being scientists we are first living beings, and as such we have the evidence of intrinsic teleology in us. And, in observing other creatures struggling to continue their existence – starting from simple bacteria that actively swim away from a chemical repellent – we can, by our own evidence, understand teleology as the governing force of the realm of the living. Theories about the living can only be conceived from the fragile and concerned perspective of the living itself."
"By autopoietic organization, Maturana and Varela meant the] processes interlaced in the specific form of a network of productions of components which realizing the network that produced them constitutes it as a unity."
"The relations that define a system as a unity, and determine the dynamics of interaction and transformations which it may undergo as such a unity constitute the organization of the machine."
"As Buddhist teachers often point out, knowledge, in the sense of prajña, is not knowledge about anything. There is no abstract knower of an experience that is separate from the experience itself."
"The cybernetics phase of cognitive science produced an amazing array of concrete results, in addition to its long-term (often underground) influence:"
"all our suffering is associated with this pre-occupation. All loss and gain, pleasure and pain arise because we identify so closely with this vague feeling of selfness that we have. We are so emotionally involved with and attached to this "self" that we take it for granted."
"[M]any people would accept that we do not really have knowledge of the world; we have knowledge only of our representations of the world. Yet we seem condemned by our constitution to treat these representations as if they were the world, for our everyday experience feels as if it were of a given and immediate world."
"The possibility for compassionate concern for others, which is present in all humans, is usually mixed with the sense of ego and so becomes confused with the need to satisfy one's own cravings for recognition and self-evaluation. The spontaneous compassion that arises when one is not caught in the habitual patterns - when one is not performing volitional actions out of karmic cause and effect - is not done with a sense of need for feedback from its recipient. It is the anxiety about feedback - the response of the other - that causes us tension and inhibition in our action. When action is done without the business-deal mentality, there can be relaxation. This is called supreme (or transcendental) generosity."
"I guess I've had only one question all my life. Why do emergent selves, virtual identities, pop up all over the place creating worlds, whether at the mind/body level, the cellular level, or the transorganism level? This phenomenon is something so productive that it doesn't cease creating entirely new realms: life, mind, and societies. Yet these emergent selves are based on processes so shifty, so ungrounded, that we have an apparent paradox between the solidity of what appears to show up and its groundlessness. That, to me, is a key and eternal question."
"I'm perhaps best known for three different kinds of work, which seem disparate to many people but to me run as a unified theme. These are my contributions in conceiving the notion of autopoiesis — self-production — for cellular organization, the enactive view of the nervous system and cognition, and a revising of current ideas about the immune system."
"I'm interested in establishing empirical correlations between a long-standing interest in Buddhist practice and scientific work."
"Buddhism is a practice, not a belief, and every Buddhist is, in some way, lay clergy — involved in the way a scientist is involved in his or her work, or in the way a writer's mind is involved in writing, present in the background, all the time."
"Francisco Varela is amazingly inventive, freewheeling, and creative. There's a lot of depth in what he and Humberto Maturana have said. Conversely, from the point of view of a tied-down molecular biologist, this is all airy-fairy, flaky stuff. Thus there's the mixed response. That part of me that's tough-minded and critical is questioning, but the other part of me has cottoned on to the recent stuff he's doing on self- representation in immune networks. I love it."
"Francisco, an experimental and theoretical biologist, studied what he termed "emergent selves" or "virtual identities." His was an immanent view of reality, based on metaphors derived from self-organization and Buddhist-inspired epistemology rather than on those derived from engineering and information science."
"The two photons are entangled and according to local realism, their polarization planes should become independent... a typical EPR situation. Already in 1948, observations... agreed with quantum mechanics, not with local realism."
"Regardless of the prophetic value of Dirac’s description [on interference] his was probably the first discussion... including a coherent beam of light. In other words, Dirac wrote the first chapter in laser optics."
"Feynman uses Dirac's notation to describe the quantum mechanics of stimulated emission... he applies that physics to... dye molecules... In this regard, Feynman could have predicted the existence of the tunable laser."
"The Dirac notation, though originally applied to the propagation of single particles, also applies to describing the propagation of ensembles of coherent, or indistinguishable, photons."
"All the indistinguishable photons illuminate the array of N slits, or grating, simultaneously. If only one photon propagates, at any given time, then that individual photon illuminates the whole array of N slits simultaneously."
"The intimate relation between interference and diffraction has its origin in the interference equation itself."
"Multiple-prism arrays were first introduced by Newton (1704) in his book Opticks. In that visionary volume Newton reported on arrays of nearly isosceles prisms in additive and compensating configurations to control the propagation path and the dispersion of light. Further, he also illustrated slight beam expansion in a single isosceles prism."
"The longer the cavity and the narrower the beam waist, the better the beam quality of the laser emission, or |\langle x | s \rangle|^2\ = \sum_{j=1}^\N\,\Psi(r_j)^2\ +2 \sum_{j=1}^\N\,\Psi(r_j)\bigg(\sum_{m=j+1}^\N\,\Psi(r_m)cos(\Omega_m-\Omega_j)\bigg)"
"Personally, I find the concept of a "final theory," or a "theory of everything," rather limiting. The fun of discovery will most likely last as long as the human race continues."
"The EPR claim of an "all values" spread in the coordinate depends on an idealized absolute and exact measurement of p with \Delta p\ = 0. Since this is physically impossible, the claim of "no physical reality" can be negated."
"The most efficient and practical interpretation of quantum mechanics is... no interpretation at all."
"As noted previously Bell's theorem is completely disconnected from the physics leading to |\psi\rangle_+, |\psi\rangle_-, |\psi\rangle^+, and |\psi\rangle^- ."
"From an interferometric perspective, there are no mysteries... and no paradoxes... in the physics of quantum entanglement."
"One of Ward's few close friends at Macquarie is... Frank Duarte... the two make an odd couple - the restrained rather distant Englishman and the intense, earnest South American."
"Ward was vocal in his denunciation of the trivia that filled up Senate agendas… suitably then, it was a close student associate of Ward’s, physics Ph. D. student Frank Duarte, who began to mobilize student opinion in favor of a change."
"The sciences revolted under the guidance of several student activists, Frank Duarte in particular... we were fortunate that Duarte somehow established close links to the Federal Government, which was now the source of all funds."
"In 1994, Duarte first reported on solid-state dye laser oscillators."
"After some algebra, a successive formula can be derived from Duarte's original equation."
"Another connection with Newton's pioneering work on spectra has been found by Duarte in modern quantum optics."
"«There are many ways to practice and make art. There are also various ways to express, such as comedy, sculpture, music, painting etc. Dimensions can be immense even in such small spaces as the head of a pin»."
"«Silence is the space that has yet to be resolved where the dynamics of thinking and deciding»."
""Cruz Vargas keeps his flat and surreal poetic style, characterized by simple language instrumentalized to sublime the love, the life and the nature"."
""A child who does not renounce dreaming, the same as living with the adult life struggling to pieces and holds them with claws that poetry is capable of to find the magnitude of resources”."
"(On Michael Weatherly)"Michael and I clicked immediately. We sort of hated each other immediately, and loved each other immediately. I walked into the audition and he thought, Ohmygod, she’s gonna be so hard to work with. She’s so complicated. And I thought, This guy’s so incredibly unprofessional. During the audition, he grabbed my hair. He would not follow the lines. He totally went off script and started improvising, and this was my final audition with the heads of CBS. I thought, This guy is sabotaging my audition. So immediately I went, Oh, I’m gonna show this guy. I’m gonna show him. So he tried touching me, and I literally like [mimes slapping his hand away]. That relationship was established the moment that we met. Nothing changed, it was just enhanced. And we loved each other as well. We realized we’re so drastically different and so much alike that there was an immediate attraction.""
"Whoever he is (that wins the presidential election) should never forget that he is going to be the president of all Chileans, not just of those who supported him."
"I met President Piñera several years ago. He always had a positive attitude towards Uruguay and me personally. As an example ... his support with the logistics offered for the arrival of vaccines during the (COVID-19) pandemic."
"There was a strange aftertaste to many of the calls for grand social reform in 2020. As the coronavirus crisis overtook us, the left wing on both sides of the Atlantic, at least that part that had been fired up Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders, was going down to defeat. The promise of a radicalized and reenergized left, organized around the idea of the Green New Deal, seemed to dissipate amidst the pandemic. It fell to governments mainly of the center and the right to meet the crisis. They were a strange assortment. Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Donald Trump in the United States experimented with denial. For them climate skepticism and virus skepticism went hand in hand. In Mexico, the notionally left-wing government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador also pursued a maverick path, refusing to take drastic action. Nationalist strongmen like Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Narendra Modi in India, Vladimir Putin in Russia, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey did not deny the virus, but relied on their patriotic appeal and bullying tactics to see them through. It was the managerial centrist types who were under most pressure. Figures like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer in the United States, or Sebastián Piñera in Chile, or Cyril Ramaphosa in South Africa, Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel, Ursula von der Leyen, and their ilk in Europe. They accepted the science. Denial was not an option. They were desperate to demonstrate that they were better than the 'populists.' To meet the crisis, very middle-of-the-road politicians ended up doing very radical things. Most of it was improvisation and compromise, but insofar as they managed to put a programmatic gloss on their responses—whether in the form of the EU's Next Generation program or Biden's Build Back Better program in 2020—it came from the repertoire of green modernization, sustainable development, and the Green New Deal."
"The Instrumentum Laboris invites to increase the ecumenical awareness of the faithful (No.42). Let's welcome the call. However, we must clearly aim at the problems which appear in this task, not so much on behalf of the historical reformed churches as much as the "evangelical" groups which are rapidly increasing in many countries of Latin America. It is necessary to consider the causes of this growth, recognizing wherever necessary one's own shortcomings."
"We do not content ourselves with resolutely insisting on the preferential love of Jesus Christ for those who do not have material means. If we wish to promote holiness, also we must openly present his option for the poor of Yahweh. It is necessary to recuperate the option that led Him to choose Mary, Peter, Matthew, and so many others in order to build up his Church."
"Before a culture such as the present one with vast areas where God is absent and where God is ignored, we Pastors must be an encouraging voice full of hope in order to change this way into reality. Even if the Holy Spirit continues to offer us examples of holiness in the different organizations of the Church, however, it is necessary to have a broader movement, under the guidance of pastors, constant and globalizing, which invites everybody to be holy as an urgent issue of our times."
"My proposal is that, given the close theological, spiritual and pastoral relationship between the Eucharist and the Sacrament of Penance, and taking into account the shadows in the latter sacrament's field, a year be dedicated to the Sacrament of Penance."
"See others with the eyes of disciples and missionaries of Jesus Christ."
"A political dinner is what I am paid for. A wine dinner is gratis—it is for enjoying life."
"We must live Christ's Love not only at home but in all our relations with everyone. Not all our young people are victims of alcohol and drugs. You are part of a thousand young people presently giving up part of their holiday time to share with others what they are and what they have."
"Strive for new missionary zeal with courage and to strive for holiness. As we journey towards the Great Diocesan Mission, every community must become a powerful centre of radiant of life in Christ."
"Men have to share with us the family roles and we women have to share with them the public role in society and of course, in the Church."
"Something which is not human is neither democratic, nor civil."
"The democratic political system owes its legitimacy to the capacity to guarantee and respect human rights in the best of fashions. That was the lesson of Chile. We have reappraised democracy because of what we have lived through as regards human rights. When we speak about human rights, the ethical basis of democracy is at stake."
"There is need for creativity and boldness. Photography is also a means to communicate the existence and the presence of God who gave us wonderful places to contemplate his work. If properly used, technology is a great tool. My intent is to put the work in the service of evangelization that the Church has entrusted to me in Concepcion."
"Theology and our own pastoral experience teach that the place of the saints is not "optative" in Christian life they reveal the concrete character of revelation; especially those closest to us in time and culture renew the revelation of God in history, giving flesh and blood to the Gospel."