2328 quotes found
"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence..."
"Matters of fact, which as Mr Budgell somewhere observes, are very stubborn things."
"But facts are chiels that winna ding, and downa be disputed."
"If any theories or opinions of mine can be damaged by facts, so much the worse for my theories."
"What could I do! Facts are such horrid things!"
"I should have more faith," he said; "I ought to know by this time that when a fact appears opposed to a long train of deductions it invariably proves to be capable of bearing some other interpretation."
"It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts."
"After all, facts are facts, and although we may quote one to another with a chuckle the words of the Wise Statesman, "Lies — damned lies — and statistics," still there are some easy figures the simplest must understand, and the astutest cannot wriggle out of. So we may be led to the serious consideration of change by the evolution of materials of conviction which those who run may read, though some who read may wish to run away from them."
"[I]t is quite certain that only through the equal presence to successive feeling of a subject other than they, which holds them together, and thus held together regards them as its object, are there related things or relations at all. It is not that first there are relations then they are conceived. Every relation is constituted by an act of conception. This is not to be understood as meaning that there is 'nothing but the soul and its feelings,' or that realities are feelings, even feelings as determined by thought. It is through feeling as determined by thought that for us there comes to be reality, but the reality is not to be identified with the process by which we, as thinking animals, arrive at it. Even simple facts of feeling (e.g. the fact that a certain sweet smell accompanies the sight of a rose) are not feelings as felt: more clearly, the conditions of such facts are not feelings, even as determined by thought. A 'feeling determined by thought' would probably mean a feeling which but for thought I should not have, e.g. emotion at the spectacle of a tragedy. Objective facts are not of this sort, not feelings determined by thought, though but for the determination of feeling by thought they would not exist for our consciousness."
"Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing."
"The fatal futility of Fact."
"Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact."
"Talk to him of Jacob's ladder, and he would ask him the number of steps."
"The fact disclosed by a survey of the past that majorities have usually been wrong, must not blind us to the complementary fact that majorities have usually not been entirely wrong."
"Fiction is fact distilled into truth."
"I often wish … that I could rid the world of the tyranny of facts. What are facts but compromises? A fact merely marks the point where we have agreed to let investigation cease."
"Facts were never pleasing to him. He acquired them with reluctance and got rid of them with relief. He was never on terms with them until he had stood them on their heads."
"Never assume that any fact is useless until it is so proven."
"We sometimes speak of stubborn facts. Nonsense! A fact is a mere babe when compared with a stubborn theory."
"There is no one fact in the physical world which has a greater impact on the way things are, than the Pauli exclusion principle."
"The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts, but the training of the mind to think."
"I think that only daring speculation can lead us further and not accumulation of facts."
"I despaired of the possibility of discovering the true laws by means of constructive efforts based on known facts. The longer and the more despairingly I tried, the more I came to the conviction that only the discovery of a universal formal principle could lead us to assured results."
"Facts are constituted by older ideologies, and a clash between facts and theories may be proof of progress."
"Not only are facts and theories in constant disharmony, they are never as neatly separated as everyone makes them out to be."
"Scientific "facts" are taught at a very early age and in the very same manner in which religious "facts" were taught only a century ago. There is no attempt to waken the critical abilities of the pupil so that he may be able to see things in perspective. At the universities the situation is even worse, for indoctrination is here carried out in a much more systematic manner. Criticism is not entirely absent. Society, for example, and its institutions, are criticised most severely and often most unfairly... But science is excepted from the criticism. In society at large the judgment of the scientist is received with the same reverence as the judgement of bishops and cardinals was accepted not too long ago. The move towards "demythologization," for example, is largely motivated by the wish to avoid any clash between Christianity and scientific ideas. If such a clash occurs, then science is certainly right and Christianity wrong. Pursue this investigation further and you will see that science has now become as oppressive as the ideologies it had once to fight. Do not be misled by the fact that today hardly anyone gets killed for joining a scientific heresy. This has nothing to do with science. It has something to do with the general quality of our civilization. Heretics in science are still made to suffer from the most severe sanctions this relatively tolerant civilization has to offer."
"Results from a given approach are "facts" as long as the approach fits the group or the tradition that is being addressed"
"Knowledge is a collection of facts. Wisdom is the use of knowledge. Without facts there is no knowledge. Without knowledge there is no wisdom. Facts prevent what nothing can cure. Facts are Man's best defense mechanism. Without them men fumble, falter and fail. Without them nations decline and fall. Wisdom wins wars before they start. Knowledge aborts national hostilities. Wisdom obviates racial antipathies. Knowledge effaces religious animosities. Emancipation from bigotry prefaces peace. Intolerance takes all and gives nothing. Peace rewards reciprocal respect and regard. To all Men of Good Will, "Pax Vobiscum!""
"The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows."
"Facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away while scientists debate rival theories for explaining them."
"The facts of nature are what they are, but we can only view them through the spectacles of our mind."
"The power of administrative bodies to make finding of fact which may be treated as conclusive, if there is evidence both ways, is a power of enormous consequence. An unscrupulous administrator might be tempted to say "Let me find the facts for the people of my country, and I care little who lays down the general principles.""
"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."
"Where theory lags behind the facts, we are dealing with miserable degenerating research programmes.""
"The subversive character of truth inflicts upon thought an imperative quality. Logic centers on judgments which are, as demonstrative propositions, imperatives, — the predicative “is” implies an “ought.” … Verification of the proposition involves a process in fact as well as in thought: (S) must become that which it is. The categorical statement thus turns into a categorical imperative; it does not state a fact but the necessity to bring about a fact. For example, it could be read as follows: man is not (in fact) free, endowed with inalienable rights, etc., but he ought to be."
"Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour, Rains from the sky a meteoric shower Of facts . . . they lie unquestioned, uncombined. Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill..."
"You had to know the facts if you were ever going to find the solutions."
"Facts have a cruel way of substituting themselves for fancies. There is nothing more remorseless, just as there is nothing more helpful, than truth."
"Obviously the facts are never just coming at you but are incorporated by an imagination that is formed by your previous experience. Memories of the past are not memories of facts but memories of your imaginings of the facts."
"Historical facts, many of them, have an intrinsic value, a profound interest on their own account, which makes them worthy of study, quite apart from any possibility of linking them together by means of causal laws."
"We are driven back to correspondence with fact as constituting the nature of truth. It remains to define precisely what we mean by 'fact', and what is the nature of the correspondence which must subsist between belief and fact, in order that belief may be true."
"A hallucination is a fact, not an error; what is erroneous is a judgment based upon it."
"Facts have to be discovered by observation, not by reasoning."
"When you are studying any matter, or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only: What are the facts, and what is the truth that the facts bear out. Never let yourself be diverted, either by what you wish to believe, or what you think could have beneficent social effects if it were believed; but look only and solely at what are the facts."
"A myth is, of course, not a fairy story. It is the presentation of facts belonging to one category in the idioms appropriate to another. To explode a myth is accordingly not to deny the facts but to re-allocate them."
"Facts do not "speak for themselves." They speak for or against competing theories. Facts divorced from theory or visions are mere isolated curiosities."
"Insufficient facts always invite danger."
"It is a confusion to present the items of one sort in the idioms of another -- without awareness. For to do this is not just to cross two different sorts; it is to confuse them. It is to mistake, for example, the theory for the fact, the for the , the myth for history, the model for the thing and the metaphor for the face of literal truth."
"The hard facts are extraordinary, without adding superstitious mumbo-jumbo."
"There is nothing in the real world which is merely an inert fact. Every reality is there for feeling: it promotes feeling; and it is felt."
"1 The world is all that is the case. 1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things. 1.11 The world is determined by the facts, and by their being all the facts. 1.12 For the totality of facts determines what is the case, and also whatever is not the case. 1.13 The facts in logical space are the world. 1.2 The world divides into facts. 1.21 Each item can be the case or not the case while everything else remains the same."
"We can define a fact as an observation backed up by such a preponderance of evidence that no useful purpose would be served by doubting it."
"People make a grievous error thinking that a list of facts is the truth. Facts are just the bare bones out of which truth is made."
"The educated don't get that way by memorizing facts; they get that way by respecting them."
"Facts interest me less than the trailing smoke of stories."
"Every moment age is creeping up stealthily, but life, life is melting down like a candle that is flickering around."
"Life is withering away like a candle that is melting down."
"I have no need for the boundless sky; the moon and stars are beyond my grasp. I prefer to exist in the real world, for dreams alone cannot sustain me."
"Facts don't care about your feelings."
"One assault on the world of facts was launched some time ago from the direction of the theory of knowledge. This campaign was primarily waged by those who aimed to discredit the empiricist belief that our world consists of sense data capable of being directly perceived and uncontentiously described. It would not be too much to say that by now this particular dogma of empiricism has fallen into very general disrepute. Scarcely anyone nowadays believes in the possibility of building up structures of factual knowledge on foundations purporting to be wholly independent of our judgements."
"Besides being assailed by epistemologists, the world of facts has been undermined in recent times by developments within the theory of meaning. The cardinal assumption of positivistic philosophies of language was that all meaningful statements must refer to facts, and thus that the meanings of sentences must be given by the method of verifying the assertions contained in them."
"All men suppose what is called Wisdom to deal with the first causes and the principles of things; so that, as has been said before, the man of experience is thought to be wiser than the possessors of any sense-perception whatever, the artist wiser than the men of experience, the masterworker than the mechanic, and the theoretical kinds of knowledge to be more of the nature of Wisdom than the productive."
"Practical life is not necessarily directed toward other people, as some think; and it is not the case that practical thoughts are only those which result from action for the sake of what ensues. On the contrary, much more practical are those mental activities and reflections which have their goal in themselves and take place for their own sake."
"Never call yourself a philosopher, nor talk a great deal among the unlearned about theorems, but act conformably to them."
"A light was kindled amongst the investigators of nature when Galilei let balls of a definite weight roll down the inclined plane. For they saw that they only understand what is produced according to a predetermined plan or hypothesis... for otherwise planless observations made according to no ideas could never be brought into the form of a law which reason demands and seeks. ...Thus physics was brought into the position of a certain science after groping about blindly for so many hundred years."
"Theory is in itself of no use, except in so far as it makes us believe in the connection of phenomena."
"Theories usually result from the precipitate reasoning of an impatient mind which would like to be rid of phenomena and replace them with images, concepts, indeed often with mere words."
"All competent thinkers agree with Bacon that there can be no real knowledge except that which rests upon observed facts. This fundamental maxim is evidently indisputable if it is applied, as it ought to be, to the mature state of our intelligence. But, if we consider the origin of our knowledge, it is no less certain that the primitive human mind could not, and indeed ought not to, have thought in that way. For if, on the one hand, every Positive theory must necessarily be founded upon observations, it is, on the other hand, no less true that, in order to observe, our mind has need of some theory or other. If in contemplating phenomena we did not immediately connect them with principles, not only would it be impossible for us to combine these isolated observations, and therefore to derive profit from them, but we should even be entirely incapable of remembering facts, which would for the most remain unnoted by us. Thus there were two difficulties be overcome: the human mind had to observe in order to form real theories, and yet had to form theories of some sort before it could apply itself to a connected series of observations. The primitive human mind, therefore, found itself involved in a vicious circle, from which it would never have had any means of escaping, if a natural way of the difficulty had not fortunately found by the spontaneous development of Theological conceptions. ...chimerical hopes ..exaggerated ideas of man's importance in the universe to which the Theological Philosophy ...at the commencement, ...afforded an indispensable stimulus without the aid which we cannot, indeed, conceive how the primitive human mind would have been induced to undertake any arduous labours."
"It is clear that the arm of criticism cannot replace the criticism of arms. Material force can only be overthrown by material force, but theory itself becomes a material force when it has seized the masses. Theory is capable of seizing the masses when it demonstrates ad hominem, and it demonstrates ad hominem as soon as it becomes radical. To be radical is to grasp things by the root. But for man the root is man himself. What proves beyond doubt the radicalism of German theory, and thus its practical energy, is that it begins from the resolute positive abolition of religion. The criticism of religion ends with the doctrine that man is the supreme being for man. It ends, therefore, with the categorical imperative to overthrow all those conditions in which man is an abased, enslaved, abandoned, contemptible being—conditions which can hardly be better described than in the exclamation of a Frenchman on the occasion of a proposed tax upon dogs: 'Wretched dogs! They want to treat you like men!'"
"About thirty years ago there was much talk that geologists ought only to observe and not theorise; and I well remember some one saying that at this rate a man might as well go into a gravel-pit and count the pebbles and describe the colours. How odd it is that anyone should not see that all observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service!"
"Philosophical theories or ideas, as points of view, instruments of criticism, may help us to gather up what might otherwise pass unregarded by us. “Philosophy is the microscope of thought.” The theory or idea or system which requires of us the sacrifice of any part of this experience, in consideration of some interest into which we cannot enter, or some abstract theory we have not identified with ourselves, or what is only conventional, has no real claim upon us."
"Their ideas seemed to him fruitful when he was reading or was himself seeking arguments to refute other theories, especially those of the materialists; but as soon as he began to read or sought for himself a solution of problems, the same thing always happened. As long as he followed the fixed definition of obscure words such as spirit, will, freedom, essence, purposely letting himself go into the snare of words the philosophers set for him, he seemed to comprehend something. But he had only to forget the artificial train of reasoning, and to turn from life itself to what had satisfied him while thinking in accordance with the fixed definitions, and all this artificial edifice fell to pieces at once like a house of cards, and it became clear that the edifice had been built up out of those transposed words, apart from anything in life."
"And don't all the theories of philosophy do the same, trying by the path of thought, which is strange and not natural to man, to bring him to a knowledge of what he has known long ago, and knows so certainly that he could not live at all without it? Isn't it distinctly to be seen in the development of each philosopher's theory, that he knows what is the chief significance of life beforehand, just as positively as the peasant Fyodor, and not a bit more clearly than he, and is simply trying by a dubious intellectual path to come back to what everyone knows?"
"It is a condition which confronts us — not a theory."
"During all those years of experimentation and research, I never once made a discovery. All my work was deductive, and the results I achieved were those of invention, pure and simple. I would construct a theory and work on its lines until I found it was untenable. Then it would be discarded at once and another theory evolved. This was the only possible way for me to work out the problem. … I speak without exaggeration when I say that I have constructed 3,000 different theories in connection with the electric light, each one of them reasonable and apparently likely to be true. Yet only in two cases did my experiments prove the truth of my theory. My chief difficulty was in constructing the carbon filament. . . . Every quarter of the globe was ransacked by my agents, and all sorts of the queerest materials used, until finally the shred of bamboo, now utilized by us, was settled upon."
"[T]he studies preliminary to the construction of a great theory should be at least as deliberate and thorough as those that are preliminary to the building of a dwelling-house."
"[W]ith regard to light, that it consists of vibrations was almost proved by the phenomena of diffraction, while those of polarisation showed the excursions of the particles to be perpendicular to the line of propogation; but the phenomena of dispersion, etc., require additional hypotheses which may be very complicated. Thus, the further progress of molecular speculation appears quite uncertain. If hypotheses are to be tried haphazard, or simply because they will suit certain phenomena, it will occupy the mathematical physicists of the world say half a century on the average to bring each theory to the test, and since the number of possible theories may go up into the trillion, only one of which can be true, we have little prospect of making further solid additions to the subject in our time."
"Theory alone is of no value. Practical application of the theory is the test."
"In conclusion, a word about your tired expression that there is a difference between theory and praxis. ... Thereby you want to say that praxis should be an unencumbered as possible by theory. Coming from you, this wish is quite intelligible. What you mean by praxis is private profit; what I mean by theory is justice."
"There is no great harm in the theorist who makes up a new theory to fit a new event. But the theorist who starts with a false theory and then sees everything as making it come true is the most dangerous enemy of human reason."
"Things and events explain themselves, and the business of thought is to brush aside the verbal and conceptual impediments which prevent them from doing so. Start with the notion that it is you who explain the Object, and not the Object that explains itself, and you are bound to end in explaining it away. It ceases to exist, its place being taken by a parcel of concepts, a string of symbols, a form of words, and you find yourself contemplating, not the thing, but your theory of the thing."
"Der theoretisch arbeitende Naturforscher ist nicht zu beneiden denn die Nature oder genauer gesagt: das Experiment, ist eine unerbittliche und wenig freundliche Richterin seiner Arbeit. (Theorists in science are unenviable because nature — or, more precisely, experiment — is a relentless and unfriendly judge of their theories.)"
"I firmly believe people have hitherto been a great deal too much taken up about doctrine and far too little about practice. The word doctrine, as used in the Bible, means teaching of duty, not theory. I preached a sermon about this. We are far too anxious to be definite and to have finished, well-polished, sharp-edged systems — forgetting that the more perfect a theory about the infinite, the surer it is to be wrong, the more impossible it is to be right."
"The successful development of science requires a proper balance between the method of building up from observations and the method of deducing by pure reasoning from speculative assumptions..."
"When an active individual of sound common sense perceives the sordid state of the world, desire to change it becomes the guiding principle by which he organizes given facts and shapes them into a theory. The methods and categories as well as the transformation of the theory can be understood only in connection with his taking of sides. This, in turn, discloses both his sound common sense and the character of the world. Right thinking depends as much on right willing as right willing on right thinking."
"Conservatives feel instinctively that it is new ideas more than anything else that cause change. But, from its point of view rightly, conservatism fears new ideas because it has no distinctive principles of its own to oppose them; and, by its distrust of theory and its lack of imagination concerning anything except that which experience has already proved, it deprives itself of the weapons needed in the struggle of ideas. Unlike liberalism, with its fundamental belief in the long-range power of ideas, conservatism is bound by the stock of ideas inherited at a given time. And since it does not really believe in the power of argument, its last resort is generally a claim to superior wisdom, based on some self-arrogated superior quality."
"A theory is the more impressive the greater the simplicity of its premises is, the more different kinds of things it relates, and the more extended its area of applicability."
"The final test of a theory is its capacity to solve the problems which originated it."
"Knowing the theory of anything is contrasted with know-how in all the arts...Beethoven..Michelangelo..Shakespeare, all great exponents of know-how, probably knew how to manipulate their instruments to achieve the desired results long before they knew the theory of their art. Perhaps some of them never bothered to learn the theory. On the other hand, there are many who know the theory better than these, but who lack know-how....Although we acquire the skill of understanding words by experience, so that we know the correlations between them and things, between words and other words, and between words and feelings and actions, we do not do it by inductive reasoning. Nor must we think that we do it by deductive reasoning... In the main, words are cues rather than clues."
"A theory (though it may guide us in reaching them) does not produce the treasures the world holds. And the treasures themselves occasionally dazzle our attention; for we are not so wealthy that we may regard them as irrelevant. But a theory is more. It is an ordering of experience that both makes experience meaningful and is a pleasure to regard in its own right."
"There may thus well exist better "scientific" evidence for a false theory, which will be accepted because it is more "scientific", than for a valid explanation, which is rejected because there is no sufficient quantitative evidence for it."
"No single theory ever agrees with all the facts in its domain."
"How can we possibly test, or improve upon the truth of a theory if it is built in such a manner then any conceivable event can be described, and explained, in terms of its principles? The only way of investigating such all-embracing principles would be to compare them with a different set of equally all embracing principles- but this procedure has been excluded from the very beginning."
"Experience arises together with theoretical assumptions not before them, and an experience without theory is just as incomprehensible as is (allegedly) a theory without experience."
"I learned about renormalization theory as a graduate student, mostly by reading Dyson’s papers. ... From the beginning it seemed to me to be a wonderful thing that very few quantum field theories are renormalizable. Limitations of this sort are, after all, what we most want, not mathematical methods which can make sense of an infinite variety of physically irrelevant theories, but methods which carry constraints, because these constraints may point the way toward the one true theory."
"When a theory is transformed into an ideology, it begins to destroy the self and self-knowledge. Originally born of feeling, it pretends to float above and around feeling. Above sensation. It organizes experience according to itself, without touching experience. By virtue of being itself, it is supposed to know. To invoke the name of this ideology is to confer truthfulness. No one can tell it anything new. Experience ceases to surprise it, inform it, transform it. It is annoyed by any detail which does not fit into its world view. Begun as a cry against the denial of truth, now it denies any truth which does not fit into its scheme. Begun as a way to restore one's sense of reality, now it attempts to discipline real people, to remake natural beings after its own image. All that it fails to explain it records as its enemy. Begun as a theory of liberation, it is threatened by new theories of liberation; it builds a prison for the mind."
"Quantum mechanics is not itself a dynamical theory. It is an empty stage. You have to add the actors: You have to specify the space of configurations, an infinite-dimensional complex space, and the dynamical rules for how the state vector rotates in this space as time passes."
"Theory no longer is theoretical when it loses sight of its own conditional nature, takes no risk in speculation, and circulates as a form of administrative inquisition. Theory oppresses, when it wills or perpetuates existing power relations, when it presents itself as a means to exert authority—the Voice of Knowledge."
"... plays the same foundation-stone role in monetary theory that Einstein's E = mc2 does in physics."
"Great theories are expansive; failures mire us in dogmatism and tunnel vision."
"It has been said, and wisely said, that every successful physical theory swallows its predecessors whole."
"[T]wo aspects of this older positivist view... lack validity and impede understanding: ...the notion of a timeless based on rigorously objective observation and logic, and ...that earlier systems were either theory-free or theory-poor because explanation can only follow accurate description. Theory-free science makes about as much sense as value-free politics. Both... are oxymoronic. All thinking about the natural world must be informed by theory... The old... theories may have been wrong, but they were as persuasive (and restrictive) in the structuring of knowledge as any more accurate and later system... [W]e cannot collect information without a theory to organize our searches and observations. ...[T]heory is always, and must be, colored by social and psychological biases of surrounding culture; we have no access to utterly objective observation or universally unambiguous logic."
"During the period that began with classical Greece and ended with late pagan antiquity, philosophy was more than merely a theoretical discipline. Even when Aristotle identified philosophy with "theory," his purpose is to argue ... that a life of theoretical activity, the life of philosophy, was the best life that human beings could lead."
"A scientific theory is a concise and coherent set of concepts, claims, and laws (frequently expressed mathematically) that can be used to precisely and accurately explain and predict natural phenomena. A theory should include a mechanism that explains how its concepts, claims, and laws arise from lower-level theories."
"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is."
"The ultimate goal of science is to understand the natural world in terms of scientific theories, which are concepts that join together well-supported and related hypotheses. In ordinary speech, the word theory refers to a speculative idea. In contrast, a scientific theory is supported by a broad range of observations, experiments, and data often from a variety of disciplines."
"Once data are ruled out as arbiters among theories, those theories become pointless, just another clever intellectual game."
"Theory is important: it shapes our society, whether or not we engage with it intellectually."
"There's nothing better in physics than when your theory is incompatible with a new piece of — especially a theory that has been working very, very well for a long time. Now, if you are individually the person who came up with the theory, you might be sad. But as a , that's how you make progress. If you want to win the , you don't show that Einstein was right. You show that Einstein was wrong. That's the way to get people excited."
"How dare we speak of the laws of chance? Is not chance the antithesis of all law?"
"He who believes this (atomism) may as well believe that if a great quantity of the one-and-twenty letters, composed either of gold or any other matter, were thrown upon the ground, they would fall into such order as legibly to form the Annals of Ennius. I doubt whether fortune could make a single verse of them."
"The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance."
"The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the 'old one'. I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice."
"Events may appear to us to be random, but this could be attributed to human ignorance about the details of the processes involved."
"Perhaps randomness is not merely an adequate description for complex causes that we cannot specify. Perhaps the world really works this way, and many events are uncaused in any conventional sense of the word."
"Randomness is a very, very subtle concept with its study properly belonging to statisticians more than mathematicians."
"Consideration of black holes suggests, not only that God does play dice, but that he sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen."
"Fretting about a dearth of randomness seems like worrying that humanity might use up its last reserves of ignorance."
"The fact that randomness requires a physical rather than a mathematical source is noted by almost everyone who writes on the subject, and yet the oddity of this situation is not much remarked."
"Random chance was not a sufficient explanation of the Universe — in fact, random chance was not sufficient to explain random chance."
"Random numbers should not be generated with a method chosen at random."
"The sun comes up just about as often as it goes down, in the long run, but this doesn't make its motion random."
"A random sequence is a vague notion in which each term is unpredictable to the uninitiated and whose digits pass a certain number of tests traditional with statisticians and depending somewhat on the uses to which the sequence is to be put."
"Quand une regle est fort composée, ce qui luy est conforme, passe pour irrégulier."
"For I do not believe that it is through the interference of Divine Providence … that the spittle of a certain person moved, fell on a certain gnat in a certain place, and killed it."
"Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It’s us. Only us."
"Any one who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin."
"One of us recalls producing a 'random' plot with only 11 planes, and being told by his computer center's programming consultant that he had misused the random number generator: 'We guarantee that each number is random individually, but we don’t guarantee that more than one of them is random.' Figure that out."
"The definition of random in terms of a physical operation is notoriously without effect on the mathematical operations of statistical theory because so far as these mathematical operations are concerned random is purely and simply an undefined term."
"While in theory randomness is an intrinsic property, in practice, randomness is incomplete information."
"The notion that "applied" knowledge is somehow less worthy than "pure" knowledge, was natural to a society in which all useful work was performed by slaves and serfs, and in which industry was controlled by the models set by custom rather than by intelligence."
"The word model is used as a noun, adjective, and verb, and in each instance it has a slightly different connotation. As a noun "model" is a representation in the sense in which an architect constructs a small-scale model of a building or a physicist a large-scale model of an atom. As an adjective "model" implies a degree or perfection or idealization, as in reference to a model home, a model student, or a model husband. As a verb "to model" means to demonstrate, to reveal, to show what a thing is like."
"Scientific models have all these connotations. They are representations of states, objects, and events. They are idealized in the sense that they are less complicated than reality and hence easier to use for research purposes. These models are easier to manipulate and "carry" than the real thing. The simplicity of models, compared with reality, lies in the fact that only the relevant properties of reality are represented."
"Scientists work from models acquired through education and through subsequent exposure to the literature often without quite knowing or needing to know what characteristics have given these models the status of community paradigms"
"Knowledge about the process being modeled starts fairly low, then increases as understanding is obtained and tapers off to a high value at the end."
"Any model or description that leaves out conscious forces … is bound to be sadly incomplete and unsatisfactory … This scheme is one that puts mind back over matter, in a sense, not under or outside or beside it. It is a scheme that idealizes ideas and ideals over physical and chemical interactions, nerve impulse traffic, and DNA. It is a brain model in which conscious mental psychic forces are recognized to be the crowning achievement of some five hundred million years or more of evolution."
"For the scientist a model is also a way in which the human though processes can be amplified. This method often takes the form of models that can be programmed into computers. At no point, however, the scientist intend to loose control of the situation because off the computer does some of his thinking for him. The scientist controls the basic assumptions and the computer only derives some of the more complicated implications."
"The statistician knows ... that in nature there never was a normal distribution, there never was a straight line, yet with normal and linear assumptions, known to be false, he can often derive results which match, to a useful approximation, those found in the real world."
"We have no idea about the 'real' nature of things … The function of modeling is to arrive at descriptions which are useful."
"Models can easily become so complex that they are impenetrable, unexaminable, and virtually unalterable."
"The models of management which individuals and organizations use come from a variety of sources. Sometimes the model comes from a theory. The theory may emerge from someone's thoughts about the desired characteristics of a manager, or about the characteristics of competent managers. Sometimes the model comes from a panel. A group of people, possibly in the job or at levels above the job within the organization, generates a model through discussion of what is needed to perform a management job competently."
"The value of global modelling has been severely restricted by poor appreciation of the constraints under which governments and politicians operate. Equally, the value of governments and politicians has been severely restricted by largely ignoring the very real but less immediate problems tackled by modellers."
"Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful."
"Today, nearly all biologists acknowledge that evolution is a fact. The term theory is no longer appropriate except when referring to the various models that attempt to explain how life evolves..."
"Ackoff (1962)... differentiates between iconic models, which use the same materials but involve changes in scale, analogue models which also involve a change in the materials used in building the model, and symbolic models which represent reality by some symbolic system such as a system of mathematical equations."
"A model is a physical, mathematical, or logical representation of a system entity, phenomenon, or process. A simulation is the implementation of a model over time. A simulation brings a model to life and shows how a particular object or phenomenon will behave. It is useful for testing, analysis or training where real-world systems or concepts can be represented by a model."
"There are many specific techniques that modellers use, which enable us to discover aspects of reality that may not be obvious to everyone..."
"Modelling is an essential and inseparable part of all scientific, and indeed all intellectual, activity. How then can we treat it as a separate discipline? The answer is that the professional modeller brings special skills and techniques to bear in order to produce results that are insightful, reliable, and useful. Many of these techniques can be taught formally, such as sophisticated statistical methods, computer simulation, systems identification, and sensitivity analysis. These are valuable tools, but they are not as important as the ability to understand the underlying dynamics of a complex system well enough to assess whether the assumptions of a model are correct and complete. Above all, the successful modeller must be able to recognise whether a model reflects reality, and to identify and deal with divergences between theory and data."
"Visual modeling is a usage of images in various business-fields (in the industry, science, management etc). There are additional limitations on these images distinguishing them from arbitrary pictures - they are created from the standard “patterns” having defined semantics and way of usage."
"The role of conceptual modelling in information systems development during all these decades is seen as an approach for capturing fuzzy, ill-defined, informal "real-world" descriptions and user requirements, and then transforming them to formal, in some sense complete, and consistent conceptual specifications."
"My first heresy says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models. Of course, they say, I have no degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak. But I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models."
"Investors should be skeptical of history-based models. Constructed by a nerdy-sounding priesthood using esoteric terms such as beta, gamma, sigma and the like, these models tend to look impressive. Too often, though, investors forget to examine the assumptions behind the symbols. Our advice: Beware of geeks bearing formulas."
"Models are of central importance in many scientific contexts. The centrality of models such as the billiard ball model of a gas, the Bohr model of the atom, the MIT bag model of the nucleon, the Gaussian-chain model of a polymer, the Lorenz model of the atmosphere, the Lotka-Volterra model of predator-prey interaction, the double helix model of DNA, agent-based and evolutionary models in the social sciences, or general equilibrium models of markets in their respective domains are cases in point. Scientists spend a great deal of time building, testing, comparing and revising models, and much journal space is dedicated to introducing, applying and interpreting these valuable tools. In short, models are one of the principal instruments of modern science."
"Scientific modeling, the generation of a physical, conceptual, or mathematical representation of a real phenomenon that is difficult to observe directly. Scientific models are used to explain and predict the behaviour of real objects or systems and are used in a variety of scientific disciplines, ranging from physics and chemistry to ecology and the Earth sciences. Although modeling is a central component of modern science, scientific models at best are approximations of the objects and systems that they represent—they are not exact replicas. Thus, scientists constantly are working to improve and refine models."
"Complexity scientists concluded that there are just too many factors—both concordant and contrarian—to understand. And with so many potential gaps in information, almost nobody can see the whole picture. Complex systems have severe limits, not only to predictability but also to measurability. Some complexity theorists argue that modelling, while useful for thinking and for studying the complexities of the world, is a particularly poor tool for predicting what will happen."
"Economists also use models to learn about the world, but instead of being made of plastic, they are most often composed of diagrams and equations. Like a biology teacher’s plastic model, economic models omit many details to allow us to see what is truly important. Just as the biology teacher’s model does not include all the body’s muscles and capillaries, an economist’s model does not include every feature of the economy."
"Science in the past (and partly in the present), was dominated by one-sided empiricism. Only a collection of data and experiments were considered as being ‘scientific’ in biology (and psychology); forgetting that a mere accumulation of data, although steadily piling up, does not make a science."
"When I observed that by the performance of certain actions, unwholesome factors increased and wholesome factors decreased, then that form of bodily action was to be avoided. And when I observed that by the performance of such actions unwholesome factors decreased and wholesome ones increased, then such bodily action was to be followed. ... The same applies to conduct of speech and the pursuit of goals."
"Empiricism and positivism share the common view that scientific knowledge should in some way be derived from the facts arrived at by observation."
"I have found no better expression than "religious" for confidence in the rational nature of reality, insofar as it is accessible to human reason. Whenever this feeling is absent, science degenerates into uninspired empiricism."
"Many people think that the progress of the human race is based on experiences of an empirical, critical nature, but I say that true knowledge is to be had only through a philosophy of deduction. For it is intuition that improves the world, not just following a trodden path of thought. Intuition makes us look at unrelated facts and then think about them until they can all be brought under one law. To look for related facts means holding onto what one has instead of searching for new facts. Intuition is the father of new knowledge, while empiricism is nothing but an accumulation of old knowledge. Intuition, not intellect, is the 'open sesame' of yourself."
"[On Empiricism] It is evident, on the basis of our considerations, that this appearance of success cannot in the least be regarded as a sign of truth and correspondence with nature. Quite the contrary, suspicion arises that the absence of major difficulties is a result of the decrease of empirical content brought about by the elimination of alternatives, and of facts that can be discovered with their help. In other words, the suspicion arises that this alleged success is due to the fact that the theory, when extended beyond its starting point, was turned into rigid ideology. Such Ideology is "successful" not because it agrees so well with the facts; it is successful because no facts have been specified that could constitute a test, and because some such facts have been removed. Its "success" is entirely man-made. It was decided to stick to some ideas, come what may, and the result was, quite naturally, the survival of these ideas. If now the initial decision is forgotten, or made only implicitly, for example, if it becomes common law in physics, then the survival itself will seem to constitute independent support., it will reinforce the decision, or turn it into an explicate one, and in this way close the circle. This is how empirical "evidence" may be created by a procedure which quotes as its justification the very same evidence it has Produced."
"Naive falsificationism takes it for granted that the laws of nature are manifest an not hidden beneath disturbances of considerable magnitude. Empiricism takes it for granted that sense experience is a better mirror of the world than pure thought. Praise of argument takes it for granted that the artifices of Reason give better results than the unchecked play of our emotions. Such assumptions may be perfectly plausible and even true. Still, one should occasionally put them to a test. Putting them to a test means that we stop using the methodology associated with them, start doing science in a different way and see what happens."
"Empiricism itself is only the means, a quicker and more effective technique, for achieving technology’s ultimate cultural goal: the building of the ideal in the real world. One of its own basic dictates is that a certain amount of material must be collected and arranged into categories before any decisive comparison, analysis, or discovery can be made. In this light centuries of empirical science have been little more than the building of foundations for the breakthroughs of our own time and the future. The amassing of information and understanding of the laws and mechanical processes of nature (‘pure research’) is but a means to a larger end: total understanding of Nature in order, ultimately, to achieve transcendence."
"Humean skepticism should be well distinguished from Greek skepticism. Hume’s assumes as basic the truth of the empirical, of feeling, of intuition, and from that base contests general determinations and laws—because they lack justification from sense perception. Ancient skepticism was so far from making feeling and intuition the principle of truth that, on the contrary, it turned first of all against the senses."
"The characteristic activity of science is not construction, but induction. The more often something has occurred in the past, the more certain that it will in all the future. Knowledge relates solely to what is and to its recurrence. New forms of being, especially those arising from the historical activity of man, lie beyond empiricist theory. Thoughts which are not simply carried over from the prevailing pattern of consciousness, but arise from the aims and resolves of the individual, in short, all historical tendencies that reach beyond what is present and recurrent, do not belong to the domain of science."
"No criticism can be brought against a branch of technical science from outside; no thought fitted out with the knowledge of a period and setting its course by definite historical aims could have anything to say to the specialist. Such thought and the critical, dialectical element it communicates to the process of cognition, thereby maintaining conscious connection between that process and historical life, do not exist for empiricism; nor do the associated categories, such as the distinction between essence and appearance, identity in change, and rationality of ends, indeed, the concept of man, of personality, even of society and class taken in the sense that presupposes specific viewpoints and directions of interest."
"Logical empiricism holds the view, notwithstanding some its assertions, that the forms of knowledge and consequently the relations of man to nature and to other men never change. According to rationalism, too, all subjective and objective potentialities are rooted in insights which the individual already possesses, but rationality uses existing objects as well as the active inner striving and ideas of man to construct standards for the future. In this regard, it is not so closely associated with the present order as is empiricism."
"The quality of the human that precludes identifying the individual with the class is ‘metaphysical’ and has no place in empiricist epistemology. The pigeon hole into which a man is shoved circumscribes his fate."
"'Pure experience' is the name I gave to the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories."
"The bottom of being is left logically opaque to us, a datum in the strict sense of the word, something we simply come upon and find, and about which (if we wish to act) we should pause and wonder as little as possible. In this confession lies the lasting truth of empiricism."
"If it were so, as conceited sagacity, proud of not being deceived, thinks, that we should believe nothing that we cannot see with our physical eyes, then we first and foremost ought to give up believing in love. ... We can be deceived by believing what is untrue, but we certainly are also deceived by not believing what is true. ... Which deception is more dangerous?"
"There's a tremendous popular fallacy which holds that significant research can be carried out by trying things. Actually it is easy to show that in general no significant problem can be solved empirically, except for accidents so rare as to be statistically unimportant. One of my jests is to say that we work empirically — we use bull's eye empiricism. We try everything, but we try the right thing first!"
"The radical empiricist onslaught... provides the methodological justification for the debunking of the mind by the intellectuals—a positivism which, in its denial of the transcending elements of Reason, forms the academic counterpart of the socially required behavior."
"Our argument is not flatly circular, but something like it. It has the form, figuratively speaking, of a closed curve in space."
"The word 'definition' has come to have a dangerously reassuring sound, owing no doubt to its frequent occurrence in logical and mathematical writings.""
"Empiricism and idealism alike are faced with a problem to which, so far, philosophy has found no satisfactory solution. This is the problem of showing how we have knowledge of other things than ourself and the operations of our own mind."
"Until the publication of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason in 1781, it might have seemed as if the older philosophical tradition of Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz were being definitely overcome by the newer empirical method. The newer method, however, had never prevailed in German universities, and after 1792 it was held responsible for the horrors of the Revolution. Recanting revolutionaries such as Coleridge found in Kant an intellectual support for their opposition to French atheism. The Germans, in their resistance to the French, were glad to have a German philosophy to uphold them. Even the French, after the fall of Napoleon, were glad of any weapon against Jacobinism. All these factors favored Kant."
"The difference in method, here, may be characterized as follows: in Locke and Hume, a comparatively modest conclusion is drawn from a broad survey of facts, whereas in Leibniz, a vast edifice of deduction is pyramided upon a pin-point of logical principle. In Leibniz, if the principle is completely true and the deductions are entirely valid, all is well; but the structure in unstable, and the slightest flaw anywhere brings it down in ruins. In Locke and Hume, on the other contrary, the base of the pyramid is on the solid ground of observed fact, and the pyramid tapers upward, not downward; consequently the equilibrium is stable, and a flaw here and there can be rectified without total disaster. This difference of method survived Kant's attempt to incorporate something of the empirical philosophy: from Descartes to Hegel on the one side, and from Locke to John Stuart Mill on the other, it remains unvarying."
"If an object does exist on the strength of consciousness, how does one arrive at the existence of consciousness? If the existence of consciousness is established on the strength of the existence of the object of which it is conscious, how does one arrive at the existence of the object? If they exist on the strength of each other's existence, neither of the two can exist."
"British historians are notoriously suspicious of philosophical reflections about the nature of their craft. The charge is no doubt exaggerated, but it is hard to deny that they have sometimes gloried in presenting themselves as straightforward empiricists for whom the proper task of the historian is simply to uncover the facts about the past and recount them as objectively as possible."
"Philosophy … lost its prestige to the extent that it lost its evident advantage in cleverness to "normal life." In the transition from archaic teachings of wisdom to philosophy based on argument, it itself was engulfed in the twilight of alienation from life. It had to accept that the independent cleverness theories of pragmatics, economics, strategy, and politics proved themselves to be its better, until, with its logical niceties, it became infantile and academic, and stood there as the Utopian idiot with its reminiscences about great ideals. Today philosophy is surrounded on all sides by maliciously clever empiricisms and realistic disciplines that "know better.""
"It is usually a good idea to bear in mind the distinction between philosophy and an empirical science such as psychology. I once received a valuable lesson in this. A very distinguished astronomer visited the Department of Philosophy in Princeton and gave us a lecture entitled “An Astronomer’s Philosophy.” We philosophers were delighted. And I in my enthusiasm offered to reciprocate by giving a lecture to the astronomers which was to be entitled “A Philosopher’s Astronomy.” But this proposal was received by the astronomers with marked coldness."
"It is also naïve empiricism to provide, in support of some argument, series of eloquent confirmatory quotes by dead authorities. By searching, you can always find someone who made a well-sounding statement that confirms your point of view—and, on every topic, it is possible to find another dead thinker who said the exact opposite."
"Rave on, down through the industrial revolution Empiricism, atomic and nuclear age Rave on down through time and space down through the corridors Rave on words on printed page."
"The theory of empiricism is plausible because it assumes that accuracy about small matters prepares the way for valid judgment about large ones. What happens, however, is that the judgments are never made. The pedantic empiricist, buried in his little province of phenomena, imagines that fidelity to it exempts him from concern with larger aspects of reality."
"The whole tendency of empiricism and democracy in speech, dress and manners has been toward a plainness which is without symbolic significance. The power of symbolism is greatly feared by those who wish to expel from life all that is nonrational in the sense of being nonutilitarian"
"Science is not inevitable; this question is very fruitful indeed."
"Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life."
"Research is something that everyone can do, and everyone ought to do. It is simply collecting information and thinking systematically about it. The word ‘research’ carries overtones of abstruse statistics and complex methods, white coats and computers. Some social research is highly specialised but most is not; much of the best research is logically very straightforward. Useful research on many problems can be done with small resources, and should be a regular part of the life of any thoughtful person involved in social action."
"Attempt the end and never stand to doubt; Nothing's so hard but search will find it out."
"Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose. It is a seeking that he who wishes may know the cosmic secrets of the world and they that dwell therein."
"In the course of describing my formative moment in 1978, I have already implicitly given my four basic rules for research. Let me now state them explicitly, then explain. Here are the rules:1. Listen to the Gentiles 2. Question the question 3. Dare to be silly 4. Simplify, simplify"
"It is a good thing for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast."
"Hail, follow, well met, All dirty and wet: Find out, if you can, Who's master, who's man."
"... my experimental results were slow in coming and it was a long time before I had enough data to publish a paper. And despite all my effort, I was merely scratching the surface of a biological system. Basic research had become so complex: No one cared if in a certain disease you discovered that some protein in the blood was either high or low. The question being asked was what gene was controlling this protein? And how quickly could you it? Science had gone molecular. An investment a couple of years after fellowship training was necessary just to learn the methodology of ."
"The worst thing happens when ideologists are trying to analyse scientific researches."
"Sports and top-quality research have much in common. The best stars of each are young, not middle-aged, though occasionally someone older than forty can still be a formidable force either across the net or at the blackboard. No one can long remain a science manager unless constantly on the prowl for talented rookies able to move the game to the next level. Research institutions that let the average age of their staff creep up inevitably become dull places. Lowering your average age by constructing new buildings to create more space, however, is not the way to go. If the older buildings are not exuding vitality, they become mere financial drains. Equally important, good managers see the need to retire scientists who are no longer hitting s. Only individuals who continually reinvent themselves through new ways of thinking should enter middle age still part of your staff."
"When one is doing research, the trick is always to find a problem easy enough for you to make progress, but hard enough that it's worthwhile to make progress."
"A good rule of thumb for diagnosing an activity as pseudoscientific is the existence of ad hoc explanations: “my telepathic powers aren’t working today because of a force field emanating from the hostile talk-show host.” There are no “bad-gravity days” and there are no days when your TV set stops working because electromagnetic waves feel hostility."
"Using the term pseudoscience, then, leads to unnecessary polarization, mistrust, disrespectfulness, and confusion around science issues. Everyone—especially scientists, journalists, and science communicators—would better serve science by avoiding it."
"Although pseudoscience is a fairly common epithet, it is not exactly universal. Scientists do not just call anything they do not like “pseudoscience.” They are perfectly happy to declare many of their peers’ work to be “bad” or “substandard” science. “Pseudoscience” is used in a targeted way, at certain times, and against specific enemies. This implies that there is no unified pseudoscience; the various doctrines labeled “pseudosciences” over the last two centuries actually have very little in common with one another besides being hated by assorted scientists."
"“Pseudoscience” is an empty category, a term of abuse, and there is nothing that necessarily links those dubbed pseudoscientists besides their separate alienation from science at the hands of the establishment."
"As long as we have science, we will have a process of demarcation that happens every day in the laboratories, field sites, and classrooms of the world. Scientists will decide that some claims are relevant for their research and that some doctrines are not—sometimes so much so that they will be dubbed “pseudoscientific.” This is inevitable, and it is ineradicable. Scientists will always demarcate, because part of what science is is an exclusion of some domains as irrelevant, rejected, outdated, or incorrect. And the more successful science becomes, the more outsiders will want to participate in the process. Some of these will be hailed as brilliant; some others will be run out of town on a rail; most will simply sink without a trace. “Pseudoscience” is not some invasive pathogen that has contaminated contemporary science but that can be fully expunged from the organism with more scientific literacy or better peer review. Pseudoscience is the shadow of science; it is cast by science itself through the very fact that demarcation happens. If pseudoscience is inevitable, then combating it becomes problematic. Either the combatants resemble Sisyphus, pushing the rock up the hill only to have it tumble back down again, or the Æsir, battling the forces of darkness that besiege Valhalla at Ragnarök (and eventually losing)."
"There is an important lesson in this. All so-called pseudoscientists believe they are simply scientists, albeit ones with heterodox views marginalized by the mainstream. (They aren't necessarily right—many people have mistaken self-conceptions.) But to be a scientist, you need to behave like one, and one thing scientists do constantly is, well, demarcate. Velikovsky and his peers knew there was an edge to legitimate science, and they policed it very carefully, just like "establishment" scientists did and continue to do. I have come to think of pseudoscience as science's shadow. A shadow is cast by something; it has no substance of its own. The same is true for these doctrines on the fringe. If scientists use some criterion such as peer review to demarcate, so will the fringe (creationists have peer-reviewed journals, as did Velikovskians). The brighter the light of science—that is, the greater its cultural prestige and authority—the sharper the shadow, and the more the fringe flourishes."
"We can sensibly build science policy only upon the consensus of the scientific community. This is not a bright line, but it is the only line we have. As a result, we need to be careful about demarcation, to notice how we do it and why we do it, and stop striving for a goal of universal eradication of the fringe that is frankly impossible. We need to learn what we are talking about when we talk about pseudoscience."
"Understanding the scientific fringe as a necessary shadow of the professional scientific consensus not only emphasizes the intimate connection between the sciences and those doctrines variously labeled pseudosciences, it also refocuses our attention on the causes of the phenomenon. When someone makes shadow puppets on the wall, our eyes are naturally drawn to the striking, cleanly outlined shapes of rabbits and ducks, but that is not where the action is. Similarly, I suggest the pseudosciences are not real in themselves; they are defined by external projection. The important thing to watch is not the shadow, but the hand. It not only is the source of the shadows; it is also the more fascinating and complex phenomenon of the two. The fringe not only shadows the core, it is continuous with it, and the most effective way to deal with attacks from the latter is to ensure that the former is in good working order."
"'Tis strange how like a very dunce, Man, with his bumps upon his sconce, Has lived so long, and yet no knowledge he Has had, till lately, of Phrenology— A science that by simple dint of Head-combing he should find a hint of, When scratching o'er those little pole-hills The faculties throw up like mole hills."
"The problem of demarcation between science and pseudoscience has grave implications also for the institutionalization of criticism. Copernicus’s theory was banned by the Catholic Church in 1616 because it was said to be pseudoscientific. It was taken off the index in 1820 because by that time the Church deemed that facts had proved it and therefore it became scientific. The Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party in 1949 declared Mendelian genetics pseudoscientific and had its advocates, like Academician Vavilov, killed in concentration camps; after Vavilov’s murder Mendelian genetics was rehabilitated; but the Party’s right to decide what is science and publishable and what is pseudoscience and punishable was upheld. The new liberal Establishment of the West also exercises the right to deny freedom of speech to what it regards as pseudoscience, as we have seen in the case of the debate concerning race and intelligence. All these judgments were inevitably based on some sort of demarcation criterion. And this is why the problem of demarcation between science and pseudoscience is not a pseudo-problem of armchair philosophers: it has grave ethical and political implications."
"Through certain vagaries of history, some of which I have alluded to here, we have managed to conflate two quite distinct questions: What makes a belief well founded (or heuristically fertile)? And what makes a belief scientific? The first set of questions is philosophically interesting and possibly even tractable; the second question is both uninteresting and, judging by its checkered past, intractable. If we would stand up and be counted on the side of reason, we ought to drop terms like "pseudo-science" and "unscientific" from our vocabulary; they are just hollow phrases which do only emotive work for us. As such, they are more suited to the rhetoric of politicians and Scottish sociologists of knowledge than to that of empirical researchers. Insofar as our concern is to protect ourselves and our fellows from the cardinal sin of believing what we wish were so rather than what there is substantial evidence for (and surely that is what most forms of "quackery" come down to), then our focus should be squarely on the empirical and conceptual credentials for claims about the world. The "scientific" status of those claims is altogether irrelevant.""
"The term “pseudoscience” has become little more than an inflammatory buzzword for quickly dismissing one’s opponents in media sound-bites. … When therapeutic entrepreneurs make claims on behalf of their interventions, we should not waste our time trying to determine whether their interventions qualify as pseudoscientific. Rather, we should ask them: How do you know that your intervention works? What is your evidence?"
"This statistical regularity in moral affairs fully establishes their being under the presidency of law. Man is now seen to be an enigma only as an individual; in the mass he is a mathematical problem."
"Probability is the very guide of life."
"It is a truth very certain that, when it is not in our power to determine what is true, we ought to follow what is most probable"
"Al right. I already see you turning off. I can see you say you don't understand me. You can't understand that it could be chance. "I don't like it!" Tough! I don't like it either, but that's the way it is! Ok? I don't understand it either. ..."It must be that Nature knows that it's going to go up or down." No, it must not be that nature knows! We are not to tell Nature what she's gotta be! That's what we found out. Every time we take a guess as how she's got to be, and go and measure... She's clever. She's always got better imagination than we have, and she finds a cleverer way to do it than we have thought of. And in this particular case, the clever way to do it is by probability, by odds. ...[L]ight works by probability."
"My thesis, paradoxically, and a little provocatively, but nonetheless genuinely, is simply this :PROBABILITY DOES NOT EXIST.The abandonment of superstitious beliefs about the existence of Phlogiston, the Cosmic Ether, Absolute Space and Time, ... , or Fairies and Witches, was an essential step along the road to scientific thinking. Probability, too, if regarded as something endowed with some kind of objective existence, is no less a misleading misconception, an illusory attempt to exteriorize or materialize our true probabilistic beliefs."
"Probability is too important to be left to the experts. [...] The experts, by their very expert training and practice, often miss the obvious and distort reality seriously. [...] The desire of the experts to publish and gain credit in the eyes of their peers has distorted the development of probability theory from the needs of the average user. The comparatively late rise of the theory of probability shows how hard it is to grasp, and the many paradoxes show clearly that we, as humans, lack a well grounded intuition in the matter. Neither the intuition of the man in the street, nor the sophisticated results of the experts provides a safe basis for important actions in the world we live in."
"How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?"
"There is no Algebraist nor Mathematician so expert in his science, as to place entire confidence in any truth immediately upon his discovery of it, or regard it as any thing, but a mere probability. Every time he runs over his proofs, his confidence increases; but still more by the approbation of his friends; and is raised to its utmost perfection by the universal assent and applauses of the learned world."
"R. A. Fisher, J. Neyman, R. von Mises, W. Feller, and L. J. Savage denied vehemently that probability theory is an extension of logic, and accused Laplace and Jeffreys of committing metaphysical nonsense for thinking that it is."
"They should have known better. The probability of a train derailment was infinitesimal. That meant it was only a matter of time."
"No human being can give an eternal resolution to another or take it from him; If someone objects that then one might just as well be silent if there is no probability of winning others, he thereby has merely shown that although his life very likely thrived and prospered in probability and everyone of his undertakings in the service of probability went forward, he has never really ventured and consequently has never had or given himself the opportunity to consider that probability is an illusion, but to venture the truth is what gives human life and the human situation pith and meaning, to venture is the fountainhead of inspiration, whereas probability is the sworn enemy of enthusiasm, the mirage whereby the sensate person drags out time and keeps the eternal away, whereby he cheats God, himself, and his generation: cheats God of the honor, himself of liberating annihilation, and his generation of the equality of conditions."
"The epistemological value of probability theory is based on the fact that chance phenomena, considered collectively and on a grand scale, create non-random regularity."
"As is known, the question of the objectivity or the subjectivity of probability has divided the world of science into two camps. Some maintain that there exist two types of probability, as above, others, that only the subjective exists, because regardless of what is supposed to take place, we cannot have full knowledge of it. Therefore, some lay the uncertainty of future events at the door of our knowledge of them, whereas others place it within the realm of the events themselves."
"People seem to flinch at the word probability—it has too many syllables. Besides, it sounds mathematical, and it’s become politically correct in our country to be proud of not knowing any mathematics. (We’re already paying the price for that.)"
"The laws of probability are mighty powerful, and they never sleep. If this were more widely understood there’d be a lot less crowing about good luck, and a lot less guilt about bad luck. And we’d have a more civilized world. Some things really do happen by chance, and there is little we can do to change that."
"Feeling threatened is not the same as being threatened, but the difference gets lost. The danger from low levels of radiation is quite low, as expressed as morbidity statistics or probabilities, but there is an unfortunate lack of connection to probability in the average person. Low probabilities are a particular problem of perception. If they were not, then nobody would play the lottery and the gambling industry would collapse."
"In applying dynamical principles to the motion of immense numbers of atoms, the limitation of our faculties forces us to abandon the attempt to express the exact history of each atom, and to be content with estimating the average condition of a group of atoms large enough to be visible. This method... which I may call the statistical method, and which in the present state of our knowledge is the only available method of studying the properties of real bodies, involves an abandonment of strict dynamical principles, and an adoption of the mathematical methods belonging to the theory of probability. … If the actual history of Science had been different, and if the scientific doctrines most familiar to us had been those which must be expressed in this way, it is possible that we might have considered the existence of a certain kind of contingency a self evident truth, and treated the doctrine of philosophical necessity as a mere sophism."
"Einstein's supreme greatness was in transforming physical thinking from that of the culmination of classical physics about 1900 to that of quantum mechanics starting about 1925. ...far more than anyone else, he caused physicists to think in terms of probabilities. He began to do this in his early work in thermodynamics, and he brought such thinking to its first great fruition in 1905 in his work on Brownian movement and in his first work on radiation, in which he introduced the concept of light quanta or photons. Its second, even greater fruition was in his famous paper on the quantum theory of radiation in 1917. That paper illustrated methods that have been in use almost without change ever since, even though the majority of the users have no knowledge that it was Einstein who propounded them. It was in this paper that Einstein postulated the various transition possibilities between two states of a quantized system. ...quantum theory has existed ever since precisely for the purpose of evaluating these probabilities. In this paper of 1917 Einstein postulated in particular the process known as stimulated emission, and inferred the properties of this process. This is the process employed in the... light maser or laser."
"The theory of probability combines commonsense reasoning with calculation. It domesticates luck, making it subservient to reason."
"Why do [people] confuse probability and expectation, that is, probability and probability times payoff? Mainly because much... schooling comes from examples in symmetric environments... the... bell curve... is entirely symmetric."
"At a purely formal level, one could call probability theory the study of measure spaces with total measure one, but that would be like calling number theory the study of strings of digits which terminate."
"Since the end of World War II, I have been working on the many ramifications of the theory of messages. Besides the electrical engineering theory of the transmission of messages, there is a larger field which includes not only the study of language but the study of messages as a means of controlling machinery and society, the development of computing machines and other such automata, certain reflections upon psychology and the nervous system, and a tentative new theory of scientific method. This larger theory of messages is a probabilistic theory, an intrinsic part of the movement that owes its origin to Willard Gibbs and which I have described in the introduction."
"The Master said, "Yu, shall I teach you what knowledge is? When you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it; — this is knowledge.""
"When you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it; this is knowledge."
"To know one's ignorance is the best part of knowledge. To be ignorant of such knowledge is a disease. If one only regards it as a disease, he will be cured of it. The wise man is exempt from this disease. He knows it for what it is, and hence is free from it."
"I cannot look at something through someone else's eyes. I can only truly know something which I know."
"Everyone in the world knows how to seek for knowledge that they do not have, but do not know how to find what they already know."
"For knowing is spoken of in three ways: it may be either universal knowledge or knowledge proper to the matter in hand or actualising such knowledge; consequently three kinds of error also are possible."
"All teaching and all intellectual learning come about from already existing knowledge."
"Πάντες ἄνθρωποι τοῦ εἰδέναι ὀρέγονται φύσει. Σημεῖον δ᾽ ἡ τῶν αἰσθήσεων ἀγάπησις: καὶ γὰρ χωρὶς τῆς χρείας ἀγαπῶνται δι᾽ αὑτάς, καὶ μάλιστα τῶν ἄλλων ἡ διὰ τῶν ὀμμάτων. Οὐ γὰρ μόνον ἵνα πράττωμεν ἀλλὰ καὶ μηθὲν μέλλοντες πράττειν τὸ ὁρᾶν αἱρούμεθα ἀντὶ πάντων ὡς εἰπεῖν τῶν ἄλλων. Αἴτιον δ᾽ ὅτι μάλιστα ποιεῖ γνωρίζειν ἡμᾶς αὕτη τῶν αἰσθήσεων καὶ πολλὰς δηλοῖ διαφοράς."
"He who chooses to know for the sake of knowing will choose most readily that which is most truly knowledge."
"γνῶθι σεαυτόν."
"This is the bitterest pain among men, to have much knowledge but no power."
"Thales was asked what was very difficult; he said: "To know one's self.""
"Πᾶσα τε ἐπιστήμη χωριζομένη δικαιοσύνης καὶ τῆς ἄλλης ἀρετῆς πανουργία, οὐ σοφία φαίνεται."
"Ἕν οἶδα, ὅτι οὐδὲν οἶδα."
"Φεῦ φεῦ, φρονεῖν ὡς δεινὸν ἔνθα μὴ τέλη / λύῃ φρονοῦντι..."
"Prima sapientiae clavis definitur, assidua scilicet seu frequens interrogatio … Dubitando enim ad inquisitionem venimus; inquirendo veritatem percipimus."
"To wisdom belongs the intellectual apprehension of things eternal; to knowledge, the rational apprehension of things temporal."
"Nam non solum scire aliquid, artis est, sed, quædam ars etiam docendi."
"Minime sibi quisque notus est, et difficillime de se quisque sentit."
"Nescire autem quid ante quam natus sis acciderit, id est semper esse puerum."
"Nec scire fas est omnia."
"Si quid novisti rectius istis. Candidus imperti, si non, his utere mecum."
"E cœlo descendit nosce te ipsum."
"Scire est nescire, nisi id me scire alius scierit."
"Quid nobis certius ipsis Sensibus esse potest? qui vera ac falso notemus."
"Et teneo melius ista quam meum nomen."
"Scire tuum nihil est, nisi te scire hoc sciat alter?"
"Ego te intus et in cute novi."
"Plus scire satius est, quam loqui."
"Natura semina scientiæ nobis dedit, scientiam non dedit."
"Namque inscitia est, Adversum stimulum calces."
"Faciunt næ intelligendo, ut nihil intelligant."
"Do you know how God controls the clouds and how he causes the lightning to flash from his cloud? Do you know how the clouds float? These are the wonderful works of the One perfect in knowledge."
"They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea."
"Through wisdom is an house builded; and by understanding it is established: And by knowledge shall the chambers be filled with all precious and pleasant riches."
"Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased."
"The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge."
"In vain have you acquired knowledge if you do not impart it it to others."
"He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow."
"The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction."
"When wisdom enters your heart"
"Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge."
"O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!"
"O the depth of God’s riches and wisdom and knowledge! How unsearchable his judgments are and beyond tracing out his ways are! For “who has come to know Jehovah’s mind, or who has become his adviser?” Or, “who has first given to him, so that it must be repaid to him?” Because from him and by him and for him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen."
"And (mention, O Muhammad), when your Lord said to the angels, "Indeed, I will make upon the earth a successive authority." They said, "Will You place upon it one who causes corruption therein and sheds blood, while we declare Your praise and sanctify You?" He (God) said: Surely, I know what you know not."
"They (angels) said, "Exalted are You; we have no knowledge except what You have taught us. Indeed, it is You who is the Knowing, the Wise.""
"And do not pursue that of which you have no knowledge. Indeed, the hearing, the sight and the heart – about all those (one) will be questioned."
"So high (above all) is God, the Sovereign, the Truth. And, (O Muhammad), do not hasten with (recitation of) the Qur'an before its revelation is completed to you, and say, "My Lord, increase me in knowledge.""
"There is another form of temptation, more complex in its peril. … It originates in an appetite for knowledge. … From this malady of curiosity are all those strange sights exhibited in the theatre. Hence do we proceed to search out the secret powers of nature (which is beside our end), which to know profits not, and wherein men desire nothing but to know."
"Without any delusive representation of images or phantasms, I am most certain that I am, and that I know and delight in this. In respect of these truths, I am not at all afraid of the arguments of the Academicians, who say, What if you are deceived? For if I am deceived, I am. For he who is not, cannot be deceived; and if I am deceived, by this same token I am. And since I am if I am deceived, how am I deceived in believing that I am? for it is certain that I am if I am deceived. Since, therefore, I, the person deceived, should be, even if I were deceived, certainly I am not deceived in this knowledge that I am."
"The one who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know."
"A name made great is a name destroyed. He who does not increase his knowledge decreases it."
"The knowledge of anything, since all things have causes, is not acquired or complete unless it is known by its causes. Therefore in medicine we ought to know the causes of sickness and health. And because health and sickness and their causes are sometimes manifest, and sometimes hidden and not to be comprehended except by the study of symptoms, we must also study the symptoms of health and disease. Now it is established in the sciences that no knowledge is acquired save through the study of its causes and beginnings, if it has had causes and beginnings; nor completed except by knowledge of its accidents and accompanying essentials. Of these causes there are four kinds: material, efficient, formal, and final."
"Prudens quaestio dimidium scientiae."
"...if perception is only knowledge or a means towards knowledge; since he who perceives, has knowledge thereby, according to the special character of the senses, by sight of colours, by taste of savours and so forth: then whatsoever has knowledge in whatsoever manner may be said without impropriety in some sense to perceive. Therefore, O Lord, although Thou art not a body, yet of a truth Thou hast in this sense perception in the highest degree, since Thou knowest all things in the highest degree; but not in the sense wherein an animal that has knowledge by means of bodily feeling is said to have perception."
"Knowledge comes Of learning well retain'd, unfruitful else."
"The eye with which I see God is the same with which God sees me. My eye and God's eye is one eye, and one sight, and one knowledge, and one love."
"Knowledge comes through likeness. And so because the soul may know everything, it is never at rest until it comes to the original idea, in which all things are one. And there it comes to rest in God."
"For the more a man knows, the more worthy he is."
"You must know that if a person, who has attained a certain degree of perfection, wishes to impart to others, either orally or in writing, any portion of the knowledge which he has acquired of these subjects, he is utterly unable to be as systematic and explicit as he could be in a science of which the method is well known. The same difficulties which he encountered when investigating the subject for himself will attend him when endeavouring to instruct others: viz., at one time the explanation will appear lucid, at another time, obscure: this property of the subject appears to remain the same both to the advanced scholar and to the beginner. For this reason, great theological scholars gave instruction in all such matters only by means of metaphors and allegories."
"sic: si omnes homines natura scire desiderant, ergo maxime scientiam maxime desiderabunt. Ita arguit Philosophus I huius cap. 2. Et ibidem subdit: "quae sit maxime scientia, illa scilicet quae est circa maxime scibilia". Maxime autem dicuntur scibilia dupliciter: uel quia primo omnium sciuntur sine quibus non possunt alia sciri; uel quia sunt certissima cognoscibilia. Utroque autem modo considerat ista scientia maxime scibilia. Haec igitur est maxime scientia, et per consequens maxime desiderabilis."
"You must acquire the best knowledge first, and without delay; it is the height of madness to learn what you will later have to unlearn."
"If thou knewest the whole Bible by heart, and the sayings of all the philosophers, what would it profit thee without the love of God and without grace?"
"Every man naturally desires knowledge; but what good is knowledge without fear of God? Indeed a humble rustic who serves God is better than a proud intellectual who neglects his soul to study the course of the stars."
"Shun too great a desire for knowledge, for in it there is much fretting and delusion. Intellectuals like to appear learned and to be called wise. Yet there are many things the knowledge of which does little or no good to the soul, and he who concerns himself about other things than those which lead to salvation is very unwise."
"He knew what is what."
"I have taken all knowledge to be my province."
"Knowledge is power."
"Knowledge and human power are synonymous, since the ignorance of the cause frustrates the effect."
"Knowledge bloweth up, but charity buildeth up."
"Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est."
"For knowledge, too, is itself a power."
"I find that even those that have sought knowledge for itself, and not for benefit, or ostentation, or any practicable enablement in the course of their life, have nevertheless propounded to themselves a wrong mark, namely, satisfaction, which men call truth, and not operation. For as in the courts and services of princes and states, it is a much easier matter to give satisfaction than to do the business; so in the inquiring of causes and reasons it is much easier to find out such causes as will satisfy the mind of man and quiet objections, than such causes as will direct him and give him light to new experiences and inventions."
"Knowledge that stays at the tip of one's tongue Can always be used and expressed by the learned. The fool is deceived by what needs reference To a teacher or text for support."
"Manners must adorn knowledge, and smooth its way through the world. Like a great rough diamond, it may do very well in a closet by way of curiosity, and also for its intrinsic value; but it will never be worn, nor shine, if it is not polished."
"Scientia non habet inimicum nisi ignorantem"
"Que nuist savoir tousjours et tousjours apprendre, fust ce D'un sot, d'une pot, d'une que—doufle D'un mouffe, d'un pantoufle."
"Then I began to think, that it is very true which is commonly said, that the one-half of the world knoweth not how the other half liveth."
"And seeing ignorance is the curse of God, Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven."
"Too much to know is to know naught but fame."
"But the full sum of me * * Is an unlesson'd girl, unschool'd, unpractis'd; Happy in this, she is not yet so old But she may learn."
"Crowns have their compass—length of days their date— Triumphs their tomb—felicity, her fate— Of nought but earth can earth make us partaker, But knowledge makes a king most like his Maker."
"And thou my minde aspire to higher things; Grow rich in that which never taketh rust."
"Sweet food of sweetly uttered knowledge."
"Yet all that I have learn'd (hugh toyles now past) By long experience, and in famous schooles, Is but to know my ignorance at last. Who think themselves most wise are greatest fools."
"For all knowledge and wonder (which is the seed of knowledge) is an impression of pleasure in itself."
"There is oftentimes a great deal of knowledge where there is but little wisdom to improve that knowledge. It is not the most knowing Christian but the most wise Christian that sees, avoids, and escapes Satan's snares. Knowledge without wisdom is like mettle in a blind horse, which is often an occasion of the rider's fall."
"He knew what's what, and that's as high As metaphysic wit can fly."
"Deep sighted in intelligences, Ideas, atoms, influences."
"Nor do I know what is become Of him, more than the Pope of Rome."
"He knew whats'ever 's to be known, But much more than he knew would own."
"But ask not bodies (doomed to die), To what abode they go; Since knowledge is but sorrow's spy, It is not safe to know."
"Il connoît l'univers, et ne se connoît pas."
"Knowledge is folly unless grace guide it."
"Virtue is harder to be got than knowledge of the world; and, if lost in a young man, is seldom recovered."
"The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it, into which a young gentleman should be enter'd by degrees, as he can bear it; and the earlier the better, so he be in safe and skillful hands to guide him. The scene should be gently open'd, and his entrance made step by step, and the dangers pointed out that attend him from several degrees, tempers, designs, and clubs of men. He should be prepared to be shocked by some, and caress'd by others; warned who are like to oppose, who to mislead, who to undermine him, and who to serve him. He should be instructed how to know and distinguish them; where he should let them see, and when dissemble the knowledge of them and their aims and workings."
"Mark what 'tis his mind aims at in the question, and not what words he expresses it in: and when you have informed and satisfied him in that, you shall see how his thoughts will enlarge themselves, and how by fit answers he may be led on farther than perhaps you could have imagine. For knowledge is grateful to the understanding, as light to the eyes."
"For in particulars our knowledge begins, and so spreads itself, by degrees, to generals [Footnote: This is the order in time of the conscious acquistion of knowledge that is human. The Essay might be regarded as a commentary on this one sentence. Our intellectual progress is from particulars and involuntary recipiency, through reactive doubt and criticism, into what is at last reasoned faith.]. Though afterwards the mind takes the quite contrary course, and having drawn its knowledge into as general propositions as it can, makes those familiar to its thoughts, and accustoms itself to have recourse to them, as to the standards of truth and falsehood. [Footnote: This is the philosophic attitude. Therein one consciously apprehends the intellectual necessities that were UNCONCIOUSLY PRESUPPOSED, its previous intellectual progress. In philosophy we 'draw our knowledge into as general propositions as it can' be made to assume, and thus either learn to see it as an organic while in a speculative unity, or learn that it cannot be so seen in a finite intelligence, and that even at the last it must remain 'broken' and mysterious in the human understanding.]"
"I went into the temple, there to hear The teachers of our law, and to propose What might improve my knowledge or their own."
"The end of learning is to know God, and out of that knowledge to love Him and imitate Him."
"Vous parlez devant un homme à qui tout Naples est connu."
"Faites comme si je ne le savais pas."
"Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things. As the world, which to the naked eye exhibits the greatest variety of objects, appears very simple in its internal constitution when surveyed by a philosophical understanding, and so much the simpler by how much the better it is understood, so it is in the visions. It is the perfection of God's works that they are all done with the greatest simplicity. He is the God of order and not of confusion. And therefore as they would understand the frame of the world must endeavor to reduce their knowledge to all possible simplicity, so must it be in seeking to understand these visions."
"All things I thought I knew; but now confess The more I know, I know, I know the less."
"Knowledge of physical science will not console me for ignorance of morality in time of affliction, but knowledge of morality will always console me for ignorance of physical science."
"Nous sommes sur un milieu vaste, toujours incertains et flottants entre l'ignorance et la connaissance ; et si nous pensons aller plus avant, notre objet branle, et échappe nos prises ; il se dérobe, et fuit d'une fuite éternelle : rien ne le peut arrêter. C'est notre condition naturelle et, toutefois, la plus contraire à notre inclination. Nous brûlons du désir d'approfondir tout et d'édifier une tour qui s'élève jusqu'à l'infini. Mais tout notre édifice craque, et la terre s'ouvre jusqu'aux abîmes."
"..it is impossible that our rational part should be other than spiritual; and if any one maintain that we are simply corporeal, this would far more exclude us from the knowledge of things, there being nothing so inconceivable as to say that matter knows itself. It is impossible to imagine how it should know itself."
"We know what we are, but know not what we may be."
"If you can look into the seeds of time, And say which grain will grow and which will not; Speak then to me."
"Knowledge is, indeed, that which, next to virtue, truly and essentially raises one man above another."
"Knowledge and Wisdom, far from being one, Have oft-times no connexion. Knowledge dwells In heads replete with thoughts of other men, Wisdom in minds attentive to their own."
"Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much; Wisdom is humble that he knows no more."
"What must be the knowledge of Him, from whom all created minds have derived both their power of knowledge, and the innumerable objects of their knowledge! What must be the wisdom of Him, from whom all things derive their wisdom!"
"Life is a jest; and all things show it. I thought so once; and now I know it."
"Upon the progress of knowledge the whole progress of the human race is immediately dependent: he who retards that, hinders this also. And he who hinders this, — what character does he assume towards his age and posterity? Louder than with a thousand voices, by his actions he proclaims into the deafened ear of the world present and to come — "As long as I live at least, the men around me shall not become wiser or better; — for in their progress I too, notwithstanding all my efforts to the contrary, should be dragged forward in some direction; and this I detest I will not become more enlightened, — I will not become nobler. Darkness and perversion are my elements, and I will summon all my powers together that I may not be dislodged from them.""
"Was man nicht versteht, besitzt man nicht."
"Eigentlich weiss man nur wenn man wenig weiss; mit dem Wissen wächst der Zweifel."
"Who can direct, when all pretend to know?"
"Knowledge is more than equivalent to force. The master of mechanicks laughs at strength."
"Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful."
"A desire of knowledge is the natural feeling of mankind; and every human being whose mind is not debauched, will be willing to give all that he has to get knowledge."
"Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it."
"That all our knowledge begins with experience there can be no doubt. For how is it possible that the faculty of cognition should be awakened into exercise otherwise than by means of objects which affect our senses, and partly of themselves produce representations, partly rouse our powers of understanding into activity, to compare, to connect, or to separate these, and so to convert the raw material of our sensuous impressions into a knowledge of objects, which is called experience? In respect of time, therefore, no knowledge of ours is antecedent to experience, but begins with it. But though all our knowledge begins with experience, it by no means follows, that all arises out of experience. For, on the contrary, it is quite possible that our empirical knowledge is a compound of that which we receive through impressions, and that which the faculty of cognition supplies from itself (sensuous impressions giving merely the occasion)... It is, therefore, a question which requires close investigation, and is not to be answered at first sight,—whether there exists a knowledge altogether independent of experience, and even of all sensuous impressions? Knowledge of this kind is called à priori, in contradistinction to empirical knowledge which has its sources à posteriori, that is, in experience."
"Wer viel weiss Hat viel zu sorgen."
"Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking makes what we read ours."
"The improvement of the understanding is for two ends: first, for our own increase of knowledge; secondly, to enable us to deliver and make out that knowledge to others."
"Diffused knowledge immortalizes itself."
"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing"
"That virtue only makes our bliss below, And all our knowledge is ourselves to know."
"In vain sedate reflections we would make When half our knowledge we must snatch, not take."
"Far must thy researches go Wouldst thou learn the world to know; Thou must tempt the dark abyss Wouldst thou prove what Being is; Naught but firmness gains the prize, Naught but fullness makes us wise, Buried deep truth e'er lies."
"Willst du dich selber erkennen, so sieh' wie die andern es treiben; Willst du die andern versteh'n, blick in dein eigenes Herz."
"Wouldst thou know thyself, observe the actions of others. Wouldst thou other men know, look thou within thine own heart."
"Much learning shows how little mortals know; Much wealth, how little worldlings can enjoy."
"Oh, be wise, Thou! Instructed that true knowledge leads to love."
"Real knowledge, like every thing else of the highest value, is not to be obtained easily. It must be worked for, — studied for, — thought for, — and, more than all, it must be prayed for."
"What a man knows should find its expression in what he does. The value of superior knowledge is chiefly in that it leads to a performing manhood."
"Knowledge by suffering entereth, And life is perfected by death."
"Pursuit of knowledge under difficulties."
"Real knowledge never promoted either turbulence or unbelief; but its progress is the forerunner of liberality and enlightened toleration."
"The tree of knowledge is not that of life."
"Knowledge is not happiness, and science But an exchange of ignorance for that Which is another kind of ignorance."
"And is this the prime And heaven-sprung message of the olden time?"
"There's lots of people—this town wouldn't hold them; Who don't know much excepting what's told them."
"For love is ever the beginning of Knowledge, as fire is of light."
"What is all Knowledge too but recorded Experience, and a product of History; of which, therefore, Reasoning and Belief, no less than Action and Passion, are essential materials?"
"To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge."
"How calmly and genially the mind apprehends one after another the laws of physics! What noble emotions dilate the mortal as he enters into the counsels of the creation, and feels by knowledge the privilege to Be! His insight refines him. The beauty of nature shines in his own breast. Man is greater that he can see this, and the universe less, because Time and Space relations vanish as laws are known. Here again we are impressed and even daunted by the immense Universe to be explored. "What we know, is a point to what we do not know.""
"There is no knowledge that is not power."
"Our knowledge is the amassed thought and experience of innumerable minds."
"Knowledge is the antidote to fear,— Knowledge, Use and Reason, with its higher aids."
"The Doctrine of Knowledge, apart from all special and definite knowing, proceeds immediately upon Knowledge itself, in the essential unity in which it recognises Knowledge as existing; and it raises this question in the first place — How this Knowledge can come into being, and what it is in its inward and essential Nature? The following must be apparent: — There is but One who is absolutely by and through himself, — namely, God; and God is not the mere dead conception to which we have thus given utterance, but he is in himself pure Life. He can neither change nor determine himself in aught within himself, nor become any other Being; for his Being contains within it all his Being and all possible Being, and neither within him nor out of him can any new Being arise."
"It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment. When I have clarified and exhausted a subject, then I turn away from it, in order to go into darkness again; The never-satisfied man is so strange—if he has completed a structure, then it is not in order to dwell in it peacefully, but in order to begin another. I imagine the world conqueror must feel thus, who, after one kingdom is scarcely conquered, stretches out his arms again for others."
"The first step to self-knowledge is self-distrust. Nor can we attain to any kind of knowledge, except by a like process."
"There are a multitude of allied branches of knowledge connected with man's condition; the relation of these to political economy is analogous to the connexion of mechanics, astronomy, optics, sound, heat, and every other branch more or less of physical science, with pure mathematics."
"Knowledge of the truth I may perhaps have attained to; happiness certainly not. What shall I do? Accomplish something in the world, men tell me. Shall I then publish my grief to the world, contribute one more proof for the wretchedness and misery of existence, perhaps discover a new flaw in human life, hitherto unnoticed? I might then reap the rare reward of becoming famous, like the man who discovered the spots on Jupiter. I prefer, however, to keep silent."
"Not if I know myself at all."
"Knowledge, when only the possession of a few, has almost always been turned to iniquitous purposes."
"Who knows how many links we may have to ascend in the vast cycle of worlds around, ere we arrive at the one which is knowledge — where we may look before, and after, and judge of the whole ? How many stages of probation may we yet have to pass !"
"As all true virtue, wherever found, is a ray of the life of the All-Holy; so all solid knowledge, all really accurate thought, descends from the Eternal Reason, and ought, when we apprehend it, to guide us upwards to Him."
"'Tain't a knowin' kind of cattle Thet is ketched with mouldy corn."
"To the man who aspires to know, no man who has been the meanest student of knowledge should be unknown."
"A kind of semi-Solomon, half-knowing everything, from the cedar to the hyssop."
"Let me always remember that it is not the amount of religious knowledge which I have, but the amount which I use, that determines my religious position and character."
"Every addition to true knowledge is an addition to human power."
"As revelation is the great strengthener of reason, the march of mind which leaves the Bible in the rear, is an advance, like that of our first parents in Paradise, towards knowledge, but, at the same time, towards death."
"Only by knowledge of that which is not thyself, shall thyself be learned."
"To understand at all what life means, one must begin with Christian belief. And I think knowledge may be sorrow with a man unless he loves."
"The scientists take for granted that the education of the schools creates intelligence; very often it does no such thing. It creates a superficial appearance of knowledge indeed; but knowledge is like food, unless it be thoroughly assimilated when absorbed, and thoroughly digested, it can give no nourishment; it lies useless, a heavy and unleavened mass."
"It is not in the books of the Philosophers, but in the religious symbolism of the Ancients, that we must look for the footprints of Science, and re-discover the Mysteries of Knowledge."
"The fear of speculation, the ostensible rush from the theoretical to the practical, brings about the same shallowness in action that it does in knowledge. It is by studying a strictly theoretical philosophy that we become most acquainted with Ideas, and only Ideas provide action with energy and ethical significance."
"Every increase of knowledge may possibly render depravity more depraved, as well as it may increase the strength of virtue. It is in itself only power; and its value depends on its application."
"A life of knowledge is not often a life of injury and crime."
"Every man is a valuable member of society who, by his observations, researches, and experiments, procures knowledge for men … it is in his knowledge that man has found his greatness and his happiness, the high superiority which he holds over the other animals who inhabit the earth with him, and consequently no ignorance is probably without loss to him, no error without evil … the particle and the planet are subject to the same laws, and what is learned of one will be known of the other … I bequeath the whole of my property … to the United States of America to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men."
"The essential difference between that knowledge which is, and that which is not conclusive evidence of Christian character, lies in this: the object of the one is the agreement of the several parts of a theological proposition; the object of the other is moral beauty, the intrinsic loveliness of God and Divine things. The sinner sees and hates; the saint sees and loves."
"Knowledge alone is the being of Nature, Giving a soul to her manifold features, Lighting through paths of the primitive darkness, The footsteps of Truth and the vision of Song."
"Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers."
"Who loves not Knowledge? Who shall rail Against her beauty? May she mix With men and prosper! Who shall fix Her pillars? Let her work prevail."
"For all the talk you hear about knowledge being such a wonderful thing, instinct is worth forty of it for real unerringness."
"We have not the reverent feeling for the rainbow that the savage has, because we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we gained by prying into that matter."
"Man's knowledge, save before his fellow man, Is ignorance—his widest wisdom folly."
"Knowledge, in truth, is the great sun in the firmament. Life and power are scattered with all its beams."
"Knowledge is the only fountain, both of the love and the principles of human liberty."
"According to the technical language of old writers, a thing and its qualities are described as subject and attributes; and thus a man’s faculties and acts are attributes of which he is the subject. The mind is the subject in which ideas inhere. Moreover, the man’s faculties and acts are employed upon external objects; and from objects all his sensations arise. Hence the part of a man’s knowledge which belongs to his own mind, is subjective: that which flows in upon him from the world external to him, is objective."
"Logic and sermons never convince, The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul. (Only what proves itself to every man and woman is so, Only what nobody denies is so.)"
"He who binds His soul to knowledge, steals the key of heaven."
"A man who knows how little he knows is well, a man who knows how much he knows is sick."
"Love and knowledge have one and the same goal, for both strive to overcome the separation in the elements of being and return to the point of their original unity.… To know an object means to negate the distance between it and consciousness; it means, in a certain sense, to become one with the object: cognitio nihil est aliud, quam Coitio quaedam cum suo cognobili. [Knowledge is nothing else than a kind of union with what is known.]"
"Do you, good people, believe that Adam and Eve were created in the Garden of Eden and that they were forbidden to eat from the tree of knowledge? I do. The church has always been afraid of that tree. It still is afraid of knowledge. Some of you say religion makes people happy. So does laughing gas. So does whiskey. I believe in the brain of man. I'm not worried about my soul."
""Knowledge," in the sense of information, means the working capital, the indispensable resources, of further inquiry; of finding out, or learning, more things. Frequently it is treated as an end in itself, and then the goal becomes to heap it up and display it when called for. This static, cold-storage ideal of knowledge is inimical to educative development."
"The notion that "applied" knowledge is somehow less worthy than "pure" knowledge, was natural to a society in which all useful work was performed by slaves and serfs, and in which industry was controlled by the models set by custom rather than by intelligence. Science, or the highest knowing, was then identified with pure theorizing, apart from all application in the uses of life; and knowledge relating to useful arts suffered the stigma attaching to the classes who engaged in them."
"I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution."
"I want to know God's thoughts — the rest are mere details."
"The general policy of the past has been to drive, but the era of force must give way to that of knowledge, and the policy of the future will be to teach and to lead, to the advantage of all concerned."
"If a man empties his purse into his head no man can take it from him. An investment in knowledge pays the best interest."
"I must know everything. I must penetrate the heart of his secret! I must become Caligari!"
"There are gems of wondrous brightness Ofttimes lying at our feet, And we pass them, walking thoughtless, Down the busy, crowded street. If we knew, our pace would slacken, We would step more oft with care, Lest our careless feet be treading To the earth some jewel rare."
"The only link between the verbal and objective world is exclusively structural, necessitating the conclusion that the only content of all 'knowledge' is structural. Now structure can be considered as a complex of relations, and ultimately as multi-dimensional order. From this point of view, all language can be considered as names for unspeakable entities on the objective level, be it things or feelings, or as names of relations. In fact... we find that an object represents an abstraction of a low order produced by our nervous system as the result of a sub-microscopic events acting as stimuli upon the nervous system."
"'Whatever you might say the object "is", well it is not.'"
"Without love the acquisition of knowledge only increases confusion and leads to self-destruction."
"Never was there a greater need for the diffusion of knowledge, for in the present ignorance of men there is a very real and imminent danger. We have in the immediate future the possibility of serious struggle; we have all the elements of a possible social upheaval, and we have no religion with sufficient hold upon the people to check what may develop into a wild and dangerous movement. As yet philosophy is the study of the very few only, and the science which has done so much for us, and has achieved so many triumphs, cannot stay the danger which threatens us. The only thing that can prevent it is the diffusion of knowledge, so that men shall understand what is really best for them and shall realize that nothing can ever be good for one which is against the interests of the whole. p. 333"
"A modern theory of knowledge which takes account of the relational as distinct from the merely relative character of all historical knowledge must start with the assumption that there are spheres of thought in which it is impossible to conceive of absolute truth existing independently of the values and position of the subject and unrelated to the social context."
"If you want knowledge, you must take part in the practice of changing reality."
"I hold all knowledge that is concerned with things that actually exist – all that is commonly called Science – to be of very slight value compared to the knowledge which, like philosophy and mathematics, is concerned with ideal and eternal objects, and is freed from this miserable world which God has made."
"The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge."
"All definite knowledge — so I should contend — belongs to science; all dogma as to what surpasses definite knowledge belongs to theology. But between theology and science there is a No Man’s Land, exposed to attack by both sides; this No Man’s Land is philosophy."
"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge."
"Technical knowledge, we have seen, is susceptible of formulation in rules, principles, directions, maxims - comprehensively, in propositions. It is possible to write down technical knowledge in a book. Consequently, it does not surprise us that when an artist writes about his art, he writes only about the technique of his art. This is so, not because he is ignorant of what may be called the aesthetic element, or thinks it unimportant, but because what he has to say about that he has said already (if he is a painter) in his pictures, and he knows no other way of saying it. And the same is true when a religious man writes about his religion or a cook about cookery. And it may be observed that this character of being susceptible of precise formulation gives to technical knowledge at least the appearance of certainty: it appears to be possible to be certain about a technique. On the other hand, it is a characteristic of practical knowledge that it is not susceptible of formulation of this kind. Its normal expression is in a customary or traditional way of doing things, or, simply, in practice. And this gives it the appearance of imprecision and consequently of uncertainty, of being a matter of opinion, of probability rather than truth. It is, indeed, a knowledge that is expressed in taste or connoisseurship, lacking rigidity and ready for the impress of the mind of the learner. Technical knowledge can be learned from a book; it can be learned in a correspondence course. Moreover, much of it can be learned by heart, repeated by rote, and applied mechanically: the logic of the syllogism is a technique of this kind. Technical knowledge, in short, can be both taught and learned in the simplest meanings of these words. On the other hand, practical knowledge can neither be taught nor learned, but only imparted and acquired. It exists only in practice, and the only way to acquire it is by apprenticeship to a master - not because the master can teach it (he cannot), but because it can be acquired only by continuous contact with one who is perpetually practising it. In the arts and in natural science what normally happens is that the pupil, in being taught and in learning the technique from his master, discovers himself to have acquired also another sort of knowledge than merely technical knowledge, without it ever having been precisely imparted and often without being able to say precisely what it is. Thus a pianist acquires artistry as well as technique, a chess-player style and insight into the game as well as a knowledge of the moves, and a scientist acquires (among other things) the sort of judgement which tells him when his technique is leading him astray and the connoisseurship which enables him to distinguish the profitable from the unprofitable directions to explore."
"It would be easier to break up a theme of Beethoven with dissecting knife or acid than to break up the soul by methods of abstract thought. Nature-knowledge and man-knowledge have neither ways nor aims in common."
"Nur dem, der Glück verachtet, wird Erkenntnis."
"All schools, all colleges, have two great functions: to confer, and to conceal, valuable knowledge. The theological knowledge which they conceal cannot justly be regarded as less valuable than that which they reveal. That is, when a man is buying a basket of strawberries it can profit him to know that the bottom half of it is rotten."
"Under the world view possessed by medieval scholars, the path of learning was a path of self-deprecation. … An opposite conception comes in with Bacon’s “knowledge is power.” If the aim of knowledge is domination, it is hardly to be supposed that the possessors of knowledge will be indifferent to their importance. On the contrary, they begin to swell; the seek triumphs in the material world (knowledge being meanwhile necessarily degraded to skills) which inflate their egotism and self-consideration. Such is a brief history of how knowledge passes from a means of spiritual redemption to a basis for intellectual pride."
"One only begins to comprehend when one begins to stop trying to know."
"Knowledge is indivisible. When people grow wise in one direction, they are sure to make it easier for themselves to grow wise in other directions as well. On the other hand, when they split up knowledge, concentrate on their own field, and scorn and ignore other fields, they grow less wise — even in their own field."
"There's nothing you can know that isn't known Nothing you can see that isn't shown There's nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be It's easy"
"It is not my place to tell you whether there is indefeasible ignorance of ultimate reality. I am ignorant of whether there is or is not. But you should think of these things because there are no things more important, though there are no questions more difficult or less answerable. But one's whole life may be changed if one changes his mind about these questions."
"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known."
"The trouble with people is not that they don't know but that they know so much that ain't so."
"How wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge. If in fact the frontiers of knowledge are being pushed further and further back (and that is bound to be the case), then God is being pushed back with them, and is therefore continually in retreat. We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don’t know."
"While knowledge is orderly and cumulative, information is random and miscellaneous."
"Man's need of self-esteem entails the need for a sense of control over reality – but no control is possible in a universe which, by one's own concession, contains the supernatural, the miraculous and the causeless, a universe in which one is at the mercy of ghosts and demons, in which one must deal, not with the unknown, but with the unknowable; no control is possible if man proposes, but a ghost disposes; no control is possible if the universe is a haunted house."
"And by the way, it’s knowledge that moves mountains, you know, not faith."
"Knowledge makes people special. Knowledge enriches life itself."
"A man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting... Thus a man of knowledge sweats and puffs and if one looks at him he is just like an ordinary man, except that the folly of his life is under his control."
"Knowledge is a deadly friend, If no one sets the rules. The fate of all mankind I see, Is in the hands of fools."
"We should admit rather that power produces knowledge (and not simply by encouraging it because it serves power or by applying it because it is useful); that power and knowledge directly imply one another."
"There's no earthly way of knowing Which direction we are going There's no knowing where we're rowing Or which way the river's flowing Is it raining? Is it snowing? Is a hurricane a-blowing? Not a speck of light is showing So the danger must be growing Are the fires of hell a-glowing? Is the grisly reaper mowing? Yes, the danger must be growing 'Cause the rowers keep on rowing And they're certainly not showing Any signs that they are slowing!"
"Knowing, whatever its level, is not the act by which a subject transformed into an object docilely and passively accepts the contents others give or impose on him or her. Knowledge, on the contrary, necessitates the curious presence of subjects confronted with the world. It requires their transforming action on reality. It demands a constant searching. It implies invention and reinvention. It claims from each person a reflection on the very act of knowing."
"Knowing is the task of Subjects, not of objects. It is as a subject, and only as such, that a man or woman can really know. In the learning process the only person who really learns is s/he who appropriates what is learned, who apprehends and thereby re-invents that learning; s/he who is able to apply the appropriated learning to concrete existential situations. On the other hand, the person who is filled by another with "contents" whose meaning s/he is not aware of, which contradict his or her way of being in the world, cannot learn because s/he is not challenged."
"The best student in physics or mathematics, at school or university, is not one who memorizes formulae but one who is aware of the reason for them. For students, the more simply and docilely they receive the contents with which their teachers "fill" them in the name of knowledge, the less they are able to think and the more they become merely repetitive. The best philosophy student is not one who discourses, "ipsis verbis," on the philosophy of Plato, Marx, or Kant but one who thinks critically about their ideas and takes the risk of thinking too."
"Various attempts have been made in recent years to state necessary and sufficient conditions for someone's knowing a given proposition. The attempts have often been such that they can be stated in a form similar to the following: (a) S knows that P IFF (i) P is true, (ii) S believes that P, and (iii) S is justified in believing that P. ... These ... examples show that definition (a) does not state a sufficient condition for someone's knowing a given proposition."
"Nothing can be achieved without knowledge, and yet everything can be achieved just through a pure heart."
"The human sciences have to assume at least an equal responsibility in establishing the foundations of knowledge."
"I hold that every bit of definite knowledge has to have a mathematical aspect"
"Charles Hartshorne, "Charles Hartshorne, Philosophy," in interview with Steven Vita, Veery journal (1996)"
"No human mind can comprehend all the knowledge which guides the actions of society."
"Civilization enables us constantly to profit from knowledge which we individually do not possess and because each individual's use of his particular knowledge may serve to assist others unknown to him in achieving their ends that men as members of civilized society can pursue their individual ends so much more successfully than they could alone."
"But history may well remember this as a week for an act of lesser immediate impact, and that is the decision by the United States and the Soviet Union to seek concrete agreements on the joint exploration of space. Experience has taught us that an agreement to negotiate does not always mean a negotiated agreement. But should such a joint effort be realized, its significance could well be tremendous for us all. In terms of space science, our combined knowledge and efforts can benefit the people of all the nations: joint weather satellites to provide more ample warnings against destructive storms--joint communications systems to draw the world more closely together--and cooperation in space medicine research and space tracking operations to speed the day when man will go to the moon and beyond. But the scientific gains from such a joint effort would offer, I believe, less realized returns than the gains for world peace. For a cooperative Soviet-American effort in space science and exploration would emphasize the interests that must unite us, rather than those that always divide us. It offers us an area in which the stale and sterile dogmas of the cold war could be literally left a quarter of a million miles behind. And it would remind us on both sides that knowledge, not hate, is the passkey to the future--that knowledge transcends national antagonisms--that it speaks a universal language--that it is the possession not of a single class, or of a single nation or a single ideology, but of all mankind."
"We may be proud as a nation of our record in scientific achievement--but at the same time we must be impressed by the interdependence of all knowledge. I am certain that every scholar and scientist here today would agree that his own work has benefited immeasurably from the work of the men and women in other countries. The prospect of a partnership with Soviet scientists in the exploration of space opens up exciting prospects of collaboration in other areas of learning. And cooperation in the pursuit of knowledge can hopefully lead to cooperation in the pursuit of peace."
"No one who examines the modern world can doubt that the great currents of history are carrying the world away from the monolithic idea towards the pluralistic idea--away from communism and towards national independence and freedom. No one can doubt that the wave of the future is not the conquest of the world by a single dogmatic creed but the liberation of the diverse energies of free nations and free men. No one can doubt that cooperation in the pursuit of knowledge must lead to freedom of the mind and freedom of the soul."
"Beyond the drumfire of daily crisis, therefore, there is arising the outlines of a robust and vital world community, founded on nations secure in their own independence, and united by their allegiance to world peace. It would be foolish to say that this world will be won tomorrow, or the day after. The processes of history are fitful and uncertain and aggravating. There will be frustrations and setbacks. There will be times of anxiety and gloom. The specter of thermonuclear war will continue to hang over mankind; and we must heed the advice of Oliver Wendell Holmes of "freedom leaning on her spear" until all nations are wise enough to disarm safely and effectively. Yet we can have a new confidence today in the direction in which history is moving. Nothing is more stirring than the recognition of great public purpose. Every great age is marked by innovation and daring--by the ability to meet unprecedented problems with intelligent solutions. In a time of turbulence and change, it is more true than ever that knowledge is power; for only by true understanding and steadfast judgment are we able to master the challenge of history."
"All types of knowledge, ultimately mean self knowledge."
"When I speak of knowledge, as you know, I am speaking of that dark and true depth which understanding serves, waits upon, and makes accessible through language to ourselves and others. It is this depth within each of us that nurtures vision."
"Man's knowledge makes another leap through the test of practice. This leap is more important than the previous one. For it is this leap alone that can prove the correctness or incorrectness of the first leap in cognition, i.e., of the ideas, theories, policies, plans or measures formulated in the course of reflecting the objective external world. There is no other way of testing truth. Furthermore, the one and only purpose of the proletariat in knowing the world is to change it. Often, correct knowledge can be arrived at only after many repetitions of the process leading from matter to consciousness and then back to matter, that is, leading from practice to knowledge and then back to practice."
"I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant."
"Penetrating so many secrets, we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there it sits nevertheless, calmly licking its chops."
"Each part of the mind sees only a little of what happens in some others, and that little is swiftly refined, reformulated and "represented." We like to believe that these fragments have meanings in themselves—apart from the great webs of structure from which they emerge—and indeed this illusion is valuable to us qua thinkers—but not to us as psychologists—because it leads us to think that expressible knowledge is the first thing to study."
"I think that asking “what's the point?” when referring to the contents of a study or research project can be indicative of a utilitarian, pragmatic, consumerist mindset. I believe that advanced civilizations should leave room for knowledge as a value in itself."
"What is the difference between merely knowing (or remembering, or memorizing) and understanding? ...A thing or idea seems meaningful only when we have several different ways to represent it–different perspectives and different associations. ...Then we can turn it around in our minds, so to speak: however it seems at the moment, we can see it another way and we never come to a full stop. In other words, we can 'think' about it. If there were only one way to represent this thing or idea, we would not call this representation thinking."
"How can the unknown merit reverence? In other words how can you revere that of which you are ignorant? At the same time, it would be ridiculous to propose that what we know merits reverence. What we know merits any one of a number of things, but it stands to reason reverence isn't one of them. In other words, apart from the known and the unknown, what else is there?"
"The more we learn about the world, and the deeper our learning, the more conscious, specific, and articulate will be our knowledge of what we do not know, our knowledge of our ignorance. For this, indeed, is the main source of our ignorance — the fact that our knowledge can be only finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite."
"To gain knowledge, we must learn to ask the right questions; and to get answers, we must act, not wait for answers to occur to us."
"Let no one be deluded that a knowledge of the path can substitute Jor putting one foot in front of the other."
"I think of the need for more wisdom in the world, to deal with the knowledge that we have. At one time we had wisdom, but little knowledge. Now we have a great deal of knowledge, but do we have enough wisdom to deal with that knowledge?"
"Knowledge is not eating, and we cannot expect to devour and possess what we mean. Knowledge is recognition of something absent; it is a salutation, not an embrace."
"Ideas are everywhere, but knowledge is rare."
"I shall maintain that there simply is no such thing as philosophical knowledge, nor any philosophical way of knowing anything, and defend the humble point that philosophy is indeed the love of wisdom."
"Knowledge is in the end based on acknowledgement."
"People making bad choices ... and blame but themselves, the beginning reality tv show folks... glad we grew out of that, when you know better, you do better, right?"
"A deep consideration of the essence of knowledge should reveal how knowledge corresponds to the truth. ... Darkness reigns when knowledge is silent. ... Knowledge is a unique kind of property, indeed: you can share it with others, while still possessing it. ... There is a fascinating entanglement of science and knowledge, which is expressed as scientific knowledge."
"You can't manage knowledge — nobody can. What you can do is to manage the environment in which knowledge can be created, discovered, captured, shared, distilled, validated, transferred, adopted, adapted and applied."
"While knowledge is increasingly being viewed as a commodity or intellectual asset, there are some paradoxical characteristics of knowledge that are radically different from other valuable commodities. These knowledge characteristics include the following: • Using knowledge does not consume it. • Transferring knowledge does not result in losing it. • Knowledge is abundant, but the ability to use it is scarce. • Much of an organization’s valuable knowledge walks out the door at the end of the day."
"There may be things that are completely unknowable to us, so we must be careful not to treat the limits of our knowledge as sure guides to the limit of what there is."
"In Western society... [t]here are no more continents... little left to discover. I am, in part, an ant biologist... and I knew that much of the world of insects remains unknown. ...How ignorant are we? The question of what we know and do not know clung to me. ...In looking into the stories of biological discovery, I... began to find... a collection of scientists, often obsessive, usually brilliant, occasionally half-mad... Those individuals very often see the same things that other scientists see, but they pay more attention... and they focus on them to the point of exhaustion, and at the risk of the ridicule of their peers. ...[W]e are, before these discoveries, always more ignorant than we imagine ourselves to be. ...[W]e are repeatedly willing to imagine we have found most of what is left to discover. Before microbes were discovered, scientists were confident that insects were the smallest organisms. Before life was discovered at the bottom of the ocean, many scientists were confident that nothing lived deeper than three hundred fathoms. Once we made a tree of life that included four kingdoms (animals, plants, fungi, and s), we were confident that there would be no more major branches to reveal. ...We are again at a stage when we believe we have found most of what might be found, but we are wrong. ...[W]hole realms of life remain to be found. ...And even before a new realm or kind of life is found, we still have to explore the realms we have already discovered. Most species on Earth are not yet named. Most named species have not yet been studied. When we lived in small communities, hunting and gathering, we knew only the animals and plants around us, particularly those... useful or dangerous. Living on the thin green surface of our small planet in a universe full of stars, we are not so different today. The wild leaps up and more often than not we do not event know its name."
"Fortunately, in our time, we've learned more about the problems than in all preceding history. And with knowing comes caring."
"Knowledge is the superpower of the 21st century. Even the smartest people alive when I was born did not know what 10-year-olds today have available to them. That’s truly cause for hope."
"What we call knowledge does not and cannot have the purpose of producing representations of an independent reality, but instead has an adaptive function."
"Our brains are really not equipped to process events on the geologic scale—at least in reference to how we choose to live, or what we choose to do in the here and now."
"As Immanuel Kant pointed out long ago, learning to learn is one of the things that we cannot learn from experience. [see Kant 18th century quote above on à priori and à posteriori knowledge] ...So although sensations give us "occasions" to learn, this cannot be what makes us "able", to learn, because we first must have the additional knowledge that our brains would need, as Kant has said, to "produce representations" and then "to connect" them. Such additional knowledge would also include inborn ways to recognize correlations and other relations among sensations. I suspect that... our brains are already innately endowed with machinery to help us "to compare, to connect, or to separate" objects so that we can represent them as existing in space."
"It makes no sense to seek a single best way to represent knowledge—because each particular form of expression also brings its particular limitations. For example, logic-based systems are very precise, but they make it hard to do reasoning with analogies. Similarly, statistical systems are useful for making predictions, but do not serve well to represent the reasons why those predictions are sometimes correct."
"May I free myself from the labyrinth of knowledge"
"The importance of knowing nothing is underrated."
"As we know, There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know, there are known unknowns, that is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we do not know we do not know."
"I draw [a] distinction between knowledge and information. You can find information online very easily. Knowledge is another matter altogether. Now, this is not something new about the Internet [but] a basic feature of human life that while information is easy, knowledge is difficult. There has never been a shortage of mere data and opinion in human life. It’s a very old observation that the most ignorant people are usually full of opinions, while many of the most knowledgeable people are full of doubt. Other people are certainly sources of knowledge, but they are also sources of half-truths, confusion, misinformation, and lies. If we simply want information from others, it is easy to get; if we want knowledge in any strong sense of the word, it is very difficult."
"The acquisition of knowledge is the voyage of humanity, isn't it?"
"[[Game theory|[G]ame theory]] has already established itself as an essential tool in the , where it is widely regarded as a unifying language for investigating human behavior. Game theory's prominence in evolutionary biology builds a natural bridge between the life sciences and the behavioral sciences. And connections have been established between game theory and the two most prominent pillars of physics: and quantum theory. ...[M]any physicists, neuroscientists, and social scientists... are... pursuing the dream of a quantitative science of human behavior. Game theory is showing signs of... an increasing[ly] important role in that endeavor. It's a story of exploration along the shoreline separating the continent of knowledge from an ocean of ignorance... a story worth telling."
"The knowable world is incomplete if seen from any one point of view, incoherent if seen from all points of view at once, and empty if seen from nowhere in particular."
"Knowledge is one of the most scarce of all resources and a pricing system economizes on its use by forcing those with the most knowledge of their own particular situation to make bids for goods and resources based on that knowledge, rather than on their ability to influence other people in planning commissions, legislatures, or royal palaces."
"The sucker’s trap is when you focus on what you know and what others don’t know, rather than the reverse."
"Sapiens did not forage only for food and materials. They foraged for knowledge as well."
"He who knows not, and knows not that he knows not, is a fool. Shun him. He who knows not, and knows that he knows not, is simple. Teach him. He who knows, and knows not that he knows, is asleep. Wake him. He who knows, and knows that he knows, is wise. Follow him."
"Men are four: He who knows not and knows not he knows not, he is a fool—shun him; He who knows not and knows he knows not, he is simple—teach him; He who knows and knows not he knows, he is asleep—wake him; He who knows and knows he knows, he is wise—follow him!"
"There are four kinds of people, three of which are to be avoided and the fourth cultivated: those who don't know that they don't know; those who know that they don't know; those who don't know that they know; and those who know that they know."
"He that hath knowledge spareth his words."
"Learn to say I do not know"
"If a man empties his purse into his head no one can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest."
"Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge."
"A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."
"They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge."
"Give light and the people will find their own way."
"Wisdom is not absolute autocracy and independence of the soul, but obedience and subordination of the soul to higher things, through which it acquires the ability to dominate and subordinate lower things. Only in this way does it become subordinate and mistress. “'Servire Deo libertas est”'. Humility and freedom are equally necessary."
"It is necessary therefore that the person who is to study, with any tolerable chance of profit, the principles of nobleness and justice and politics generally, should have received a good moral training. For our data here are moral judgments, and if a man knows what it is right to do, he does not require a formal reason. And a person that has been thus trained, either possesses these first principles already, or can easily acquire them. As for him who neither possesses nor can acquire them, let him take to heart the words of Hesiod:"
"‘ He is the best of all who thinks for himself in all things."
"He, too, is good who takes advice from a wiser (person)."
"But he who neither thinks for himself, nor lays to heart another's wisdom, this is a useless man.’"
"For many of my years — perhaps twelve — had passed away since my nineteenth, when, upon the reading of Cicero's Hortensius, I was roused to a desire for wisdom. And here I was, still postponing the abandonment of this world's happiness to devote myself to the search. For not just the finding alone, but also the bare search for it, ought to have been preferred above the treasures and kingdoms of this world; better than all bodily pleasures, though they were to be had for the taking."
"A fence to wisdom is silence."
"Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom."
"Wisdom is the science of the spirit, just as knowledge is the science of matter. Knowledge is separative and objective, whilst wisdom is synthetic and subjective. Knowledge divides; wisdom unites. Knowledge differentiates whilst wisdom blends."
"Wisdom concerns the one Self, knowledge deals with the not-self whilst the understanding is the point of view of the Ego [soul or higher self], or Thinker, or his relation between them."
"Wisdom, actuated and motivated by love, and intelligently applied to world problems, is much needed today... Many more must love with wisdom, and appreciate the group aspiration, before we shall see the next reality to be known and to emerge out of the darkness which we are now in the process of dispelling."
"The storyteller is a man who has counsel for his readers. But if today "having counsel" is beginning to have an old-fashioned ring, this is because the communicability of experience is decreasing. In consequence we have no counsel either for ourselves or for others. After all, counsel is less an answer to a question than a proposal concerning the continuation of a story which is just unfolding. To seek this counsel one would first have to be able to tell the story. ... Counsel woven into the fabric of real life is wisdom. The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out."
"Men are often praised for their sagacity, but all the foresight in the world can't tell a double-yoked egg until it is broken."
"Every man thinks his own wisdom faultless, and every mother her own child beautiful. (January) ... If wisdom were to vanish suddenly from the universe, no one yet would suspect himself a fool. (January) ... To feel one’s ignorance is to be wise; to feel sure of one’s wisdom is to be a fool. (February) ...Daily practical wisdom consists of four things: To know the root of Truth, the branches of Truth, the limit of Truth, and the opposite of Truth. (February 28) ... The heart of the fool is in his tongue; the tongue of the wise is in his heart. (July) ... One is not aged because his head is grey. Whoever, although a youth, has wisdom, him the gods consider an elder. (October) ... Intelligence is not shown by witty words, but by wise actions. (October) ....The most precious gift received by man on earth is desire for wisdom. (December) ... Do but return to the principles of wisdom, and those who take you now for a monkey or a wild beast will make a god of you. (December)"
"Do not go by revelation; Do not go by tradition; Do not go by hearsay; Do not go on the authority of sacred texts; Do not go on the grounds of pure logic; Do not go by a view that seems rational; Do not go by reflecting on mere appearances; Do not go along with a considered view because you agree with it; Do not go along on the grounds that the person is competent; Do not go along because "the recluse is our teacher." Kalamas, when you yourselves know: These things are unwholesome, these things are blameworthy; these things are censured by the wise; and when undertaken and observed, these things lead to harm and ill, abandon them... Kalamas, when you know for yourselves: These are wholesome; these things are not blameworthy; these things are praised by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to benefit and happiness, having undertaken them, abide in them."
"Wisdom is purified by morality, and morality is purified by wisdom: where one is, the other is, the moral man has wisdom and the wise man has morality, and the combination of morality and wisdom is called the highest thing in the world."
"But these are foolish things to all the wise, And I love wisdom more than she loves me; My tendency is to philosophise On most things, from a tyrant to a tree; But still the spouseless virgin Knowledge flies, What are we? and whence come we? what shall be Our ultimate existence? What's our present? Are questions answerless, and yet incessant."
"Perhaps that is the only wisdom there really is, young Mage: that our choices matter."
"Don’t be afraid to be a fool. Remember, you cannot be both young and wise. Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly just cynics. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics always say no. But saying yes begins things. Saying yes is how things grow. Saying yes leads to knowledge. "Yes" is for young people. So for as long as you have the strength to, say yes."
"It seems the part of wisdom."
"Knowledge is proud that he has learn'd so much; Wisdom is humble that he knows no more."
"The fear of God is not the beginning of wisdom. The fear of God is the death of wisdom. Skepticism and doubt lead to study and investigation, and investigation is the beginning of wisdom."
""I do not know." The person who cannot make that statement is one who will never learn anything. And I have prided myself on my ability to learn."
"Verily, wisdom is like hunger. Perhaps it is a very fine thing—but who would willingly partake of it?"
"To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom."
"Man thinks Brutes have no wisdom, since they know not his: Can we divine their world?"
"In our age, when men seem more than ever prone to confuse wisdom with knowledge, and knowledge with information, and to try to solve problems of life in terms of engineering, there is coming into existence a new kind of provincialism."
"I must reveal to you that I am not one of the Divine who march into the desert and return gravid with wisdom."
"Cleverness is not wisdom. And not to think mortal thoughts is to see few days."
"For in much wisdom there is much sorrow; whoever increases knowledge increases grief."
"Wisdom is a better defence for the wise than ten princes in the city."
"How will people become wise"
"A wise man changes his mind sometimes, but a fool never. To change your mind is the best evidence you have one. The last redoubt holding out for me was the year-day principle (on which I had written a defense in 1972 for the Southern Publishing Association Daniel volume which was published in 1978). This collapsed when I handled hundreds of books of commentary on Revelation in the Library of Congress stacks and found that the respective authors had in many cases suggested dates that seemed appropriate for their own time but ridiculous later. It became clear that we, as Adventists, had done the same as our predecessors."
"Wisdom is intelligence in context."
"Laissez dire les sots: le savoir a son prix."
"The Doors of Wisdom are never shut."
"Silence is not always a Sign of Wisdom, but Babbling is ever a Mark of Folly."
"Wisdom makes but a slow defence against trouble, though at last a sure one."
"... quantum theory reminds us, as Bohr has put it, of the old wisdom that when searching for harmony in life one must never forget that in the drama of existence we are ourselves both players and spectators. It is understandable that in our scientific relation to nature our own activity becomes very important when we have to deal with parts of nature into which we can penetrate only by using the most elaborate tools."
"A boor cannot be sin-fearing, an ignoramus cannot be pious, a bashful one cannot learn, a short-tempered person cannot teach, nor does anyone who does much business grow wise."
"Vis consili expers mole ruit sua."
"Virtus est vitium fugere et sapientia prima stultitia caruisse."
"No se avergüenzan los Sabios de mirarse convencidos; porque saben, como Sabios, que su saber es finito."
"But the wisdom from above is first of all pure, then peaceable, reasonable, ready to obey, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial, not hypocritical. Moreover, the fruit of righteousness is sown in peaceful conditions for those who are making peace."
"The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook."
"Wisdom requires the long view. And the long view shows us that the revolution of national independence is a fundamental fact of our era. This revolution will not be stopped. As new nations emerge from the oblivion of centuries, their first aspiration is to affirm their national identity. Their deepest hope is for a world where, within a framework of international cooperation, every country can solve its own problems according to its own traditions and ideals."
"Beyond the drumfire of daily crisis, therefore, there is arising the outlines of a robust and vital world community, founded on nations secure in their own independence, and united by their allegiance to world peace. It would be foolish to say that this world will be won tomorrow, or the day after. The processes of history are fitful and uncertain and aggravating. There will be frustrations and setbacks. There will be times of anxiety and gloom. The specter of thermonuclear war will continue to hang over mankind; and we must heed the advice of Oliver Wendell Holmes of "freedom leaning on her spear" until all nations are wise enough to disarm safely and effectively. Yet we can have a new confidence today in the direction in which history is moving. Nothing is more stirring than the recognition of great public purpose. Every great age is marked by innovation and daring--by the ability to meet unprecedented problems with intelligent solutions. In a time of turbulence and change, it is more true than ever that knowledge is power; for only by true understanding and steadfast judgment are we able to master the challenge of history. If this is so, we must strive to acquire knowledge--and to apply it with wisdom."
"What the world actually admires as sagacity is knowledge of evil—whereas wisdom is knowledge of the good. The one who loves does not have and does not want to have knowledge of evil; in this regard he is and remains, he wants to be and wants to remain, a child."
"The humble sages, by virtue of true knowledge, see with equal vision a learned and gentle brahmana, a cow, an elephant, a dog and a dog-eater [outcaste]."
"You grieve for those who should not be grieved for; yet you speak wise words. Neither for the dead nor those not dead do the wise grieve. Never was there a time when I did not exist nor you nor these lords of men. As the soul experiences in this body childhood, youth, and old age, so also it acquires another body; the sage in this is not deluded."
"For verily (the true nature) of 'right action' should be known; also (that) of 'forbidden (or unlawful) action' and of 'inaction'; imponderable is the nature (path) of action. He who recognises inaction in action and action in inaction is wise among men; he is a Yogi and a true performer of all actions."
"As enjoyments, born of contacts (with external objects), have a beginning and an end, they become the cause of unhappiness. The wise man, O Kaunteya! does not find happiness in them."
"There is nothing so easy as to be wise for others ; a species of prodigality, by the by — for such wisdom is wholly wasted."
"Wisdom is only knowledge well applied."
"Theosophy... has its good news to bring you; not the good news of salvation, indeed, but the still greater good news that there is nothing to be “saved” from except your own error and ignorance that there is no Divine wrath from which you must escape, but that the whole world is moving on in one mighty and glorious order towards an end greater than the mind of man can conceive. This is not a poetic dream, not a mere flight of the imagination, but a certainty which can be seen and known, which can be examined scientifically by those who will take the trouble to prepare themselves for such an investigation."
"Never... forget that though the outer side of life may seem so dull and heavy, there is yet always the Divine fire glowing within, remember that 'the soul of things is sweet, the heart of being is celestial rest, stronger than woe is Will, that which is good doth pass to better, best.' ...So this celestial bliss, that lies beyond the sorrow and the suffering shall become for you the ever present reality, until you learn to look through the misery and see its cause — and not only to see the cause but (far beyond that) the exhaustion of that evil through this temporary suffering, and the glory that is to come the magnificent qualities which all this is developing in the man. So this gospel will become a living reality to you. So, although you sympathize ever more and more deeply, you will find that you have within you the power to help, to comfort and to save, because you know, because you have this gospel in your hearts, and so you can communicate its light to others. So you will say to them once more, in the words of the greatest of Indian teachers: "Do not complain, and cry and pray, but open your eyes and see; the light is all about you, if you will only remove the bandage from your eyes and look; it is always with you, so wonderful, so glorious, so far bond anything that man has ever dreamt of or prayed for, and it is forever and forever.” p. 392"
"Ripe in wisdom was he, but patient, and simple, and childlike."
"The sons of this system of things are wiser in a practical way toward their own generation than the sons of the light are."
"Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill Is daily spun; but there exists no loom To weave it into fabric"
"Though wisdom wake, suspicion sleeps At wisdom's gate, and to simplicity Resigns her charge, while goodness thinks no ill Where no ill seems."
"But to know That which before us lies in daily life, Is the prime wisdom."
"Socrates * * * Whom, well inspir'd, the oracle pronounc'd Wisest of men."
"It takes finishing 490 books for one to achieve wisdom."
"Wisdom is not the purchase of a day, and it is no wonder that we should err at the first setting off."
"Wisdom … never closes her school of thought but always opens her doors to those who thirst for the sweet water of discourse, and pouring on them an unstinted stream of undiluted doctrine, persuades them to be drunken with the drunkenness which is soberness itself."
"Tell (for you can) what is it to be wise? 'Tis but to know how little can be known, To see all other's faults, and feel our own."
"Doth not wisdom cry? and understanding put forth her voice? She standeth in the top of high places, by the way in the places of the paths. She crieth at the gates, at the entry of the city, at the coming in at the doors. Unto you, O men, I call; and my voice is to the sons of man. O ye simple, understand wisdom: and, ye fools, be ye of an understanding heart. Hear; for I will speak of excellent things; and the opening of my lips shall be right things. For my mouth shall speak truth; and wickedness is an abomination to my lips. All the words of my mouth are in righteousness; there is nothing froward or perverse in them. They are all plain to him that understandeth, and right to them that find knowledge. Receive my instruction, and not silver; and knowledge rather than choice gold. For wisdom is better than rubies; and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it. I wisdom dwell with prudence, and find out knowledge of witty inventions. The fear of the Lord is to hate evil: pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate. Counsel is mine, and sound wisdom: I am understanding; I have strength."
"I lead in the way of righteousness, in the midst of the paths of judgment: That I may cause those that love me to inherit substance; and I will fill their treasures. The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. When there were no depths, I was brought forth; when there were no fountains abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth: While as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world. When he prepared the heavens, I was there: when he set a compass upon the face of the depth: When he established the clouds above: when he strengthened the fountains of the deep: When he gave to the sea his decree, that the waters should not pass his commandment: when he appointed the foundations of the earth: Then I was by him, as one brought up with him: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him; Rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth; and my delights were with the sons of men. Now therefore hearken unto me, O ye children: for blessed are they that keep my ways. Hear instruction, and be wise, and refuse it not. Blessed is the man that heareth me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors. For whoso findeth me findeth life, and shall obtain favour of the LORD. But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: all they that hate me love death."
"The wise person storms the city of the mighty, and overthrows the stronghold in which they trust."
"He gives wisdom to whom He wills, and whoever has been given wisdom has certainly been given much good. And none will remember except those of understanding."
"Afin que ne semblons es Atheniens, qui ne consultoient jamais sinon après le cas faict."
"You are that rarest of creatures: a man with the wisdom to see beyond his own time."
"Wisdom precludes boldness."
"To realise the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom."
"Having granted the excellence of these maxims, I come to certain points in which I do not believe that one can grant either the superlative wisdom or the superlative goodness of Christ as depicted in the Gospels... there one does find some things that do not seem to be very wise. For one thing, he certainly thought that His second coming would occur in clouds of glory before the death of all the people who were living at that time. There are a great many texts that prove that. He says, for instance, "Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel till the Son of Man be come." Then he says, "There are some standing here which shall not taste death till the Son of Man comes into His kingdom"; and there are a lot of places where it is quite clear that He believed that His second coming would happen during the lifetime of many then living. That was the belief of His earlier followers, and it was the basis of a good deal of His moral teaching. When He said, "Take no thought for the morrow," and things of that sort, it was very largely because He thought that the second coming was going to be very soon, and that all ordinary mundane affairs did not count. I have, as a matter of fact, known some Christians who did believe that the second coming was imminent. I knew a parson who frightened his congregation terribly by telling them that the second coming was very imminent indeed, but they were much consoled when they found that he was planting trees in his garden. The early Christians did really believe it, and they did abstain from such things as planting trees in their gardens, because they did accept from Christ the belief that the second coming was imminent. In that respect, clearly He was not so wise as some other people have been, and He was certainly not superlatively wise."
"There is the instance of the Gadarene swine, where it certainly was not very kind to the pigs to put the devils into them and make them rush down the hill into the sea. You must remember that He was omnipotent, and He could have made the devils simply go away; but He chose to send them into the pigs. Then there is the curious story of the fig-tree, which always rather puzzled me. You remember what happened about the fig-tree. "He was hungry; and seeing a fig-tree afar off having leaves, He came if haply He might find anything thereon; and when he came to it He found nothing but leaves, for the time of figs was not yet. And Jesus answered and said unto it: 'No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever'.... and Peter.... saith unto Him: 'Master, behold the fig-tree which thou cursedst is withered away.'" This is a very curious story, because it was not the right time of year for figs, and you really could not blame the tree. I cannot myself feel that either in the matter of wisdom or in the matter of virtue Christ stands quite as high as some other people known to History. I think I should put Buddha and Socrates above Him in those respects."
"I am interested in a phase that I think we are entering. I call it "teleological evolution," evolution with a purpose. The idea of evolution by design, designing the future, anticipating the future. I think of the need for more wisdom in the world, to deal with the knowledge that we have. At one time we had wisdom, but little knowledge. Now we have a great deal of knowledge, but do we have enough wisdom to deal with that knowledge?"
"Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it."
"The disease having been caused by allowing cleverness to displace wisdom, no amount of clever research is likely to produce a cure."
"Full oft we see Cold wisdom waiting on superfluous folly."
"Wisdom and fortune combating together, If that the former dare but what it can, No chance may shake it."
"Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise."
"To that dauntless temper of his mind, He hath a wisdom that doth guide his valour To act in safety."
"Well, God give them wisdom that have it; and those that are fools, let them use their talents."
"Do you desire wisdom? Keep the commandments and the Lord will give her to you without measure; for fear of the Lord is wisdom and learning"
"My son, if thou wilt receive my words, and hide my commandments with thee; So that thou incline thine ear unto wisdom, and apply thine heart to understanding; Yea, if thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding; If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures; Then shalt thou understand the fear of the LORD, and find the knowledge of God. For the LORD giveth wisdom: out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding."
"Be not wise in thine own eyes."
"He taught me also, and said unto me, Let thine heart retain my words: keep my commandments, and live. Get wisdom, get understanding: forget it not; neither decline from the words of my mouth. Forsake her not, and she shall preserve thee: love her, and she shall keep thee. Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding. Exalt her, and she shall promote thee: she shall bring thee to honour, when thou dost embrace her. She shall give to thine head an ornament of grace: a crown of glory shall she deliver to thee."
"O ye simple, understand wisdom: and, ye fools, be ye of an understanding heart."
"For wisdom is better than rubies; And all the things that may be desired are not to be compared unto it."
"He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind. And the fool shall be servant to the wise in heart."
"For those who despise wisdom and instruction are doomed. Vain is their hope, fruitless their labours, and worthless their works."
"The beginning of wisdom is the most sincere desire for instruction."
"Those who get it obtain friendship with God."
"If you listen well enough, even the emptiness will whisper wisdom."
"It takes extraordinary wisdom and self-control to accept that many things have a logic we do not understand that is smarter than our own."
"'Tis held that sorrow makes us wise."
"Nor is he the wisest man who never proved himself a fool."
"It is a confusion to present the items of one sort in the idioms of another -- without awareness. For to do this is not just to cross two different sorts; it is to confuse them. It is to mistake, for example, the theory for the fact, the procedure for the process, the myth for history, the model for the thing and the metaphor for the face of literal truth."
"The wisest man is he who can account for his actions."
"Experience is the only source of wisdom: by which I mean, the competent conduct of life."
"Wisdom is oftimes nearer when we stoop Than when we soar."
"σοφίαν δὲ τὸ μέγιστον ἀγαθὸν οὐ δοκεῖ σοι ἀπείργουσα τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἡ ἀκρασία εἰς τοὐναντίον αὐτοὺς ἐμβάλλειν; ἢ οὐ δοκεῖ σοι προσέχειν τε τοῖς ὠφελοῦσι καὶ καταμανθάνειν αὐτὰ κωλύειν, ἀφέλκουσα ἐπὶ τὰ ἡδέα, καὶ πολλάκις αἰσθανομένους τῶν ἀγαθῶν τε καὶ τῶν κακῶν ἐκπλήξασα ποιεῖν τὸ χεῖρον ἀντὶ τοῦ βελτίονος αἱρεῖσθαι;"
"There is no wisdom without leisure."
"And wisdom is a butterfly And not a gloomy bird of prey."
"On every thorn, delightful wisdom grows, In every rill a sweet instruction flows."
"Be wise to-day; 'tis madness to defer; Next day the fatal precedent will plead; Thus on, till wisdom is push'd out of life."
"Wisdom, though richer than Peruvian mines, And sweeter than the sweet ambrosial hive, What is she, but the means of happiness? That unobtain'd, than folly more a fool."
"The man of wisdom is the man of years."
"But wisdom, awful wisdom! which inspects, Discerns, compares, weighs, separates, infers, Seizes the right, and holds it to the last."
"Teach me my days to number, and apply My trembling heart to wisdom."
"Putting human affairs in exact formulas shows in itself a lack of the sense of humor and therefore a lack of wisdom."
"To speak as the common people do, to think as wise men do."
"A wise man is out of the reach of fortune."
"The wisdom of our ancestors."
"Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise."
"Wisdom and goodness are twin-born, one heart Must hold both sisters, never seen apart."
"Some people are more nice than wise."
"But they whom truth and wisdom lead Can gather honey from a weed."
"Who are a little wise the best fools be."
"In much wisdom is much grief."
"The words of the wise are as goads."
"Nequicquam sapere sapientem, qui ipse sibi prodesse non quiret."
"No one could be so wise as Thurlow looked."
"Some are weather-wise, some are otherwise."
"Die Weisheit ist nur in der Wahrheit."
"The heart is wiser than the intellect."
"Chiefs who no more in bloody fights engage, But, wise through time, and narrative with age, In summer-days like grasshoppers rejoice, A bloodless race, that send a feeble voice."
"For never, never, wicked man was wise."
"In youth and beauty wisdom is but rare!"
"How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise!"
"Utiliumque sagax rerum et divina futuri."
"Sapere aude."
"Quis nam igitur liber? Sapiens qui sibi imperiosus."
"He taketh the wise in their own craftiness."
"Wisdom shall die with you."
"The price of wisdom is above rubies."
"Days should speak, and multitude of years should teach wisdom."
"Great men are not always wise."
"Away, thou strange justifier of thyself, to be wiser than thou wert, by the event."
"Victrix fortunæ sapientia."
"Il est plus aisé d'être sage pour les autres, que pour soi-même."
"Quisquis plus justo non sapit, ille sapit."
"Be wise; Soar not too high to fall; but stoop to rise."
"Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves."
"Wisdom is justified of her children."
"A little too wise they say do ne'er live long."
"Il est bon de frotter et limer notre cervelle centre celle d'autrui."
"The most manifest sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness: her state is like that of things in the regions above the moon, always clear and serene."
"Le sage vit tant qu'il doibt, non pas tent qu'il peut."
"Qui aura esté une fois bien fol ne sera nulle aultre fois bien sage."
"Seven wise men on an old black settle, Seven wise men of the Mermaid Inn, Ringing blades of the one right metal, What is the best that a blade can win?"
"Some men never spake a wise word, yet doe wisely; some on the other side doe never a wise deed, and yet speake wisely."
"When swelling buds their od'rous foliage shed, And gently harden into fruit, the wise Spare not the little offsprings, if they grow Redundant."
"Feliciter sapit qui alieno periculo sapit."
"Nemo solus satis sapit."
"Nemo mortalium omnibus horis sapit."
"Wisdom crieth without; she uttereth her voice in the street."
"Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom; and with all thy getting get understanding."
"Wisdom is better than rubies."
"Get wisdom, because it is better than gold: and purchase prudence, for it is more precious than silver."
"Those who seek me diligently find me."
"Be wisely worldly, but not worldly wise."
"Ce n'est pas être sage D'être plus sage qu'il ne le faut."
"The power is yours, but not the sight; You see not upon what you tread; You have the ages for your guide, But not the wisdom to be led."
"Wouldst thou wisely, and with pleasure, Pass the days of life's short measure, From the slow one counsel take, But a tool of him ne'er make; Ne'er as friend the swift one know, Nor the constant one as foe."
"The Italian seemes wise, and is wise; the Spaniard seemes wise, and is a foole; the French seemes a foole, and is wise; and the English seemes a foole and is a foole."
"Wisdom does not show itself so much in precept as in life—in a firmness of mind and mastery of appetite. It teaches us to do, as well as to talk; and to make our actions and words all of a color."
"Nulli sapere casu obtigit."
"Melius in malis sapimus, secunda rectum auferunt."
"As for me, all I know is that I know nothing."
"A short saying oft contains much wisdom."
"Happy those Who in the after-days shall live, when Time Hath spoken, and the multitude of years Taught wisdom to mankind!"
"The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance."
"By Wisdom wealth is won; But riches purchased wisdom yet for none."
"The Prophet's words were true; The mouth of Ali is the golden door Of Wisdom." When his friends to Ali bore These words, he smiled and said: "And should they ask The same until my dying day, the task Were easy; for the stream from Wisdom's well, Which God supplies, is inexhaustible."
"Isthuc est sapere non quod ante pedes modo est Videre sed etiam illa, quæ futura sunt Prospicere."
"The children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light."
"Wisdom alone is true ambition's aim Wisdom the source of virtue, and of fame, Obtained with labour, for mankind employed, And then, when most you share it, best enjoyed."
"Wisdom sits alone, Topmost in heaven:—she is its light—its God; And in the heart of man she sits as high— Though grovelling eyes forget her oftentimes, Seeing but this world's idols. The pure mind Sees her forever: and in youth we come Fill'd with her sainted ravishment, and kneel, Worshipping God through her sweet altar fires, And then is knowledge "good.""
"Wisdom is the gray hair unto men, and an unspotted life is old age."
"And he is oft the wisest man Who is not wise at all."
"The wise man is but a clever infant, spelling letters from a hieroglyphical prophetic book, the lexicon of which lies in eternity."
"What in me is dark, Illumine, what is low, raise and support."
"For knowledge to become wisdom, and for the soul to grow, the soul must be rooted in God: and it is through prayer that there comes to us that which is the strength of our strength, and the virtue of our virtue, the Holy Spirit."
"The question is, whether, like the Divine Child in the Temple, we are turning knowledge into wisdom, and whether, understanding more of the mysteries of life, we are feeling more of its sacred law; and whether, having left behind the priests and the scribes and the doctors and the fathers, we are about our Father's business, and becoming wise to God."
"Drop, drop—in our sleep, upon the heart sorrow falls, memory's pain, and to us, though against our very will, even in our own despite, comes wisdom by the awful grace of God."
"[The argument of Alcidamas:] Everyone honours the wise. Thus the Parians have honoured Archilochus, in spite of his bitter tongue; the Chians Homer, though he was not their countryman; the Mytilenaeans Sappho, though she was a woman; the Lacedaemonians actually made Chilon a member of their senate, though they are the least literary of men; the inhabitants of Lampsacus gave public burial to Anaxagoras, though he was an alien, and honour him even to this day."
"Ask counsel of both times—of the ancient time what is best, and of the latter time what is fittest."
"Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late."
"Standing in this presence, mindful of the solemnity of this occasion, feeling the emotions which no one may know until he senses the great weight of responsibility for himself, I must utter my belief in the divine inspiration of the founding fathers."
"The poet's aim is either to profit or to please, or to blend in one the delightful and the useful. Whatever the lesson you would convey, be brief, that your hearers may catch quickly what is said and faithfully retain it. Every superfluous word is spilled from the too-full memory."
"That which seems the height of absurdity in one generation often becomes the height of wisdom in the next."
"Pain makes man think. Thought makes man wise. Wisdom makes life endurable."
"When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years."
"The extensive literature addressed to the definition or characterization of science is filled with inconsistent points of view and demonstrates that an adequate definition is not easy to attain. Part of the difficulty arises from the fact that the meaning of science is not fixed, but is dynamic. As science has evolved, so has its meaning. It takes on a new meaning and significance with successive ages."
"We are stuck with technology when all we really want is just stuff that works. How do you recognize something that is still technology? A good clue is if it comes with a manual."
"Some day science may have the existence of mankind in its power, and the human race commit suicide, by blowing up the world."
"No sand-blast of science had yet skimmed off the epidermis of history, thought, and feeling."
"While all other Sciences have advanced, that of Government is at a stand; little better understood; little better practiced now than 3 or 4 thousand Years ago."
"Should not a true understanding of life promote care for the future along with the present? This is the immediate duty of every scientist. Until now scientists have dealt with life as finite — is it not now their mission to see life as extending into Infinity?"
"Religion and science must not be considered separate in their essential nature."
"Speak, ye, the pure delight, whose favour’d steps The lamp of science, through the jealous maze Of nature guides, when haply you reveal Her secret honours."
"Discovery attends on every quest, Except for renegades who shirk the toil. Now certain men have pushed discovery Into the sphere of heaven. Some part they know,— How planets rise and set and wheel about, And of the sun’s eclipse. If men have probed Worlds far remote, can problems of this earth, This common home to which we’re born, defy them?"
"We should remember that there was once a discipline called natural philosophy. Unfortunately, this discipline seems not to exist today. It has been renamed science, but science of today is in danger of losing much of the natural philosophy aspect."
"The sciences we are familiar with have been installed in a number of great 'continents'. Before Marx, two such continents had been opened up to scientific knowledge: the continent of Mathematics and the continent of Physics. The first by the Greeks (Thales), the second by Galileo. Marx opened up a third continent to scientific knowledge: the continent of History."
"Science is not a neutral or innocent commodity which can be employed as a convenience by people wishing to partake only of the West's material power. Rather it is spiritually corrosive, burning away ancient authorities and traditions. It has shown itself unable to co-exist with anything. Scientists inevitably take on the mantle of the wizards, sorcerers and witch-doctors. Their miracle cures are our spells, their experiments our rituals."
"Scientific Knowledge is a mode of conception dealing with universals and things that are of necessity; and demonstrated truths and all scientific knowledge (since this involves reasoning) are derived from first principles. Consequently the first principles from which scientific truths are derived cannot themselves be reached by Science; nor yet are they apprehended by Art, nor by Prudence. To be matter of Scientific Knowledge a truth must be demonstrated by deduction from other truths; while Art and Prudence are concerned only with things that admit of variation. Nor is Wisdom the knowledge of first principles either: for the philosopher has to arrive at some things by demonstration."
"Science doesn't purvey absolute truth. Science is a mechanism. It's a way of trying to improve your knowledge of nature. It's a system for testing your thoughts against the universe and seeing whether they match. And this works, not just for the ordinary aspects of science, but for all of life. I should think people would want to know that what they know is truly what the universe is like, or at least as close as they can get to it."
"Scientific theories can always be improved and are improved. That is one of the glories of science. It is the authoritarian view of the Universe that is frozen in stone and cannot be changed, so that once it is wrong, it is wrong forever."
"Don't you believe in flying saucers, they ask me? Don't you believe in telepathy? — in ancient astronauts? — in the Bermuda triangle? — in life after death? No, I reply. No, no, no, no, and again no. One person recently, goaded into desperation by the litany of unrelieved negation, burst out "Don't you believe in anything?" "Yes", I said. "I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be.""
"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not “Eureka!” (I've found it!) but “That's funny...”"
"There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere."
"In human life, you will find players of religion until the knowledge and proficiency in religion will be cleansed from all superstitions, and will be purified and perfected by the enlightenment of real science."
"Science is the most real guide for civilisation, for life, for success in the world. To search for a guide other than science is absurdity, ignorance and heresy."
"Science is systematic organisation of knowledge about the universe on the basis of explanatory hypotheses which are genuinely testable. Science advances by developing gradually more comprehensive theories; that is, by formulating theories of greater generality which can account for observational statements and hypotheses which appear as prima facie unrelated."
"Those who have taken upon them to lay down the law of nature as a thing already searched out and understood, whether they have spoken in simple assurance or professional affectation, have therein done philosophy and the sciences great injury. For as they have been successful in inducing belief, so they have been effective in quenching and stopping inquiry; and have done more harm by spoiling and putting an end to other men's efforts than good by their own. Those on the other hand who have taken a contrary course, and asserted that absolutely nothing can be known — whether it were from hatred of the ancient sophists, or from uncertainty and fluctuation of mind, or even from a kind of fullness of learning, that they fell upon this opinion — have certainly advanced reasons for it that are not to be despised; but yet they have neither started from true principles nor rested in the just conclusion, zeal and affectation having carried them much too far.... Now my method, though hard to practice, is easy to explain; and it is this. I propose to establish progressive stages of certainty. The evidence of the sense, helped and guarded by a certain process of correction, I retain. But the mental operation which follows the act of sense I for the most part reject; and instead of it I open and lay out a new and certain path for the mind to proceed in, starting directly from the simple sensuous perception."
"Moreover the works already known are due to chance and experiment rather than to sciences; for the sciences we now possess are merely systems for the nice ordering and setting forth of things already invented; not methods of invention or directions for new works."
"Science, being the wonder of the ignorant and unskilful, may be not absurdly called a monster. In figure and aspect it is represented as many-shaped, in allusion to the immense variety of matter with which it deals. It is said to have the face and voice of a woman, in respect of its beauty and facility of utterance. Wings are added because the sciences and the discoveries of science spread and fly abroad in an instant ; the communication of knowledge being like that of one candle with another, which lights up at once. Claws, sharp and hooked, are ascribed to it with great elegance, because the axioms and arguments of science penetrate and hold fast the mind, so that it has no means of evasion or escape."
"The divisions of the sciences are not like different lines that meet in one angle, but rather like the branches of trees that join in one trunk."
"We often frame our understanding of what the space telescope will do in terms of what we expect to find, and actually it would be terribly anticlimactic if in fact we find what we expect to find. ... The most important discoveries will provide answers to questions that we do not yet know how to ask and will concern objects we have not yet imagined."
"Science preceded the theory of science, and is independent of it. Science preceded naturalism, and will survive it."
"The civilization of the West, which was brilliant by virtue of its scientific perfection for a long time, and which subjugated the whole world with the products of this science to its states and nations, is now bankrupt and in decline."
"Mathematics became an experimental subject. Individuals could follow previously intractable problems by simply watching what happened when they were programmed into a personal computer. ... The PC revolution has made science more visual and more immediate ... by creating films of imaginary experiences of mathematical worlds. ... Words are no longer enough."
"We say that the string is 'random' if there is no other representation of the string which is shorter than itself. But we will say that it is 'non-random' if there does exist such an abbreviated representation. ... In general, the shorter the possible representation... the less random... On this view we recognize science to be the search for algorithmic compressions. ... It is simplest to think of mathematics as the catalogue of all possible patterns. ... When viewed in this way, it is inevitable that the world is described by mathematics. ...In many ways the search for a Theory of Everything is a manifestation of a faith that this compression goes all the way down to the bedrock of reality..."
"Science has taught us how to put the atom to work. But to make it work for good instead of for evil lies in the domain dealing with the principles of human duty. We are now facing a problem more of ethics than physics."
"I do not believe that the present flowering of science is due in the least to a real appreciation of the beauty and intellectual discipline of the subject. It is due simply to the fact that power, wealth and prestige can only be obtained by the correct application of science."
"The scientific method is only a method. Dreams, plans, purposes, and collective will must come from the human mind and heart. Where they exist, science can discover the facts that condition realization and furnish instrumentalities for carrying plan and purpose into effect. Science without dreams is sterile. Dreams without research and science are empty. The deed of ignorance is perilous; deedless information is futile. United, idea and deed may create a civilization. A revolution in thought is at hand, a revolution as significant as the Renaissance: the subjection of science to ethical and esthetic purpose. Hence the next great survey undertaken in the name of the social sciences may begin boldly with a statement of values agreed upon, and then utilize science to discover the conditions, limitations, inventions, and methods involved in realization."
"'Twas thus by the glare of false science betray'd, That leads to bewilder, and dazzles to blind."
"In the logic of science there is a principle as important as that of parsimony: it is that of sufficient reason. The former directs us to look for simplest causes, the later cautions us not to simplify so far that the explanation is inadequate to the facts to be explained....Parsimony is not itself a simple criterion of a good methodology; we cannot simply count the factors of explanation and say that the theory containing the smallest number is the best. The ideal of parsimony cannot be expressed without the proviso that the conditions for which it is a norm shall themselves be adequate."
"Modern science explicitly and emphatically rejects teleology."
"Just because people doing science are embedded in a particular social and cultural milieu, it doesn’t follow that science is not universal."
"It is clear today that modern science developed when people stopped debating metaphysical questions about the world and instead concerned themselves with the discovery of laws that were primarily mathematical."
"Science is about continuity of ideas, a web of connections."
"Science was a systematic way to avoid fooling yourself, after all."
"Science is one of the most absorbing and satisfying pastimes, and as such it appeals in different ways to different types of personality. To some it 1s a game against the unknown where one wins and no one loses, to others, more humanly minded, it is a race between different investigators as to who should first wrest the prize from nature. It has all the qualities which make millions of people addicts of the crossword puzzle or the detective story, the only difference being that the problem has been set by nature or chance and not by man, that the answers cannot be got with certainty, and when they are found often raise far more questions than the original problem."
"It is the aim of science to co-ordinate all observable phenomena within a single natural order and it is its faith that such is possible. Hence the basic objection to acceptance of the supernatural. If the scientific stand is justified, then everything, whether of matter, energy, mind or spirit, belongs to one vast scheme—it is all one and every part has meaning in relation to the whole. This is as much a tenet of faith as any other belief, but it forms the working hypothesis of all real scientific endeavor. As a basis for action or inquiry it is worth pushing to the limit ... If facts or phenomena, in whatever field, fail to fit in, then we modify or rebuild our conceptions until they do, on the assumption that they belong and that there is no separate pigeonhole for mystic revelation and no possibility for arbitrary intervention by any powers that be. If this brings the divine down to earth, so much the better for earthly inhabitants."
"Engineering or Technology is the making of things that did not previously exist, whereas science is the discovering of things that have long existed."
"Science, dimly perceiving the truth, may find Bacteria and other infinitesimals in the human body, and see in them but occasional and abnormal visitors to which diseases are attributed. Occultism — which discerns a life in every atom and molecule, whether in a mineral or human body, in air, fire or water -- affirms that our whole body is built of such lives, the smallest bacteria under the microscope being to them in comparative size like an elephant to the tiniest infusoria."
"Sam was too good a scientist to let that hope creep into his hypothesizing."
"Science is the art of understanding nature."
"Ignoramus et ignorabimus."
"Pursued one-sidedly, science confines our glance to the immediate, tangible, certain result. It turns the mind away from more general considerations and disaccustoms it to move in the realm of the quantitatively indeterminate. In one respect, this is the invaluable advantage that we prize, but where science reigns exclusive, the mind grows poor in ideas, the imagination in images, the soul in sensitivity, and the result is a narrow, dry, and hard mode of thought, forsaken by the muses and the graces."
"But in practical affairs, particularly in politics, men are needed who combine human experience and interest in human relations with a knowledge of science and technology. Moreover, they must be men of action and not contemplation. I have the impression that no method of education can produce people with all the qualities required. I am haunted by the idea that this break in human civilization, caused by the discovery of the scientific method, may be irreparable."
"All models are wrong; some models are useful."
"Your worship is your furnaces, Which, like old idols, lost obscenes, Have molten bowels; your vision is Machines for making more machines."
"If the author is so interested in Science, why doesn't she take a course in it?"
"L'Art est fait pour troubler, la Science rassure."
"Science, by itself, has no moral dimension. The drug which cures when taken in small doses may kill when taken in excess. The nuclear energies that produce cheap electrical power when harnessed in a reactor may kill when abruptly released in a bomb. Thus, it does not make sense to ask a scientist whether his poison or his nuclear energy is “good” or “bad” for mankind."
"One of the most disconcerting issues of our time lies in the fact that modern science, along with miracle drugs and communications satellites, has also produced nuclear bombs. What makes it even worse, science has utterly failed to provide an answer on how to cope with them. As a result, science and scientists have often been blamed for the desperate dilemma in which mankind finds itself today. Science, all by itself, has no moral dimension. The same poison-containing drug which cures when taken in small doses, may kill when taken in excess. The same nuclear chain reaction that produces badly needed electrical energy when harnessed in a reactor, may kill thousands when abruptly released in an atomic bomb. Thus it does not make sense to ask a biochemist or a nuclear physicist whether his research in the field of toxic substances or nuclear processes is good or bad for mankind. In most cases the scientist will be fully aware of the possibility of an abuse of his discoveries, but aside from his innate scientific curiosity he will be motivated by a deep-seated hope and belief that something of value for his fellow man may emerge from his labors. The same applies to technology, through which most advances in the natural sciences are put to practical use."
"People keep saying "science doesn't know everything!" Well, science "knows" it doesn't know everything; otherwise it would stop."
"Magic may be more romantic than science. But science is honest…and it works."
"Science, like art, is not a copy of nature but a re-creation of her."
"The symbol and the metaphor are as necessary to science as to poetry."
"Man masters nature not by force but by understanding. This is why science has succeeded where magic failed: because it has looked for no spell to cast on nature."
"Science has nothing to be ashamed of even in the ruins of Nagasaki. The shame is theirs who appeal to other values than the human imaginative values which science has evolved. The shame is ours if we do not make science part of our world..."
"All great scientists have used their imaginations freely, and let it ride them to outrageous conclusions without crying "Halt!""
"That is the essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to a pertinent answer."
"I believe that the world is totally connected: that is to say, that there are no events anywhere in the universe which are not tied to every other event in the universe. ... It is ... an essential part of the methodology of science to divide the world for any experiment into ... relevant and ... irrelevant. We make a cut. We put the experiment ... into a box. ... The moment we do that, we do violence to the connections ... I get a set of answers which I try to decode in this context. ... I am certainly not going to get the world right, because the basic assumption that I have made about the world is a lie. ... It is bound to give me only an approximation to what goes inside the fence. Therefore, when we practice science (and this is true of all our experience) we are always decoding a part of nature which is not complete. We simply cannot get out of our own finiteness."
"Science is an attempt to represent the known world as a closed system with a perfect formalism. Scientific discovery is a constant maverick process of breaking out at the ends of the system ... and then hastily closing it. ... The act of the imagination is the opening of the system so that it shows new connections. ...every act of imagination is the discovery of likenesses between two things which were thought unlike. ... They introduce new likenesses, whether it is Shakespeare ... or Newton saying that the moon in essence is exactly like a thrown apple."
"In my concept of time, which is largely connected with evolutionary time, the notion that errors are made by nature, that replication is not perfect, is central. ... We must accept the fact that all the imaginative inventions are to some extent errors with respect to the norm. ... But these errors have the peculiar property of being able to sustain themselves, of being able to reproduce themselves. ... More scientific discoveries are wrong than right. Of course, the wrong ones do not get published so often. But never confuse the process of exposition with the process of discovery. ... The discovery is made with tears and sweat (... with a good deal of bad language) by people who are constantly getting the wrong answer. ... So, of course, more bad science is produced than good and and more bad works of art are produced than good ones. The difference is only that most scientists take care not to exhibit their bad work."
"Science is a magnificent force, but it is not a teacher of morals. It can perfect machinery, but it adds no moral restraints to protect society from the misuse of the machine. It can also build gigantic intellectual ships, but it constructs no moral rudders for the control of storm tossed human vessel. It not only fails to supply the spiritual element needed but some of its unproven hypotheses rob the ship of its compass and thus endangers its cargo."
"In war, science has proven itself an evil genius; it has made war more terrible than it ever was before. Man used to be content to slaughter his fellowmen on a single plane — the earth's surface. Science has taught him to go down into the water and shoot up from below and to go up into the clouds and shoot down from above, thus making the battlefield three times a bloody as it was before; but science does not teach brotherly love. Science has made war so hellish that civilization was about to commit suicide; and now we are told that newly discovered instruments of destruction will make the cruelties of the late war seem trivial in comparison with the cruelties of wars that may come in the future."
"There are three stages in scientific discovery. First, people deny that it is true, then they deny that it is important; finally they credit the wrong person."
"I find it [science] analytical, pretentious and superficial—largely because it does not address itself to dreams, chance, laughter, feelings, or paradox—in other words,—all the things I love the most."
"Science has been advancing without interruption during the last three of four hundred years; every new discovery has led to new problems and new methods of solution, and opened up new fields for exploration. Hitherto men of science have not been compelled to halt, they have always found ways to advance further. But what assurance have we that they will not come up against impassable barriers? ... How can we be sure that some day progress may not come to a dead pause, not because knowledge is exhausted, but because our resources for investigation are exhausted? ... It is an assumption, which cannot be verified, that we shall not reach a point in our knowledge of nature beyond which the human intellect is unqualified to pass."
"One of my complaints is that you've got far more scientists than ever before but the pace of discovery has not increased. Why? Because they're all busy just filling in the details of what they think is the standard story. And the youngsters, the people with different ideas have just as big a fight as ever and normally it takes decades for science to correct itself. But science does correct itself and that's the reason why science is such a glorious thing for our species."
"Can all that Optics teach, unfold Thy form to please me so, As when I dreamed of gems and gold Hid in thy radiant bow? When Science from Creation's face Enchantment's veil withdraws, What lovely visions yield their place To cold material laws!"
"O star-eyed Science, hast thou wander'd there, To waft us home the message of despair?"
"Scientists, therefore, are responsible for their research, not only intellectually but also morally. This responsibility has become an important issue in many of today's sciences, but especially so in physics, in which the results of quantum mechanics and relativity theory have opened up two very different paths for physicists to pursue. They may lead us—to put it in extreme terms—to the Buddha or to the Bomb, and it is up to each of us to decide which path to take."
"What we might call, by way of Eminence, the Dismal Science."
"But when Science, passing beyond its own limits, assumes to take the place of Theology, and sets up its own conception of the Order of Nature as a sufficient account of its Cause, it is invading a province of Thought to which it has no claim, and not unreasonably provokes the hostility of those who ought to be its best friends."
"The aim of science is to discover and illuminate truth. And that, I take it, is the aim of literature, whether biography or history or fiction. It seems to me, then, that there can be no separate literature of science."
"We see scientific societies acknowledging as "sustaining associates" a dozen or more giants of a related industry. When the scientific organization speaks, whose voice do we hear-that of science? or of the sustaining industry? It might be a less serious situation if this voice were always clearly identified, but the public assumes it is hearing the voice of science…All of these things raise the question of the communication of scientific knowledge to the public. Is industry becoming a screen through which facts must be filtered, so that the hard, uncomfortable truths are kept back and only the harmless morsels allowed to filter through?...here the tailoring-the screening of basic truth is done, not to suit a party line-but to accommodate to the short-term gain-to serve the gods of profit and production."
"The solutions put forth by imperialism are the quintessence of simplicity...When they speak of the problems of population and birth, they are in no way moved by concepts related to the interests of the family or of society...Just when science and technology are making incredible advances in all fields, they resort to technology to suppress revolutions and ask the help of science to prevent population growth. In short, the peoples are not to make revolutions, and women are not to give birth. This sums up the philosophy of imperialism."
"In 1945, ... I proved a sentimental fool; and Mr. Truman could safely have classified me among the whimpering idiots he did not wish admitted to the presidential office. For I felt that no man has the right to decree so much suffering, and that science, in providing and sharpening the knife and in upholding the ram, had incurred a guilt of which it will never get rid. It was at that time that the nexus between science and murder became clear to me. For several years after the somber event, between 1947 and 1952, I tried desperately to find a position in what then appeared to me as a bucolic Switzerland,—but I had no success."
"I'm not anti-science, I'm anti the way science is sometimes used."
"Through all God's works there runs a beautiful harmony. The remotest truth in his universe is linked to that which lies nearest the throne."
"We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost... The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men — cries out for universal brotherhood — for the unity of us all."
"For out of olde feldes, as men seith, Cometh al this newe corn fro yeer to yere; And out of olde bokes, in good feith, Cometh al this newe science that men lere."
"My own case for Christianity is rational; but it is not simple. It is an accumulation of varied facts, like the attitude of the ordinary agnostic. But the ordinary agnostic has got his facts all wrong. He is a non-believer for a multitude of reasons; but they are untrue reasons. He doubts because the Middle Ages were barbaric, but they weren't; because Darwinism is demonstrated, but it isn't; because miracles do not happen, but they do; because monks were lazy, but they were very industrious; because nuns are unhappy, but they are particularly cheerful; because Christian art was sad and pale, but it was picked out in peculiarly bright colours and gay with gold; because modern science is moving away from the supernatural, but it isn't, it is moving towards the supernatural with the rapidity of a railway train."
"As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss."
"But if we fail, then the whole world...will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age, made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science."
"It is arguable whether the human race have been gainers by the march of science beyond the steam engine. Electricity opens a field of infinite conveniences to ever greater numbers, but they may well have to pay dearly for them. But anyhow in my thought I stop short of the internal combustion engine which has made the world so much smaller. Still more must we fear the consequences of entrusting a human race so little different from their predecessors of the so-called barbarous ages such awful agencies as the atomic bomb. Give me the horse."
"Philosophia vero omnium mater artium."
"As our own species is in the process of proving, one cannot have superior science and inferior morals. The combination is unstable and self-destroying."
"The search for the truth is the most important work in the whole world — and the most dangerous."
"By scientific thought we mean the application of past experience to new circumstances by means of an observed order of events. By saying that this order of events is exact we mean that it is exact enough to correct experiments by, but we do not mean that it is theoretically or absolutely exact, because we do not know. The process of inference [is] in itself an assumption of uniformity, and... as the known exactness of the uniformity became greater, the stringency of the inference increased. By saying that the order of events is reasonable we do not mean that everything has a purpose, or that everything can be explained, or that everything has a cause; for neither of these is true. But we mean that to every reasonable question there is an intelligible answer, which either we or posterity may know by the exercise of scientific thought."
"I specially wish you not to go away with the idea that the exercise of scientific thought is properly confined... When the Roman jurists applied their experience of Roman citizens to dealings between citizens and aliens, showing by the difference of their actions that they regarded the circumstances as essentially different, they laid the foundations of that great structure which has guided the social progress of Europe. That procedure was an instance of strictly scientific thought. When a poet finds that he has to move a strange new world which his predecessors have not moved; when, nevertheless, he catches fire from their flashes, arms from their armoury, sustentation from their foot-prints, the procedure by which he applies old experience to new circumstances is nothing greater or less than scientific thought. When the moralist studying the conditions of society and the ideas of right and wrong which have come down to us from a time when war was the normal condition of man and success in war the only chance of survival, evolves from them the conditions and ideas which must accompany a time of peace, when the comradeship of equals is the condition of national success; the process by which he does this is scientific thought and nothing else."
"Remember, then, that [scientific thought] is the guide of action; that the truth which it arrives at is not that which we can ideally contemplate without error, but that which we may act upon without fear; and you cannot fail to see that scientific thought is not an accompaniment or condition of human progress, but human progress itself. And for this reason the question what its characters are...is the question of all questions for the human race."
"In the age of the genotype, phenotype is king!"
"Science is finding things out; and in that sense history is science."
"... there are answers that science isn’t able to provide about the natural world—the questions about why instead of the questions about how. I’m interested in the whys. I find many of those answers in the spiritual realm. That in no way compromises my ability to think rigorously as a scientist."
"Science … is to be regarded as a series of interconnected conceptual schemes which arose originally from experimentation or careful observation and were fruitful of new experiments."
"The French Revolution qualitatively transformed all aspects of human culture, including science, for better or worse. The institutional ideological changes wrought in French science by the Revolution and its aftermath shaped the subsequent course of modern science everywhere. The essential underlying factor, as the Hessen thesis maintains, was the victory of capitalism, which the Revolution consolidated. The new social order spread to Europe and the rest of the world, everywhere subordinating the further development of science to capitalist interests."
"Modern science will continue to be blindly destructive as long as its operations are determined by the anarchism of market economic forces. The problem to be solved is whether science, technology, and industry can be brought under genuinely democratic control in the context of a global planned economy, so that all of us can collectively put our hard-won scientific knowledge to mutually beneficial use. I am confident it can be accomplished, but will it? If so, there is reason for optimism. If not... well, to paraphrase Keynes, "in the not-so-long run we're all dead.""
"Today, when so much depends on our informed action, we as voters and taxpayers can no longer afford to confuse science and technology, to confound “pure” science and “applied” science."
"Far from attempting to control science, few among the general public even seem to recognize just what “science” entails. Because lethal technologies seem to spring spontaneously from scientific discoveries, most people regard dangerous technology as no more than the bitter fruit of science, the real root of all evil."
"Science is one of the few areas of human life in which the majority does not rule."
"It seems to me that we live in a society in which technology is continuously presented as wonderful. We were less exposed to the negative aspects of technology which were inevitably there. One of my interests is to provide that kind of balance to these notions that cell phones and faxes are all wonderful and great. Isn't it fabulous that we all have computers? Well, yes and no is my response. I was particularly interested in that, in working on Jurassic Park that aspect of what are the negative parts. Because in talking with the people who were doing this kind of research what I was hearing was that the most responsible of them were deciding not to proceed down certain lines of inquiry which is really a new phase in science. Traditionally in science what the scientists themselves have said is: "I might as well do it, because if I don't, someone else will. It is going to happen inevitably." I think there's recognition now, that it's no so inevitable and it's quite conceivable that if I don't do this research neither will anyone else. It's simply too dangerous."
"Experimental physics—hell, all of science—is about solving problems. However, you can’t solve them all at once. There’s always a larger, overarching question—the big target. But if you obsess on the sheer enormity of it, you lose focus."
"To spread healthy ideas among even the lowest classes of people, to remove men from the influence of prejudice and passion, to make reason the arbiter and supreme guide of public opinion; that is the essential goal of the sciences; that is how science will contribute to the advancement of civilization, and that is what deserves protection of governments who want to insure the stability of their power."
"The objective world of science has nothing in common with the world of things-in-themselves of the metaphysician. The metaphysical world, assuming that it has any meaning at all, is irrelevant to science."
"The vast majority of modern scientists are agnostics in that they reject the claim of the metaphysical realist who presumes to have discovered substance and true being in the outside world. They will claim that substance and the thing in itself are unknowable, or at least that these elude rational investigation, and that the objective world of science is nothing but a mental construct imagined for the purpose of co-ordinating our sense impressions. But, once this point is admitted, they will recognise that this mentally constructed objective universe must to all intents and purposes be treated as a reality pre-existing to the observer who discovers it bit by bit. This last expression of opinion is not the result of some philosophical system. It is imposed upon scientists as an inevitable conclusion; for had it been proved impossible to imagine a common objective universe, the same for all men, science could never have existed, since it would have been reduced to individual points of view which could never have been co-ordinated. In other words, knowledge would have lacked generality; and without generality there could have been no such thing as science."
"But beyond the bright searchlights of science, Out of sight of the windows of sense, Old riddles still bid us defiance, Old questions of Why and of Whence."
"Alas! A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections — a mere heart of stone."
"The time is always ripe for the re-interpretation of theories in the light of new vision and of new facts. This is the very province of science."
"Science consists in grouping facts so that general laws or conclusions may be drawn from them."
"It is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science."
"In science the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to the man to whom the idea first occurs."
"Finding hidden links between seemingly disparate phenomena is what makes the scientific method so powerful and compelling. The distinctive feature of science is that it is both broad and deep: broad in the way it tackles all physical phenomena and deep in the way it weaves them, economically, into a common explanatory scheme requiring fewer and fewer assumptions. No other system of thought can match its breadth and depth."
"Nothing makes clearer the limits of science than the scientist’s opinions about any topic that is not strictly related to his profession."
"Fortunately science, like that nature to which it belongs, is neither limited by time nor by space. It belongs to the world, and is of no country and of no age. The more we know, the more we feel our ignorance; the more we feel how much remains unknown; and in philosophy, the sentiment of the Macedonian hero can never apply, — there are always new worlds to conquer."
"There are very few persons who pursue science with true dignity."
"There's real poetry in the real world. Science is the poetry of reality."
"We know that mathematicians care no more for logic than logicians for mathematics. The two eyes of exact science are mathematics and logic: the mathematical sect puts out the logical eye, the logical sect puts out the mathematical eye; each believing that it can see better with one eye than with two."
"What Art was to the ancient world, Science is to the modern: the distinctive faculty. In the minds of men the useful has succeeded to the beautiful. ...There are great truths to tell, if we had either the courage to announce them or the temper to receive them."
"Test ideas by experiment and observation. Build on those ideas that pass the test. Reject the ones that fail. Follow the evidence wherever it leads. And question everything. Including authority."
"What I would be so happy about is—I don’t expect everybody to understand everything about science at the end of the season, but I want them to be curious about learning more. I want them to understand the power of science, and its tremendous liberating potential. If those things are communicated, then I feel like my work is done."
"... science is a birthright that belongs to every one of us. And the degree to which we're excluded from science is the degree to which we are powerless. We can't be informed decision-makers."
"It is a great tragedy that science, this wonderful process for finding out what is true, has ceded the spiritual uplift of its central revelations: the vastness of the universe, the immensity of time, the relatedness of all life, and life’s preciousness on our tiny planet."
"Science is a culture, constantly growing and changing. The science of today has broken out of the molds of classical nineteenth-century science, just as the paintings of Pablo Picasso and Jackson Pollock broke out of the molds of nineteenth-century art. Science has as many competing styles as painting or poetry."
"Science has an important part to play in our everyday existence, and there is far too much neglect of science; but its intention is to supplement not to supplant the familiar outlook."
"It is not enough that you should understand about applied science in order that your work may increase man's blessings. Concern for the man himself and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors; concern for the great unsolved problems of the organization of labor and the distribution of goods in order that the creations of our mind shall be a blessing and not a curse to mankind. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations."
"All of science is nothing more than the refinement of everyday thinking."
"The aim of science is, on the one hand, a comprehension, as complete as possible, of the connection between the sense experiences in their totality, and, on the other hand, the accomplishment of this aim by the use of a minimum of primary concepts and relations. (Seeking, as far as possible, logical unity in the world picture, i.e. paucity in logical elements.)"
"All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom. It is no mere chance that our older universities developed from clerical schools. Both churches and universities — insofar as they live up to their true function — serve the ennoblement of the individual. They seek to fulfill this great task by spreading moral and cultural understanding, renouncing the use of brute force."
"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
"There exists a passion for comprehension, just as there exists a passion for music. That passion is rather common in children, but it gets lost in most people later on. Without this passion, there would be neither mathematics nor natural science. Time and again the passion for understanding has led to the illusion that man is able to comprehend the objective world rationally, by pure thought, without any empirical foundations—in short, by metaphysics. I believe that every true theorist is a kind of tamed metaphysicist, no matter how pure a "positivist" he may fancy himself. The metaphysicist believes that the logically simple is also the real. The tamed metaphysicist believes that not all that is logically simple is embodied in experienced reality, but that the totality of all sensory experience can be "comprehended" on the basis of a conceptual system built on premises of great simplicity. The skeptic will say that this is a "miracle creed." Admittedly so, but it is a miracle creed which has been borne out to an amazing extent by the development of science."
"One thing I have learned in a long life: all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike—and yet it is the most precious thing we have."
"I had fallen in love with a young man..., and we were planning to get married. And then he died of subacute bacterial endocarditis... Two years later with the advent of penicillin, he would have been saved. It reinforced in my mind the importance of scientific discovery..."
"Science brings to the light of day everything man had believed sacred. Technique takes possession of it and enslaves it."
"From society's standpoint, modern science and technology appears Janus-faced : It has given us wealth in one sense, and poverty in another; it has harnessed nature to man's basic needs in ways and to extents undreamed - of only a few decades ago, but it has fostered a continuingly lowered "quality of life"."
"We tend to think of science as an activity that has its own ways and rules, independent of the political or social environment where they take place. And we often think of s as being detached from their mundane surroundings, paying only attention to this or that yet unsolved problem. This is of course not true. All facets of society, and science is no exception, are interconnected, at a much deeper level than we may naively think. Everyday experiences, social turmoils or wars influence the life and the death of everyone and a scientist is not immune to any such events."
"It is a cliché that the modern scientific vision has desacralized the world, and the world desacralized by scientific knowledge has become one of the existential elements that make up modern man, all the more so to the degree that he is "civilized." Ever since he has been subject to compulsory education, his mind has been stuffed with "positive" scientific notions; he cannot avoid seeing in a soulless light everything that surrounds him, and therefore acts destructively. What, for example, could the symbol of the sunset of a dynasty, like the Japanese, mean to him when he knows scientifically what the sun is: merely a star, at which one can even fire missiles."
"The impression that science is over has occurred many times in various branches of human knowledge, often because of an explosion of discoveries made by a genius or a small group of men in such a short time that average minds could hardly follow and had the unconscious desire to take breath, to get used to the unexpected things that came to be revealed. Dazzled by these new truths, they could not see beyond. Sometimes an entire century did not suffice to produce this accommodation."
"These days, scientists are largely treated like beggars, their tin cups externally extended to the government funding agencies."
"Science is first of all the savants. A somewhat sorry crowd. They are timid, fusty, sad and shortsighted, wonderful when it comes to not seeing the world, to not appreciating men, to not knowing what man is, also to not knowing either the principles, origins and foundations nor the end, the importance and the consequences of the very science they are studying. Often enough they are superstitious and dogmatic in their superstitions and prejudices because, knowing exactly what effectively they know, they bring to the expression of their prejudices the strictness and imperiousness of the formulas of their laboratories and studies."
"The delights of science and mathematics—their revelations of natural beauty and harmony, their visions of thing to come, and the joy of discovery in itself, the light and shadow it casts on the mystery dance of mind and nature—are too profound, and too important, to be left to scientists and mathematicians alone. They belong to the cultural heritage of the entire world, and to know something about them is to be acquainted with the finest new achievements of the human mind."
"Science is an essentially anarchic enterprise: theoretical anarchism is more humanitarian and more likely to encourage progress than its law-and-order alternatives."
"The separation of state and church must be complemented by the separation of state and science, that most recent, most aggressive, and most dogmatic religious institution."
"The assertion...that there is no knowledge outside science – extra scientiam nulla salus – is nothing but another and most convenient fairy-tale."
"Our freedom to doubt was born out of a struggle against authority in the early days of science. It was a very deep and strong struggle: permit us to question — to doubt — to not be sure. I think that it is important that we do not forget this struggle and thus perhaps lose what we have gained."
"Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool."
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. ... Science doesn't teach anything; experience teaches it."
"I have a friend who’s an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don’t agree with very well. He’ll hold up a flower and say “look how beautiful it is,” and I’ll agree. Then he says “I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing,” and I think that he’s kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe... I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it’s not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there’s also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts."
"Misuse of science has often obscured the value of science itself."
"In science, just as in art and in life, only that which is true to culture is true to nature."
"Edison definitely ended the distinction between the theoretical man of science and the practical man of science, so that today we think of scientific discoveries in connection with their possible present or future application to the needs of man. He took the old rule-of-thumb methods out of industry and substituted exact scientific knowledge, while, on the other hand, he directed scientific research into useful channels."
"For indeed it is one of the lessons of the history of science that each age steps on the shoulders of the ages which have gone before. The value of each age is not its own, but is in part, in large part, a debt to its forerunners. And this age of ours, if, like its predecessors, it can boast of something of which it is proud, would, could it read the future, doubtless find much also of which it would be ashamed."
"It is probably not too much to say that the hope of progress--moral and intellectual as well as material--in the future is bound up with the fortunes of science, and that every obstacle placed in the way of scientific discovery is a wrong to humanity."
"Although many... feel we can prepare for our future by thinking, acting, and learning using present methods and values, nothing is farther from the truth... in today’s rapidly changing world... Each succeeding generation inherits the values, accomplishments, hopes, successes, and failings of previous generations... they inherit the results of the decisions made by those generations. For the hundreds of thousands of years of human existence when technologies were simple or non-existent, this may have had little impact on human life and the earth that sustains it. Each generation of hunters and gatherers, then plowmen and pioneers, passed on tools to the next generation to help them survive. Change from one generation to the next was slow and hardly noticeable. In those days there was little understanding of science and how things worked, and explanations were not scientific. This is no longer the case in today’s high-tech world where a change that affects millions may happen in a matter of seconds. A child born today inherits a world vastly different from that of its parent’s generation, let alone that from centuries ago. Previous generations left a legacy of, exploitation, occupation, and irrelevant values that present great challenges, but also opportunities to the people of today. The application of scientific principles, for better or worse, accounts for every single advance that has improved people’s lives... at the heart of human progress – or destruction – is the rock-solid foundation of science."
"And most people say of astrology, "Oh, it's harmless fun, isn't it?" And I should say probably for about 80% of the cases it probably is harmless fun, but there's a strong way in which it isn't harmless: one, because it's so anti-science; you know, you'll hear things like "Science doesn't know everything." Well, of course science doesn't know everything. But because science doesn't know everything that doesn't mean science knows nothing. Science knows enough for us to be watched by a few million people now on television, for these lights to be working, for quite extraordinary miracles to have taken place in terms of the harnessing of the physical world and our dim approaches towards understanding it."
"We must start with scientific fundamentals, and that means with the data of experiments and not with assumed axioms predicated only upon the misleading nature of that which only superficially seems to be obvious. It is the consensus of great scientists that science is the attempt to set in order the facts of experience."
"The word generalization in literature usually means covering too much territory too thinly to be persuasive, let alone convincing. In science, however, a generalization means a principle that has been found to hold true in every special case. ... The principle of leverage is a scientific generalization."
"Science is a way of talking about the universe in words that bind it to a common reality. Magic is a method of talking to the universe in words that it cannot ignore. The two are rarely compatible."
"Man’s responsibility increases as that of the gods decreases."
"So far what we’re doing here is pure science. We’re learning facts about the universe without worrying what they’re good for."
"“Are you sure?” Myron asked. “If I was sure,” Uncle Hugo said, “I wouldn’t have to do the experiment.”"
"Wissenschaft und Kunst gehören der Welt an, und vor ihnen verschwinden die Schranken der Nationalität."
"In many ways, science, including statistics, is like detective work. Beginning with a set of observations, we ask what can be said about the systems that generated them."
"In the measure in which they are scientific, the sciences of man can consider man only by selecting points of view under which it is possible to treat him objectively. It is obviously not a question for the philosopher to ignore the various forms of sociology, psychology, ethnology, neurology, and so forth: he must simply wonder if the sciences of man, added up, constitute a science of man."
": Four pounds. Four pounds – like two pounds wasn't bad enough. We're talking two – three-hundred boxes of sinus pills. There ain't that many Smurfs in the world. : We're not going to need pseudoephedrine. We're going to make phenylacetone in a tube furnace, then we're going to use reductive amination to yield methamphetamine. Four pounds. : So no pseudo? : No pseudo. : So you do have a plan! Yeah, Mr. White! Yeah, science!"
"Science is not “organized common sense”; at it most exciting, it reformulates our view of the world by imposing powerful theories against the ancient, anthropocentric prejudices that we call intuition."
"Results rarely specify their causes unambiguously. If we have no direct evidence of fossils or human chronicles, if we are forced to infer a process only from its modern results, then we are usually stymied or reduced to speculation about probabilities. For many roads lead to almost any Rome."
"Science does progress toward more adequate understanding of the empirical world, but no pristine, objective reality lies "out there" for us to capture as our technologies improve and our concepts mature. The human mind is both an amazing instrument and a fierce impediment—and the mind must be interposed between observation and understanding. Thus we will always "see" with the aid (or detriment) of conventions. All observation is a partnership between mind and nature, and all good partnerships require compromise. The mind, we trust, will be constrained by a genuine external reality; this reality, in turn, must be conveyed to the brain by our equally imperfect senses, all jury-rigged and cobbled together by that maddeningly complex process known as evolution."
"While bright-eyed Science watches round."
"The success of the scientific method in the past has encouraged us to think that with enough time and effort we can unravel nature's mysteries. But hitting the absolute limit of scientific explanation—not a technological obstacle or the current but progressing edge of human understanding—would be a singular event, one for which past experience could not prepare us. ...the possibility that there are limits to scientific explanation ...is an issue that may never be resolved."
"That is better and more valuable which requires fewer, other circumstances being equal, just as that demonstration is better, other circumstances being equal, which necessitates the answering of a smaller number of questions for a perfect demonstration or requires a smaller number of suppositions and premises from which the demonstration proceeds. For if one thing were demonstrated from many and another thing from fewer equally known premisses, clearly that is better which is from fewer because it makes us know quickly, just as a universal demonstration is better than particular because it produces knowledge from fewer premises. Similarly in natural science, in moral science, and in metaphysics the best is that which needs no premisses and the better that which needs the fewer, other circumstances being equal."
"The gentleman [Mr. Taber] from New York says [agricultural research] is all foolish. Yes; it was foolish when Burbank was experimenting with wild cactus. It was foolish when the Wright boys went down to Kitty Hawk and had a contraption there that they were going to fly like birds. It was foolish when Robert Fulton tried to put a boiler into a sail boat and steam it up the Hudson. It was foolish when one of my ancestors thought the world was round and discovered this country so that the gentleman from New York could become a Congressman. (Laughter.) ... Do not seek to stop progress; do not seek to put the hand of politics on these scientific men who are doing a great work. As the gentleman from Texas points out, it is not the discharge of these particular employees that is at stake, it is all the work of investigation, of research, of experimentation that has been going on for years that will be stopped and lost."
"Science can only be comprehended epistemologically, which means as one category of possible knowledge, as long as knowledge is not equated either effusively with the absolute knowledge of a great philosophy or blindly with scientistic self-understanding of the actual business of research."
"We must regard science...from three points of view. First, it is the free activity of man’s divine faculties of reason and imagination. Secondly, it is the answer of the few to the demands of the many for wealth, comfort and victory, for “νόσων τ᾽ ἀπείρους καί μακραίωνας βίους," gifts which it will grant only in exchange for peace, security, and stagnation. Finally it is man’s gradual conquest, first of space and time, then of matter as such, then of his own body and those of other living beings, and finally the subjugation of the dark and evil elements in his own soul. None of these conquests will ever be complete, but all, I believe, will be progressive. The question of what he will do with these powers is essentially a question for religion and aesthetic. It may be urged that they are only fit to be placed in the hands of a being who has learned to control himself, and that man armed with science is like a baby with a box of matches."
"The tendency of applied science is to magnify injustices until they become too intolerable to be borne, and the average man whom all the prophets and poets could not move turns at last and extinguishes the evil at its source."
"My own belief is that science remains the most powerful tool we have yet generated to apply leverage for our future. It is the instrument which is most useful for guiding our own destinies, for assuring the condition of man in the years to come. I have much to hope that we will not abandon that tool, leaving us to our own brute devices."
"Much recent philosophy of science has been dedicated to disclosing that a 'given' or a 'pure' observation language is a myth-eaten fabric of philosophical fiction. ...In any observation statement the cloven hoofprint of theory can readily be detected."
"Modern science is based on the Latin injunction ignoramus - 'we do not know'."
"The willingness to admit ignorance has made modern science more dynamic, supple and inquisitive than any previous tradition of knowledge."
"Mere observations, however, are not knowledge. In order to understand the universe, we need to connect observations into comprehensive theories. Earlier traditions usually formulated their theories in terms of stories. Modern science uses mathematics."
"exact science - defined as 'exact' by their use of mathematical tools."
"Scientists themselves are not always aware of the political, economic and religious interests that control the flow of money; many scientists do, in fact, act out of purely intellectual curiosity. Hovever, only rarely do scientists dictate the scientific agenda."
"To whatever extent the science of the past may have contributed to a mechanistic and economic image of man and a technocratic image of the good society, the new science of subjective experience may provide a counteracting force toward the ennobling of the image of the individual's possibilities, of the educational and socializing processes, and of the future. And since we have come to understand that science is not a description of "reality" but a metaphorical ordering of experience, the new science does not impugn the old. It is not a question of which view is "true" in some ultimate sense. Rather, it is a matter of which picture is more useful in guiding human affairs. Among the possible images that are reasonably in ac-cord with accumulated human experience, since the image held is that most likely to come into being, it is prudent to choose the noblest."
"What follows naturally from [the] empiricist starting-point is the division of propositions into two main classes, (i) empirical propositions, about synthetic matters of fact, which are (or should be, if they are to have literal meaning) testable by experience, and (ii) those which are purely analytic, the function of which is to elucidate the use and meaning of terms, but which give no in¬ formation about the world. The truth or falsity of the latter depends solely on their self-consistency and the law of non-contradiction, whereas of the former self-consistency, though necessary, is not a sufficient condition of truth. Accordingly there are two main types of science, exact science on the one hand comprising logic and mathematics, concerned with analytic truths and using purely deductive reasoning; and empirical science on the other seeking laws which are generalizations from particular experiences and are verifiable (or, more strictly, ‘probabilifiable’) only by observation and experiment."
"Science has given us back something strangely like a World-Soul."
"Though there be one onely roade to Science, namely, that by which we proceed from things more known, to things known less; and from that which is more manifest, to that which is more obscure; and though Universals are chiefly known to us (for Science is begot by reasoning from Universals to Particulars) yet that very comprehension of Universals in the Understanding, springs from the perception of Singulars in our sense."
"The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired."
"Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?"
"Science could predict that the universe must have had a beginning."
"He who performs not practical work nor makes experiments will never attain to the least degree of mastery. But then, O my son, do thou experiment so that thou mayesy acquire knowledge. Scientists delight not in abundance of material; they rejoice only in the excellence of their experimental methods."
"Science embraces facts and debates opinion; religion embraces opinion and debates the facts."
"The spirit of poetry (only authentic and great poetry is meant) is essentially superior to the spirit that prevails in all mere science."
"In the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory we can indeed proceed without mentioning ourselves as individuals, but we cannot disregard the fact that natural science is formed by men. Natural science does not simply describe and explain nature; it is part of the interplay between nature and ourselves; it describes nature as exposed to our nature of questioning. This was a possibility of which Descartes could not have thought, but it makes a sharp separation between the world and the I impossible. If one follows the great difficulty which even eminent scientists like Einstein had in understanding and accepting the Copenhagen interpretation... one can trace the roots... to the Cartesian partition. ... It will take a long time for it [this partition] to be replaced by a really different attitude toward the problem of reality."
"Modern civilization depends on science … James Smithson was well aware that knowledge should not be viewed as existing in isolated parts, but as a whole, each portion of which throws light on all the other, and that the tendency of all is to improve the human mind, and give it new sources of power and enjoyment … narrow minds think nothing of importance but their own favorite pursuit, but liberal views exclude no branch of science or literature, for they all contribute to sweeten, to adorn, and to embellish life … science is the pursuit above all which impresses us with the capacity of man for intellectual and moral progress and awakens the human intellect to aspiration for a higher condition of humanity."
"Science … may be degraded from its native dignity … by placing it in the light of a mere appendage to and caterer for our pampered appetites. The question "cui bono" to what practical end and advantage do your researches tend? is one which the speculative philosopher who loves knowledge for its own sake, and enjoys, as a rational being should enjoy, the mere contemplation of harmonious and mutually dependent truths, can seldom hear without a sense of humiliation. He feels that there is a lofty and disinterested pleasure in his speculations which ought to exempt them from such questioning; communicating as they do to his own mind the purest happiness (after the exercise of the benevolent and moral feelings) of which human nature is susceptible, and tending to the injury of no one, he might surely allege this as a sufficient and direct reply to those who, having themselves little capacity, and less relish for intellectual pursuits, are constantly repeating upon him this enquiry."
"Science is the knowledge of many, orderly and methodically digested and arranged, so as to become attainable by one."
"Wir müssen wissen — wir werden wissen!"
"Geometry, which is the only science that it hath pleased God hitherto to bestow on man."
"Science is the topography of ignorance."
"Science is a good piece of furniture for a man to have in an upper chamber, provided he has common sense on the ground floor."
"Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science."
"Take from the air every aëroplane; from the roads every automobile; from the country every train; from the cities every electric light; from ships even wireless apparatus; from oceans all cables; from the land all wires; from shops all motors; from office buildings every elevator, telephone, and typewriter; let epidemics spread at will; let major surgery be impossible—all this and vastly more, the bondage of ignorance, where knowledge now makes us free, would be the terrible catastrophe if the tide of time should but ebb to the childhood days of men still living! ...Therefore, whoever desires progress and prosperity, whoever would advance humanity to a higher plane of civilization, must further the work of the scientist in every way he possibly can."
"The four criteria for evaluating hypotheses are relevant to the distinction between science and superstition. These criteria are adequacy, internal coherence, external consistency, and fruitfulness. But the distinction between science and superstition also involves psychological and volitional elements. It involves such factors as how the observer’s subjective states influence how he sees the world, and how his needs and desires play a role in the formation of his beliefs. Accordingly, to explore the distinction between science and superstition, we must introduce criteria that include these psychological and volitional elements. The criteria we suggest are evidentiary support, objectivity, and integrity."
"Science and superstition are, in large measure, polar opposites. Where scientific activity recognizes the importance of evidentiary support, objectivity, and integrity, superstition ignores them."
"The great tragedy of Science — the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact."
"Science ... commits suicide when it adopts a creed."
"Physical science is one and indivisible. ... [T]he method of investigation and the ultimate object of the physical inquirer are everywhere the same. The object is the discovery of the rational order which pervades the universe; the method consists of observation and experiment (which is observation under artificial conditions) for the determination of the facts of nature; of inductive and deductive reasoning for the discovery of their mutual relations and connection."
"Just re-member that you're standing on a planet that's evolving, And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour. It's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned, A sun that is the source of all our power. The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see Are moving at a million miles a day In the outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour, Of the galaxy we call the "Milky Way"."
"Science is for the laboratory. Other men, who stand alone and face the elemental forces of nature, know that science as a shining, world-conquering hero, is a myth. Science lives in concrete structures full of bright factory toys, insulated from the earth's great forces. The priesthood of this new cult are seldom called upon to stand and face the onslaught."
"It is necessary to recognize that with respect to unity and coherence, mythical explanation carries one much further than scientific explanation. For science does not, as its primary objective, seek a complete and definitive explanation of the Universe... It satisfies itself with partial and conditional responses. Whether they be magical, mythical, or religious, the other systems of explanation include everything. They are applied to all domains. They answer all questions. They account for the origin, for the present and even for the evolution of the universe."
"Science and mathematics Run parallel to reality, they symbolize it, they squint at it, They never touch it: consider what an explosion Would rock the bones of men into little white fragments and unsky the world If any mind for a moment touch truth."
"Habits of thought in the tradition of science are not readily changed, it is not easy to deviate from the customary channels of accumulated experience in conventionalized subjects."
"Nature is to us like an infinite ballot-box, the contents of which are being continually drawn, ball after ball, and exhibited to us. Science is but the careful observation of the succession in which balls of various character present themselves..."
"Science is our century’s art."
"There are many examples of old, incorrect theories that stubbornly persisted, sustained only by the prestige of foolish but well-connected scientists. … Many of these theories have been killed off only when some decisive experiment exposed their incorrectness. .. Thus the yeoman work in any science, and especially physics, is done by the experimentalist, who must keep the theoreticians honest."
"The life of a biological scientist in the United States is a life of discussion and debate—it is the Talmudic tradition writ large. ...The egalitarian structure of American science encourages this camaraderie. ...this would not—could not—have taken place in the Austria, the Germany, the France, or perhaps even the England of 1955."
"Science can be defined as a self-correcting way to get knowledge about the natural universe, plus the body of knowledge obtained that way. It is both a method and the resulting understanding and knowledge. The method requires making models to explain phenomena, testing them experimentally, and revising them until they work. The goal of science is understanding."
"Science makes progress by combining imagination with experimental results—by insisting on evidence."
"I maintain that in every special natural doctrine only so much science proper is to be met with as mathematics; for... science proper, especially of nature, requires a pure portion, lying at the foundation of the empirical, and based upon à priori knowledge of natural things. ...the conception should be constructed. But the cognition of the reason through construction of conceptions is mathematical. A pure philosophy of nature in general, namely, one that only investigates what constitutes a nature in general, may thus be possible without mathematics; but a pure doctrine of nature respecting determinate natural things (corporeal doctrine and mental doctrine), is only possible by means of mathematics; and as in every natural doctrine only so much science proper is to be met with therein as there is cognition à priori, a doctrine of nature can only contain so much science proper as there is in it of applied mathematics."
"Natural science is throughout either a pure or an applied doctrine of motion."
"When brought to the proletariat from the capitalist class, science is invariably adapted to suit capitalist interests. What the proletariat needs is a scientific understanding of its own position in society. That kind of science a worker cannot obtain in the officially and socially approved manner. The proletarian himself must develop his own theory. For this reason he must be completely self-taught."
"Do not all charms fly At the mere touch of cold philosophy? There was an awful rainbow once in heaven: We know her woof, her texture; she is given In the dull catalogue of common things. Philosophy will clip an Angel’s wings, Conquer all mysteries by rule and line, Empty the haunted air, and gnomèd mine— Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made The tender-person’d melt into a shade."
"The deep gender bias of science (including medicine), of its very ways of seeing problems, resonates, Keller argues, in its "common rhetoric." Mainly "adversarial" and "aggressive" in its stance toward what it studies, "science can come to sound like a battlefield.""
"Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all—the apathy of human beings."
"The admired wisdom turns out to be that the subject’s task is to strip away more and more of his subjectivity and become more and more objective. … It thereby quite correctly understands the accidental, the angular, the selfish, the eccentric, etc., of which every human being can have plenty. Christianity does not deny, either, that such things are to be discarded. … But the difference is simply that science and scholarship want to teach that becoming objective is the way, whereas Christianity teaches that the way is to become subjective, that is, truly to become a subject."
"Someone who has lived his whole life in a remote place and in addition has had only slight interest in getting to know nature-how little he knows, he who also speaks of the multiplicity of creation. A natural scientist, on the other hand, who traveled around the world, who has been all over, both above and under the surface of the earth, has seen the abundance that he has seen, and moreover with armed eyes he has at a distance discovered otherwise invisible stars and at extraordinarily close range has discovered otherwise invisible creeping things-how amazing much he knows; yet he uses the same phrase, “multiplicity of creation.” And further, although the natural scientist is happy about what he has succeeded in observing, he willingly admits that there is no limit to discoveries since there is not even any limit to discoveries regarding the instruments used for discovery; therefore the multiplicity, as it is discovered or as new instruments of discovery are discovered, continually becoming greater and greater and can continually become even greater, that is, proves to be even greater-yet all in all it is still, comprehended in the phrase “the multiplicity of creation.”"
"To name and describe you must first see, and science polishes the gift of seeing."
"Doing science with awe and humility is a powerful act of reciprocity with the more-than-human world."
"Science can be a way of forming intimacy and respect with other species that is rivaled only by the observations of traditional knowledge holders. It can be a path to kinship."
"There is something wrong with our world, something fundamentally and basically wrong. I don't think we have to look too far to see that. I'm sure that most of you would agree with me in making that assertion. And when we stop to analyze the cause of our world's ills, many things come to mind. We begin to wonder if it is due to the fact that we don't know enough. But it can't be that. Because in terms of accumulated knowledge we know more today than men have known in any period of human history. We have the facts at our disposal. We know more about mathematics, about science, about social science, and philosophy than we've ever known in any period of the world's history. So it can't be because we don't know enough. And then we wonder if it is due to the fact that our scientific genius lags behind. That is, if we have not made enough progress scientifically. Well then, it can't be that. For our scientific progress over the past years has been amazing. Man through his scientific genius has been able to dwarf distance and place time in chains, so that today it's possible to eat breakfast in New York City and supper in London, England. Back in about 1753 it took a letter three days to go from New York City to Washington, and today you can go from here to China in less time than that. It can't be because man is stagnant in his scientific progress. Man's scientific genius has been amazing. I think we have to look much deeper than that if we are to find the real cause of man's problems and the real cause of the world's ills today. If we are to really find it I think we will have to look in the hearts and souls of men."
"We have genuflected before the God of Science only to find that it has given us the atomic bomb, producing fears and anxieties that science can never mitigate."
"Softmindedness often invades religion. ... Softminded persons have revised the Beautitudes to read "Blessed are the pure in ignorance: for they shall see God." This has led to a widespread belief that there is a conflict between science and religion. But this is not true. There may be a conflict between softminded religionists and toughminded scientists, but not between science and religion. ... Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals. They are complementary."
"For science is ... like virtue, its own exceeding great reward."
"Einstein's space is no closer to reality than Van Gogh's sky. The glory of science is not in a truth more absolute than the truth of Bach or Tolstoy, but in the act of creation itself. The scientist's discoveries impose his own order on chaos, as the composer or painter imposes his; an order that always refers to limited aspects of reality, and is based on the observer's frame of reference, which differs from period to period as a Rembrandt nude differs from a nude by Manet."
"In science you learn ... you're willing to be wrong and also learn to throw out ideas (bad ideas) like yesterday's newspaper — regardless of how precious they are to you."
"Science has everything to say about what is possible. Science has nothing to say about what is permissible."
"Science should remain above politics, if it’s to do its job."
"Some people think that science is just all this technology around, but no: it's something much deeper than that. Science, scientific thinking, scientific method is for me the only philosophical construct that the human race has developed to determine what is reliably true."
"The men in the laboratory... cannot be said to observe the actual objects of their curiosity at all. ...The sense data on which the propositions of modern science rest are, for the most part, little photographic spots and blurs, or inky curved lines on paper. ... What is directly observable is only a sign of the "physical fact"; it requires interpretation to yield scientific propositions."
"There's a reason for poetry... Poetry is a very nonlinear use of language, where the meaning is more than just the sum of the parts. And science requires that it be nothing more than the sum of the parts. And just the fact that there's stuff to explain out there that's more than the sum of the parts means that the traditional approach, just characterizing the parts and the relations, is not going to be adequate for capturing the essence of many systems that you would like to be able to do. That's not to say that there isn't a way to do it in a more scientific way than poetry, but I just like the feeling that culturally there's going to be more of something like poetry in the future of science."
"The worldview of the classical sciences conceptualized nature as a giant machine composed of intricate but replaceable machine-like parts. The new systems sciences look at nature as an organism endowed with irreplaceable elements and an innate but non-deterministic purpose for choice, for flow, for spontaneity."
"The notion of "system" has gained central importance in contemporary science, society and life. In many fields of endeavor, the necessity of a "systems approach" or "systems thinking" is emphasized, new professions called "systems engineering," "systems analysis" and the like have come into being, and there can be little doubt that this this concept marks a genuine, necessary, and consequential development in science and world-view."
"In the penultimate decade of the twentieth century science is sufficiently advanced to resolve the puzzles that stymied scientists in the last century and demonstrate, without metaphysical speculation, the consistency of evolution in all realms of experience. It is now possible to advance a general evolution theory based on unitary and mutually consistent concepts derived from the empirical sciences."
"Obviously something is wrong with the entire argument of "obviousness"."
"It is only when science asks why, instead of simply describing how, that it becomes more than technology. When it asks why, it discovers Relativity. When it only shows how, it invents the atom bomb, and then puts its hands over its eye and says, 'My God what have I done?"
"Focusing on the science-technology relationship may strike some as strange, because conventional wisdom views this relationship as an unproblematic given. ... Technology is seen as being, at best, applied science ... the conventional view perceives science as clearly preceding and founding technology. ... Recent studies in the history of technology have begun to challenge this assumed dependency of technology on science. ... But the conventional view of science is persistent."
"Scientists don’t arrive at the truth by inward certainty or by majority vote, but they do demonstrate it to each other (and to other men) by open and rational procedures. If an experiment or observation can’t be repeated, it can’t be accepted, no matter how great the reputation, scientific or otherwise, of the man who says he did it or saw it."
"Science does not speak of the world in the language of words alone, and in many cases it simply cannot do so. The natural language of science is a synergistic integration of words, diagrams, pictures, graphs, maps, equations, tables, charts, and other forms of visual and mathematical expression... [Science thus consists of] the languages of visual representation, the languages of mathematical symbolism, and the languages of experimental operations."
"In Science the paramount appeal is to the Intellect — its purpose being instruction; in Art, the paramount appeal is to the Emotions — its purpose being pleasure. A work of Art must of course indirectly appeal to the Intellect, and a work of Science will also indirectly appeal to the Feelings; nevertheless a poem on the stars and a treatise on astronomy have distinct aims and distinct methods. But having recognised the broadly-marked differences, we are called upon to ascertain the underlying resemblances. Logic and Imagination belong equally to both. It is only because men have been attracted by the differences that they have overlooked the not less important affinities."
"One can ask two different kinds of questions with regard to the topics of study in psychology as well as in other sciences. One can ask for the phenomenal characteristics of psychological units or events, for example, how many kinds of feelings can be qualitatively differentiated from one another or which characteristics describe an experience of a voluntary act. Aside from this are the questions asking for the why, for the cause and the effect, for the conditional-genetic interrelations. For example, one can ask: Under which conditions has been a decision made and which are the specific psychological effects which follow this decision? The depiction of phenomenal characteristics is usually characterized as “description”, the depiction of causal relationships as “explanation.”"
"Science intensifies religious truth by cleansing it of ignorance and superstition."
"The world seemed so large I had assumed that portions would remain in primitive state, attainable at reasonable cost in time and effort. Days spent in laboratories, factories and offices were lightened by intuitive contact with wilderness outside. Had the choice confronted me, I would not have traded nature's miracles of life for all of science's toys. Was not my earth's surface more important than increasing the speed of transport and visiting the moon and Mars?"
"In wilderness, I sense the miracle of life, and behind it, our scientific accomplishments fade to trivia. The construction of an analogue computer or a supersonic airplane is simple when compared to the mixture of space and evolutionary eons represented by a cell."
"With respect to science, the assumption behind consensus is that science is a source of authority and that authority increases with the number of scientists. Of course, science is not primarily a source of authority. Rather, it is a particularly effective approach to inquiry and analysis. Skepticism is essential to science; consensus is foreign."
"[Maxims] are not of use to help men forward in the advancement of sciences, or new discoveries of yet unknown truths. Mr. Newton, in his never enough to be admired book, has demonstrated several propositions, which are so many new truths, before unknown to the world, and are further advances in mathematical knowledge: but, for the discovery of these, it was not the general maxims, 'what is, is;' or, 'the whole is bigger than a part,' or the like, that helped him. These were not the clues that led him into the discovery of the truth and certainty of those propositions. Nor was it by them that he got the knowledge of those demonstrations, but by finding out intermediate ideas that showed the agreement or disagreement of the ideas, as expressed in the propositions he demonstrated. This is the greatest exercise and improvement of human understanding in the enlarging of knowledge, and advancing the sciences; wherein they are far enough from receiving any help from the contemplation of these or the like magnified maxims."
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."
"The successful launching of the Sputnik was a demonstration of one of the highest scientific and technological achievements of man—a tantalizing invitation both to the militarist in search of ever more devastating means of destruction and to the astronomer searching for new means of carrying his instruments away from their earthbound environment."
"To grasp the proof of things and search into doubtful causes, to hallow genius, to raise the head to the sky, to know the number and character of natal elements in the mighty universe ... this is the mind's divine and grateful pleasure."
"Within the short span of a human life and with man's limited powers of memory, any stock of knowledge worthy of the name is unattainable except by the greatest mental economy. Science itself, therefore, may be regarded as a minimal problem, consisting of the completest possible presentment of facts with the least possible expenditure of thought."
"The function of science...is to replace experience. Thus, on the one hand, science must remain in the province of experience, but, on the other, must hasten beyond it, constantly expecting confirmation, constantly expecting the reverse. Where neither confirmation nor refutation is possible, science is not concerned. Science acts and only acts in the domain of uncompleted experience."
"Science is about wonder, Jalila. I was a poor teacher if I never told you that."
"Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting progress in the arts and the sciences and a flourishing socialist culture in our land."
"Theology is to-day recognised to be the instrument of myth, philosophy to be the instrument of science."
"Science by itself has no moral dimension. But it does seek to establish truth. And upon this truth morality can be built."
"To conduct the operations of science in a perfectly legitimate manner, by means of methodised experiment and strict demonstration, requires a strategic skill which we must not look for, even among those to whom science is most indebted for original observations and fertile suggestions. It does not detract from the merit of the pioneers of science that their advances, being made on unknown ground, are often cut off, for a time, from that system of communications with an established base of operations, which is the only security for any permanent extension of science."
"“And now you have had to alter your theory.” ”Well,” Andrews said, smiling, “that’s science.”"
"The purpose of scientific enquiry is not to compile an inventory of factual information, nor to build up a totalitarian world picture of natural Laws in which every event that is not compulsory is forbidden. We should think of it rather as a logically articulated structure of justifiable beliefs about nature."
"Observation is the generative act in scientific discovery. For all its aberrations, the evidence of the senses is essentially to be relied upon—provided we observe nature as a child does, without prejudices and preconceptions, but with that clear and candid vision which adults lose and scientists must strive to regain."
"Science, at bottom, is really anti-intellectual. It always distrusts pure reason, and demands the production of objective fact."
"The whole universe of science is built upon the world as directly experienced, and if we want to subject science itself to a rigorous scrutiny, and arrive at a precise assessment of its meaning and scope, we must begin by reawakening the basic experience of the world, of which science is the second-order expression."
"We'll try to imitate how Galileo and Newton learned so much by studying the simplest kinds of pendulums and weights, mirrors and prisms. ... It is the same reason why so many biologists today devote more attention to tiny germs and viruses than to magnificent lions and tigers. ... In science, one can learn the most by studying what seems the least."
"Perhaps we would have forestalled [human] extinction if Louis Pasteur had abandoned his studies on the germ theory. What about the plant pathologists who scorned centuries of superstitions and identified the fungi responsible for cereal diseases? They made it possible to combat the rusts and smuts that wasted crops and allowed modern agriculture to feed us in our billions. Science is so central to modern civilization that we will not willingly retreat from the continuing exploration and manipulation of nature."
"What is a scientist?… We give the name scientist to the type of man who has felt experiment to be a means guiding him to search out the deep truth of life, to lift a veil from its fascinating secrets, and who, in this pursuit, has felt arising within him a love for the mysteries of nature, so passionate as to annihilate the thought of himself."
"This political movement has patently demonstrated that it will not defend the integrity of science in any case in which science runs afoul of its core political constituencies. In so doing, it has ceded any right to govern a technologically advanced and sophisticated nation."
"Our abiding belief is that just as the workmen in the tunnel of St. Gothard, working from either end, met at last to shake hands in the very central root of the mountain, so students of nature and students of Christianity will yet join hands in the unity of reason and faith, in the heart of their deepest mysteries."
"By deliberately cutting off certain phases of man's personality, the warm life of private sensation and private feelings and private perceptions, the sciences assisted in building up a more public world which gained in accessibility what it lost in depth."
"By isolating simple systems and simple causal sequences the sciences created confidence in the possibility of finding a similar type of order in every aspect of experience: it was, indeed, by the success of science in the realm of the inorganic that we have acquired whatever belief we may legitimately entertain in the possibility of achieving similar understanding and control in the vastly more complex domain of life."
"The introduction of science marked the beginning of a rapid acceleration of the modern enterprise. It deepened the sense of separateness and transcendence from nature. It planted the false notion that we could overcome any limit—ultimately perhaps even death itself. It was the elixir of godly ambitions. I can hardly overstate how much of a game-changer it was to merge our already-destructive stream with science. Incidentally, the science label here also covers technology, as an application of the scientific approach."
"Science is a narrow tool: powerful and tenacious like a pit bull, but having no intrinsic wisdom or context. It concerns itself with what we can do, not what we should do."
"Most science is performed with the intent of improved manipulation and control for human (only) benefit."
"Historically, science has pursued a premise that Nature can be understood fully, its future predicted precisely, and its behavior controlled at will. However, emerging knowledge indicates that the nature of Earth and biological systems transcends the limits of science, questioning the premise of knowing, prediction, and control. This knowledge has led to the recognition that, for civilized human survival, technological society has to adapt to the constraints of these systems."
"Politics and Religion are obsolete. The time has come for Science and Spirituality."
"Doctrinaire formula-worship—that is our real enemy."
"I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."
"Has any one ever clearly understood the celebrated story at the beginning of the Bible—of God’s mortal terror of science?... No one, in fact, has understood it. This priest-book par excellence opens, as is fitting, with the great inner difficulty of the priest: he faces only one great danger; ergo, “God” faces only one great danger.— The old God, wholly “spirit,” wholly the high-priest, wholly perfect, is promenading his garden: he is bored and trying to kill time. Against boredom even gods struggle in vain. What does he do? He creates man—man is entertaining. ... But then he notices that man is also bored. God’s pity for the only form of distress that invades all paradises knows no bounds: so he forthwith creates other animals. God’s first mistake: to man these other animals were not entertaining—he sought dominion over them; he did not want to be an “animal” himself.—So God created woman. In the act he brought boredom to an end—and also many other things! Woman was the second mistake of God.—“Woman, at bottom, is a serpent, Heva”—every priest knows that; “from woman comes every evil in the world”—every priest knows that, too. Ergo, she is also to blame for science....It was through woman that man learned to taste of the tree of knowledge.—What happened? The old God was seized by mortal terror. Man himself had been his greatest blunder; he had created a rival to himself; science makes men godlike—it is all up with priests and gods when man becomes scientific!—Moral: science is the forbidden per se; it alone is forbidden. Science is the first of sins, the germ of all sins, the original sin. This is all there is of morality.—“Thou shall not know”:—the rest follows from that.—God’s mortal terror, however, did not hinder him from being shrewd. How is one to protect one’s self against science? For a long while this was the capital problem. Answer: Out of paradise with man! Happiness, leisure, foster thought—and all thoughts are bad thoughts!—Man must not think.—And so the priest invents distress, death, the mortal dangers of childbirth, all sorts of misery, old age, decrepitude, above all, sickness—nothing but devices for making war on science! The troubles of man don’t allow him to think....Nevertheless—how terrible!—, the edifice of knowledge begins to tower aloft, invading heaven, shadowing the gods—what is to be done?—The old God invents war; he separates the peoples; he makes men destroy one another (—the priests have always had need of war....). War—among other things, a great disturber of science!—Incredible! Knowledge, deliverance from the priests, prospers in spite of war.—So the old God comes to his final resolution: “Man has become scientific—there is no help for it: he must be drowned!”..."
"One thing about a science: it works. If an engineer knows his business, his bridge does not fall down."
"Science is not everything, but science is very beautiful."
"We're science: we're all about coulda, not shoulda!"
"Every step taken by science claims territory once occupied by the supernatural."
"It is not so much knowledge of science that the public needs as a scientific worldview—an understanding that we live in an orderly universe, governed by physical laws that cannot be circumvented."
"Those (natural) laws cannot be circumvented by any amount of piety or cleverness, but they can be understood. Uncovering them should be the highest goal of a civilized society. Not, as we have seen, because scientists have any claim to greater intellect or virtue, but because the scientific method transcends the flaws of individual scientists. Science is the only way we have of separating the truth from ideology, or fraud, or mere foolishness."
"Science, that was going to save the world in H. G. Wells' time, is regimented, strait-jacketed, scared shitless, its universal language diminished to one word, security."
"Give me the nobler glass that swells to the eye The things which near us lie, Till Science rapturously hails, In the minutest water-drop, A torment of innumerable tails."
"I don't believe Einstein is tied to any religious tradition, and I rather think the idea of a personal God is entirely foreign to him. But as far as he is concerned there is no split between science and religion: the central order is part of the subjective as well as the objective realm, and this strikes me as being a far better starting point."
"Too often, this concern for the big picture is simply obscurantist and is put forward by people who prefer vagueness and mystery to (partial) answers. Vagueness is at times necessary and mystery is never in short supply, but I don’t think they’re anything to worship. Genuine science and mathematical precision are more intriguing than are the “facts” published in supermarket tabloids or a romantic innumeracy which fosters credulity, stunts skepticism, and dulls one to real imponderables."
"A greater gain to the world ... than all the growth of scientific knowledge is the growth of the scientific spirit, with its courage and serenity, its disciplined conscience, its intellectual morality, its habitual response to any disclosure of the truth."
"Some feminist cultural theorists in France, Britain, and the United States have argued that visualization and objectification as privileged ways of knowing are specifically masculine (man the viewer, woman the spectacle). Without falling into such essentialism, we may suppose that the language, perceptions, and uses of visual information may be different for women, as pregnant subjects, than they are for men (or women) as physicians, researchers, or reporters. And this difference will reflect the historical control by men over science, medicine, and obstetrics in Western society and over the historical definitions of masculinity in Western culture."
"Presentations of scientific and medical "conquests" in the mass media commonly appropriate this terrain into Cold War culture and macho style. Consider this piece of text from Life's 1965 picture story on ultrasound in pregnancy, "A Sonar 'Look' at an Unborn Baby":"
": The astonishing medical machine resting on this pregnant woman's abdomen in a Philadelphia hospital is "looking" at her unborn child in precisely the same way a Navy surface ship homes in on enemy submarines. Using the sonar principle, it is bombarding her with a beam of ultra-high-frequency sound waves that are inaudible to the human ear. Back come the echoes, bouncing off the baby's head, to show up as a visual image on a viewing screen."
"The science of fools with long memories."
"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
"The unprecedented development of science and technology... so rapid that it is said that 90 per cent of the scientists which this country has ever produced are still living today."
"Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art! Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes. Why preyest thou thus upon the poet’s heart, Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?"
"Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car? And driven the from the wood To seek a shelter in some happier star? Hast thou not torn the from her flood, The Elfin from the green grass, and from me The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?"
"Most of us rather hastily and thoughtlessly regard “science” as a sort of collection of linear accelerators and space vehicles and organic chemistry models. In fact it is not any of these things; it is only a systematic method of gathering and testing knowledge, involving certain formal procedures: gathering information, forming a theory to explain the information, predicting certain consequences of the theory and performing an experiment to test the prediction. If you investigate any area of knowledge (whether it is stellar physics or the number of angels who can dance on the head of a pin) by this method, you are doing science. If you use any other method, you are doing something else."
"There is no science apart from the general. It may even be said that the object of the exact sciences is to spare us these direct verifications."
"Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house."
"There might be a serious objection to classical studies. If it is to be desired that nine out of ten Frenchmen become good merchants and business men, is it not dangerous to disgust them beforehand with that which is to fill their lives? No doubt, it would not be impossible to refute such an objection; but that is no business mine. ... I seek what must be done to form men of science. And here all is clear. The man of science ought not tarry in the realization of practical aims; these, no doubt, he will obtain, but he must obtain them over and above. ...Science has wonderful applications; but the science which would have in view only applications would no longer be science—It would be only the kitchen. There is no science but disinterested science. ... The spirit which should animate the man science is that which breathed of old on Greece and brought there to birth poets and thinkers. There remains in our classical teaching I know not what of the Greek soul; I know not what that makes us look ever upward. And that is more precious for the making of a man of science than the reading of many volumes of geometry."
"Scientists believe there is a hierarchy of facts and that among them may be made a judicious choice. They are right, since otherwise there would be no science... One need only open the eyes to see that the conquests of industry which have enriched so many practical men would never have seen the light, if these practical men alone had existed and if they had not been preceded by unselfish devotees who died poor, who never thought of utility, and yet had a guide far other than caprice. As Mach says, these devotees have spared their successors the trouble of thinking."
"Without interpolation all science would be impossible."
"Now what is science? ... It is before all a classification, a manner of bringing together facts which appearances separate, though they are bound together by some natural and hidden kinship. Science, in other words, is a system of relations. ... It is in relations alone that objectivity must be sought. ... It is relations alone which can be regarded as objective. External objects... are really objects and not fleeting and fugitive appearances, because they are not only groups of sensations, but groups cemented by a constant bond. It is this bond, and this bond alone, which is the object in itself, and this bond is a relation."
"It is only through science and art that civilization is of value. Some have wondered at the formula: science for its own sake; and yet it is as good as life for its own sake, if life is only misery; and even as happiness for its own sake, if we do not believe that all pleasures are of the same quality... Every act should have an aim. We must suffer, we must work, we must pay for our place at the game, but this is for seeing's sake; or at the very least that others may one day see."
"To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient truths; both dispense with the necessity of reflection."
"How index-learning turns no student pale, Yet holds the eel of science by the tail."
"One science only will one genius fit, So vast is art, so narrow human wit."
"Science is, on the whole, an informal activity, a life of shirt sleeves and coffee served in beakers."
"Today we preach that science is not science unless it is quantitative... [however] many - perhaps most - of the great issues of science are qualitative, not quantitative, even in physics and chemistry. Equations and measurements are useful when and only when they are related to proof; but proof or disproof comes first and is in fact strongest when it is absolutely convincing without any quantitative measurement. Or to say it another way, you can catch phenomena in a logical box or in a mathematical box. The logical box is coarse but strong. The mathematical box is fine-grained but flimsy. The mathematical box is a beautiful way of wrapping up a problem, but it will not hold the phenomena unless they have been caught in a logical box to begin with."
"I don’t believe in evolution, like people believe in God … Science and technology are not advanced by people who believe, but by people who don’t know but are doing their best to find out."
"No matter how many instances of white swans we may have observed, this does not justify the conclusion that all swans are white."
"We should be very jealous of who speaks for science, particularly in our age of rapidly expanding technology. How can the public be educated? I do not know the specifics, but of this I am certain: The public will remain uninformed and uneducated in the sciences until the media professionals decide otherwise. Until they stop quoting charlatans and quacks and until respected scientists speak up."
"The belief that established science and scholarship-which have so relentlessly excluded women from their making-are "objective" and "value-free" and that feminist studies are "unscholarly," "biased," and "ideological" dies hard. Yet the fact is that all science, and all scholarship, and all art are ideological; there is no neutrality in culture."
"Science does not aim to cover exhaustively the whole of reality, but to construct systems and concepts which will perhaps — and it is a big perhaps — allow man to act on the world."
"Science isn't structured to recognize hierarchy."
"In a fashion, at least in your time, science has as much as religion to fear from the free intellect as religion does. And (with irony) any strong combination of intellectual and intuitional abilities is not tailor-made to bring you great friends from either category. Science has, unfortunately, bound up the minds of its own most original thinkers, for they dare not stray from certain scientific principles."
"# Science is constantly, systematically and inexorably revisionary. It is a self-correcting process and one that is self-destroying of its own errors..."
"# A related trait of science is its destruction of idols, destruction of the gods men live by... Science has no absolute right or absolute justice... To live comfortably with science it is necessary to live with a dynamically changing system of concepts... it has a way of weakening old and respected bonds..."
"# Not only are the tenets of science constantly subject to challenge and revision, but its prophets are under challenge too..."
"# Further, the findings of science have an embarrassing way of turning out to be relevant to the customs and to the civil laws of men—requiring these customs and laws also to be revised..."
"# Certainly we have seen spectacular changes in the concept of private property and of national borders as we have moved into the space age..."
"# Moreover, the pace of technological advance gravely threatens the bountiful and restorative power of nature to resist modification..."
"# Another trait of science that leads to much hostility or misunderstanding by the non-scientist is the fact that science is practiced by a small elite... (which) has cultural patterns discernibly different from those of the rest of society..."
"# The trait that to me seems the most socially important about science, however, is that it is a major source of man's discontent with the status quo..."
"This day relenting God Hath placed within my hand A wondrous thing; and God Be praised. At his command, Seeking His secret deeds With tears and toiling breath, I find thy cunning seeds, O million-murdering Death."
"A theory which cannot be mortally endangered cannot be alive."
"Science fiction rarely is about scientists doing real science, in its slowness, its vagueness, the sort of tedious quality of getting out there and digging amongst rocks and then trying to convince people that what you're seeing justifies the conclusions you're making. The whole process of science is wildly under-represented in science fiction because it's not easy to write about. There are many facets of science that are almost exactly opposite of dramatic narrative. It's slow, tedious, inconclusive, it's hard to tell good guys from bad guys — it's everything that a normal hour of Star Trek is not."
"If feminist psychology is correct, the very concept of scientific "objectivity" as a disciplined withdrawal of sympathy by the knower from the known, is a male separation anxiety writ large. Written, in fact, upon the entire universe."
"A scientist looks for a description of the universe in terms of a model that allows him to understand how things work, allow him to predict how things are going to work, and allows him to put together devices that work according to his predictions."
"The work of science is to substitute facts for appearances, and demonstrations for impressions."
"What science cannot discover, mankind cannot know."
"Science is what we know, and philosophy is what we don't know."
"Gradually, … the aspect of science as knowledge is being thrust into the background by the aspect of science as the power of manipulating nature. It is because science gives us the power of manipulating nature that it has more social importance than art. Science as the pursuit of truth is the equal, but not the superior, of art. Science as a technique, though it may have little intrinsic value, has a practical importance to which art cannot aspire."
"It is not in the nature of things for any one man to make a sudden violent discovery; science goes step by step, and every man depends on the work of his predecessors. When you hear of a sudden unexpected discovery—a bolt from the blue, as it were—you can always be sure that it has grown up by the influence of one man on another, and it is this mutual influence which makes the enormous possibility of scientific advance. Scientists are not dependent on the ideas of a single man, but on the combined wisdom of thousands of men, all thinking of the same problem, and each doing his little bit to add to the great structure of knowledge which is gradually being erected."
"All science is either physics or stamp collecting."
"We’ve arranged a global civilization in which most critical elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces."
"All the sciences in the world never smoothed down a dying pillow. No earthly philosophy ever supplied hope in death."
"All inquiries carry with them some element of risk. There is no guarantee that the universe will conform to our predispositions. But I do not see how we can deal with the universe—both the outside and the inside universe—without studying it. The best way to avoid abuses is for the populace in general to be scientifically literate, to understand the implications of such investigations. In exchange for freedom of inquiry, scientists are obliged to explain their work. If science is considered a closed priesthood, too difficult and arcane for the average person to understand, the dangers of abuse are greater. But if science is a topic of general interest and concern—if both its delights and its social consequences are discussed regularly and competently in the schools, the press, and at the dinner table—we have greatly improved our prospects for learning how the world really is and for improving both it and us."
"Our perceptions may be distorted by training and prejudice or merely because of the limitations of our sense organs, which, of course, perceive directly but a small fraction of the phenomena of the world. Even so straightforward a question as whether in the absence of friction a pound of lead falls faster than a gram of fluff was answered incorrectly by Aristotle and almost everyone else before the time of Galileo. Science is based on experiment, on a willingness to challenge old dogma, on an openness to see the universe as it really is. Accordingly, science sometimes requires courage—at the very least the courage to question the conventional wisdom."
"I believe that even a smattering of such findings in modern science and mathematics is far more compelling and exciting than most of the doctrines of pseudoscience, whose practitioners were condemned as early as the fifth century B.C. by the Ionian philosopher Heraclitus as “nightwalkers, magicians, priests of Bacchus, priestesses of the wine-vat, mystery-mongers.” But science is more intricate and subtle, reveals a much richer universe, and powerfully evokes our sense of wonder. And it has the additional and important virtue—to whatever extent the word has any meaning—of being true."
"The history of science is full of cases where previously accepted theories and hypotheses have been entirely overthrown, to be replaced by new ideas that more adequately explain the data. While there is an understandable psychological inertia—usually lasting about one generation—such revolutions in scientific thought are widely accepted as a necessary and desirable element of scientific progress. Indeed, the reasoned criticism of a prevailing belief is a service to the proponents of that belief; if they are incapable of defending it, they are well advised to abandon it. This self-questioning and error-correcting aspect of the scientific method is its most striking property, and sets it off from many other areas of human endeavor where credulity is the rule."
"The idea of science as a method rather than as a body of knowledge is not widely appreciated outside of science, or indeed in some corridors inside of science."
"Vigorous criticism is more constructive in science than in some other areas of human endeavor because in science there are adequate standards of validity that can be agreed upon by competent practitioners the world over. The objective of such criticism is not to suppress but rather to encourage the advance of new ideas: those that survive a firm skeptical scrutiny have a fighting chance of being right, or at least useful."
"Science is much more than a body of knowledge. It is a way of thinking. This is central to its success. Science invites us to let the facts in, even when they don’t conform to our preconceptions. It counsels us to carry alternative hypotheses in our heads and see which ones best match the facts. It urges on us a fine balance between no-holds-barred openness to new ideas, however heretical, and the most rigorous skeptical scrutiny of everything — new ideas and established wisdom. We need wide appreciation of this kind of thinking. It works. It’s an essential tool for a democracy in an age of change. Our task is not just to train more scientists but also to deepen public understanding of science."
"At the heart of science is an essential balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes—an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive, and the most ruthlessly skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense."
"A central lesson of science is that to understand complex issues (or even simple ones), we must try to free our minds of dogma and to guarantee the freedom to publish, to contradict, and to experiment. Arguments from authority are unacceptable."
"We live in a society absolutely dependent on science and technology and yet have cleverly arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. That’s a clear prescription for disaster."
"We regard as 'scientific' a method based on deep analysis of facts, theories, and views, presupposing unprejudiced, unfearing open discussion and conclusions. The complexity and diversity of all the phenomena of modern life, the great possibilities and dangers linked with the scientific-technical revolution and with a number of social tendencies demand precisely such an approach, as has been acknowledged in a number of official statements."
"That’s the trouble with science. It’s never done. Always upending itself. Ruining perfect systems for the little inconvenience of them being wrong."
"I love science, and it pains me to think that so many are terrified of the subject or feel that choosing science means that you cannot also choose compassion, or the arts, or be awed by nature. Science is not meant to cure us of mystery, but to reinvent and reinvigorate it."
"Science holds our answer; knowledge—real knowledge, verifiable knowledge, not superstition, not religious nonsense—will be our salvation."
"When Science at last escaped from the clutches of medieval Scholasticism (which was itself a hybrid between theology and Formal Logic), it happened that ‘Logic’ remained in the old curriculum. So the students of Science were not taught it, and consequently were not paralysed by its technicalities and ineptitudes. They could therefore go ahead, and advance their subjects by the light of nature, without being blocked at every step by sterile subtleties."
"To the natural philosopher, to whom the whole extent of nature belongs, all the individual branches of science constitute the links of an endless chain, from which not one can be detached without destroying the harmony of the whole."
"Science, especially evolutionary sciences, can only proceed from learning about theories of hypotheses that do not stand the test of time."
"Science is about asking questions, not memorizing answers."
"Loquimur de materia "circa quam" est scientia, quae dicitur a quibusdam subiectum scientiae, uel magis proprie obiectum, sicut et illud circa quod est uirtus dicitur obiectum uirtutis proprie, non subiectum. De isto autem obiecto huius scientiae ostensum est prius quod haec scientia est circa transcendentia; ostensum est autem quod est circa altissimas causas. Quod autem istorum debeat poni proprium eius obiectum, uariae sunt opiniones. Ideo de hoc quaeritur primo utrum proprium subiectum metaphysicae sit ens in quantum ens (sicut posuit Auicenna) uel Deus et Intelligentiae (sicut posuit Commentator Auerroes.)"
"Essentially all civilizations that rose to the level of possessing an urban culture had need for two forms of science-related technology, namely, mathematics for land measurements and commerce and astronomy for time-keeping in agriculture and aspects of religious rituals."
"Darwin recognized that thus far the civilization of mankind has passed through four successive stages of evolution, namely, those based on the use of fire, the development of agriculture, the development of urban life and the use of basic science for technological advancement."
"In scientific matters there was a common language and one standard of values; in moral and political problems there were many. ... Furthermore, in science there is a court of last resort, experiment, which is unavailable in human affairs."
"Pythagoras, Ptolemy, Kepler, Copernicus, Aristotle, Galileo, Newton and Einstein ... These great men, they have been the makers of one side of humanity, which has two sides. We call the one side religion, and we call the other science. Religion is always right. Religion protects us against that great problem which we all must face. Science is always wrong; it is the very artifice of men. Science can never solve one problem without raising 10 more problems."
"It may be true, that as Francis Thompson noted, "Thou canst not stir a flower without troubling a star", but in computing the motion of stars and planets, the effects of flowers do not loom large. It is the disregarding of the effect of flowers on stars that allows progress in astronomy. Appropriate abstraction is critical to progress in science."
"People in the present day will be slow to believe that any knowledge worth considering can be found outside the bright focus of Western culture."
"Science has wonders far transcending those of superstition, and they are poor philosophers who try to bring Nature down to the level of their small capacities instead of striving to exalt those capacities to the height of creation's truth. No savage, worshipping the most preposterous idol, ever believed greater absurdities than a modern sceptic, who makes his small modicum of reason the standard by which to measure the boundless universe."
"Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition."
"A mere index hunter, who held the eel of science by the tail."
"The act of freezing a dead body and storing it indefinitely on the chance that some future generation may restore it to life is an act of faith, not science."
"Science is organised knowledge."
"If you could stop every atom in its position and direction, and if your mind could comprehend all the actions thus suspended, then if you were really, really good at algebra you could write the formula for all the future; and although nobody can be so clever as to do it, the formula must exist just as if one could."
"The development of human thought and achievement, as a whole, has not been, as commonly supposed, a continual upward progression, nor even the equivalent of a continuous series of ascertained results. Thoughts and inventions, which seemed on the verge of practical fruition, have often been reduced to nothingness, even at the most decisive moment, through some combination of untoward circumstances; yes, even the very memory of a pathway broken into the Land of Promise is often obliterated and what seemed accomplished fact has had to be recreated by laborious work covering years, decades and even centuries. Just the simplest, most natural and, in the end, almost self evident facts are the hardest to evolve and elucidate, just what was most decisive and potent of result has been time and again overlooked by the seeker after truth. ... The gold of historic thought, indeed, is as little to be found in the street as the gold of actual daily strife, and it is by no means the task of the historian of broad general scope to give the initial clew to its discovery. He, indeed, can only reproduce the past with fidelity and exactitude. The intuition of the true investigator and pathfinder of today and tomorrow must find its own way to new guiding principles from the work of yesterday, before yesterday, and the distant past."
"Scientific skepticism is considered good. [...] Under this principle, one must question, doubt, or suspend judgment until sufficient information is available. Skeptics demand that evidence and proof be offered before conclusions can be drawn. [...] One must thoughtfully gather evidence and be persuaded by the evidence rather than by prejudice, bias, or uncritical thinking."
"Science when well digested is nothing but good sense and reason."
"In the nineteenth century, ... official Western medicine recognized drapetomania, the tendency of slaves to run away from their owners, as a disease. ... With hindsight, drapetomania is easily dismissed as a harmful fabrication of fictitious disease, in a culture violating human rights. Less easy is it to recognize harmful fabrications of our own era for what they are. Are you sure that medicine and psychiatry are on the right track, morally and scientifically, in providing millions of person with drugs after having diagnosed them as depressed?"
"No scientific discovery is named after its original inventor."
"If we are successful we shall be able to let in on the world of modern science such a flood of light from the Old World as will change every condition of thought and experiment and practice."
"All the great revolutions in science start with an unexpected discrepancy that wouldn’t go away."
"The science and technology which have advanced man safely into space have brought about startling medical advances for man on earth. Out of space research have come new knowledge, techniques and instruments which have enabled some bedridden invalids to walk, the totally deaf to hear, the voiceless to talk, and, in the foreseeable future, may even make it possible for the blind to “see.”"
"Science deals with but a partial aspect of reality, and... there is no faintest reason for supposing that everything science ignores is less real than what it accepts. ...Why is it that science forms a closed system? Why is is that the elements of reality it ignores never come in to disturb it? The reason is that all the terms of physics are defined in terms of one another. The abstractions with which physics begins are all it ever has to do with..."
"It may be that science has rather gone to our heads. Science is all right in its place, but that is no reason for our treating life like something in a test tube. Social studies such as education, sociology and similar things, which surely more than anything but fiction must deal with human beings and all their complicated relationships, are haunted by the scientific method, reduced largely to graphs, statistics and a hodge-podge of pseudo-scientific terms, the human element neglected or lost. In a similar manner, equally affected perhaps, romance has to be reduced to the scientific or physiological level. The love songs we hear on the radio and see on television are accompanied by physical gymnastics."
"Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic."
"At its core, ... science is a form of arrogance control."
"Today's science is tomorrow's technology."
"Today, nothing is unusual about a scientific discovery's being followed soon after by a technical application: The discovery of electrons led to electronics; fission led to nuclear energy. But before the 1880's, science played almost no role in the advances of technology. For example, James Watt developed the first efficient steam engine long before science established the equivalence between mechanical heat and energy."
"Science, my forward-looking friend, is a complex of interlocking theories, all derived from observation."
"I trust I have not wasted breath: I think we are not wholly brain, Magnetic mockeries; not in vain, Like Paul with beasts, I fought with Death;Not only cunning casts in clay: Let Science prove we are, and then What matters Science unto men, At least to me? I would not stay."
"When we speak of man, we have a conception of humanity as a whole, and before applying scientific methods to the investigation of his movement we must accept this as a physical fact. But can anyone doubt to-day that all the millions of individuals and all the innumerable types and characters constitute an entity, a unit? Though free to think and act, we are held together, like the stars in the firmament, with ties inseparable. These ties cannot be seen, but we can feel them. I cut myself in the finger, and it pains me: this finger is a part of me. I see a friend hurt, and it hurts me, too: my friend and I are one. And now I see stricken down an enemy, a lump of matter which, of all the lumps of matter in the universe, I care least for, and it still grieves me. Does this not prove that each of us is only part of a whole?"
"The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result. He does not expect that his advanced ideas will be readily taken up. His work is like that of the planter — for the future. His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way. He lives and labors and hopes."
"Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality."
"What are the sciences but maps of universal laws, and universal laws but the channels of universal power; and universal power but the outgoings of a universal mind?"
"I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be."
"The great difference between science and technology is a difference of initial attitude. The scientific man follows his method whithersoever it may take him. He seeks acquaintance with his subjectmatter, and he does not at all care about what he shall find, what shall be the content of his knowledge when acquaintance-with is transformed into knowledge-about. The technologist moves in another universe; he seeks the attainment of some determinate end, which is his sole and obsessing care; and he therefore takes no heed of anything that he cannot put to use as means toward that end."
"The High-Elves, … the Noldor or Loremasters, were always on the side of ‘science and technology’, as we should call it: they wanted to have the knowledge that Sauron genuinely had."
"Different media of publication... have been introduced... to meet new professional needs; and the historically changing operations of the scientific profession are reflected... in the transfer of influence from one medium to another. The 's' of seventeenth-century Europe were initially linked by the circulated correspondence of men like Henry Oldenburg. With the foundation of national academies, emphasis shifted to their Transactions and to treatises such as Newton's Principia, which were published under their auspices. In subsequent centuries, the balance has again shifted several times: to quarterlies... twice monthly... weeklies, and even shorter-term publications. The proliferation... and the acceleration of publication are effects, in part of the fragmentation of sub-disciplines, in part of the sharpened competition for priority; but they are associated also with the great decentralization of scientific authority. Where no-one can hope to master all... scientific professions were bound to move towards a pluralistic pattern of authority. On the very frontiers of research, indeed, we are now back not only with 'invisible colleges' but with a multiplicity of Oldenburgs, who circulate duplicated 'prepublication' material in highly specialized subjects to an international circle of equally specialized devotees. In the more self-consciously original branches of science—it has even been suggested—only out-of-date ideas ever actually get into print!"
"Science tends to frighten those who are infrequently exposed to it, while the practitioners of science are often the most misunderstood people in the world."
"The history of science may be treated from the point of view that it records attempts to place metaphysical disguises upon the faces of process and procedure... The metaphysics that still dominates science and enthralls the minds of men is nothing but a metaphor, and a limited one."
"The Good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it."
"The justification for [basic research] is that this constitutes the fount of all new knowledge, without which the opportunities for further technical progress must eventually become exhausted."
"Il faut n'appeler Science que l'ensemble des recettes qui réussissent toujours.—Tout le reste est littérature."
"Science, my lad, has been built upon many errors; but they are errors which it was good to fall into, for they led to the truth."
"Science is magic that works."
"... it really gets to this idea — how science asks us to learn about organisms, traditional knowledge asks us to learn from them."
"[To the cultures of Asia and the continent of Africa] it is the Western impact which has stirred up the winds of change and set the processes of modernization in motion. Education brought not only the idea of equality but also another belief which we used to take for granted in the West—the idea of progress, the idea that science and technology can be used to better human conditions. In ancient society, men tended to believe themselves fortunate if tomorrow was not worse than today and anyway, there was little they could do about it."
"Holding then to science with one hand — the left hand — we give the right hand to religion, and cry: "Open Thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things, more wondrous than the shining worlds can tell." Obedient to the promise, religion does waken faculties within us, does teach our eyes to the beholding of more wonderful things. Those great worlds blazing like suns die like feeble stars in the glory of the morning, in the presence of this new light. The soul knows that an infinite sea of love is all about it, throbbing through it, everlasting arms of affection lift it, and it bathes itself in the clear consciousness of a Father's love."
"Neither Francis nor I were ever thinking ahead five years. ... Science is moving so fast."
"Pure science is no more and no less than the logical process of deduction and experimentation upon observable events. It has no good or bad about it, merely right or wrong in a strictly mathematical definition. What people do with that science is cause for ethical debate, but it is not for the true scientist to concern themselves with that. Leave it to the politicians and philosophers."
"A scientific argument must have some degree of data, some...some sniff of theoretical basis behind it; otherwise it's not a scientific argument, it's a philosophical debate."
"... I hope no students of science today feel there are no worlds left for them to conquer. There are lots of mysteries that are waiting to be conquered."
"I like the scientific spirit—the holding off, the being sure but not too sure, the willingness to surrender ideas when the evidence is against them: this is ultimately fine—it always keeps the way beyond open—always gives life, thought, affection, the whole man, a chance to try over again after a mistake—after a wrong guess."
"In the past, the community of scholars has made it a custom to furnish scientific information to any person seriously seeking it. However, we must face these facts: The policy of the government itself during and after the war, say in the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, has made it clear that to provide scientific information is not a necessarily innocent act, and may entail the gravest consequences. One therefore cannot escape reconsidering the established custom of the scientist to give information to every person who may inquire of him."
"Some "unmasking" accounts of natural science ... aim to show that its pretensions to deliver the truth are unfounded, because of social forces that control its activities. Unlike the case of history, these do not use truths of the same kind; they do not apply science to the criticism of science. They apply the social sciences, and typically depend on the remarkable assumption that the sociology of knowledge is in a better position to deliver truth about science than science is to deliver truth about the world."
"What I found most disillusioning, however, was not that the sacred texts contained errors, but that they suffered by comparison. Compared to what I was leaning in science, they offered few truly surprising and powerful insights. Where was there a vision to compete with the concepts of infinite space, of vast expanses of time, of distant stars that rival and surpass our Sun? Of hidden forces and new, invisible forms of "light"? Or of tremendous energies that humans could, by understanding natural processes, learn to liberate and control?"
"No matter how honest scientists think they are, they are still influenced by various unconscious assumptions that prevent them from attaining true objectivity. Expressed in a sentence, Fort's principle goes something like this: People with a psychological need to believe in marvels are no more prejudiced and gullible than people with a psychological need not to believe in marvels."
"One reason for the astonishing growth of science and technology in this century has been, of course, war; but another, and perhaps a more important one, is simply that science has created the conditions—in western society at least—under which it best flourishes: these are affluence, leisure, and a high regard for education."
"Paradoxically, while applied science and its material fruits have won for the scientist new status, new acceptance by the public, the increasingly exotic nature of scientific inquiry has made what the scientist does more and more incomprehensible to a public which thanks him for new vaccines, better transportation and communications, and the somato–forming miracles of Lycra fiber. In short, although science has enormous impact on us all, has transformed our society almost beyond the power of words to express, it has steadily made less and less of a contribution to general culture."
"From all this, one can see that modern science poses a peculiar dilemma. On one hand, however remotely, science is a tremendous influence on the quality of all our lives. On the other, it has penetrated ever more deeply into a temple of abstractions whose mysteries are not understandable to very many people. We are being moved by forces we no longer comprehend. Science, which bids fair to "unlock the mysteries of the universe," has itself come to constitute a mystery of very nearly equal obscurity. Technology, the means man has employed to deal with a hostile nature, has itself produced a new environment in many ways far more hostile....We don't understand what it is, and it worries us."
"Science has no teleology; the “scientific method” and teleology are, by definition, mutually exclusive."
"It is the duty of Christian controversialists to enter the provinces over which skeptical scientists usurp dominion, to point out their mistakes, and thus re-conquer, for truth and for God, the territories in which these scientists claim supremacy."
"This statement appears to us to be conclusive with respect to the insufficiency of the undulatory theory, in its present state, for explaining all the phenomena of light. But we are not therefore by any means persuaded of the perfect sufficiency of the projectile system: and all the satisfaction that we have derived from an attentive consideration of the accumulated evidence, which has been brought forward, within the last ten years, on both sides of the question, is that of being convinced that much more evidence is still wanting before it can be positively decided. In the progress of scientific investigation, we must frequently travel by rugged paths, and through valleys as well as over mountains. Doubt must necessarily succeed often to apparent certainty, and must again give place to a certainty of a higher order; such is the imperfection of our faculties, that the descent from conviction to hesitation is not uncommonly as salutary, as the more agreeable elevation from uncertainty to demonstration. An example of such alternations may easily be adduced from the history of chemistry. How universally had phlogiston once expelled the aërial acid of Hooke and Mayow. How much more completely had phlogiston given way to oxygen! And how much have some of our best chemists been lately inclined to restore the same phlogiston to its lost honours! although now again they are beginning to apprehend that they have already done too much in its favour. In the mean time, the true science of chemistry, as the most positive dogmatist will not hesitate to allow, has been very rapidly advancing towards ultimate perfection."
"The old contrast, often amounting to hostility, between scientific and humane subjects needs to be broken down and replaced by a scientific humanism. At the same time, the teaching of science proper requires to be humanized. The dry and factual presentation requires to be transformed... by emphasizing the living and dramatic character of scientific advance... Here the teaching of the history of science, not isolated as at present, but in close relation to general history teaching, would serve to correct the existing atmosphere of scientific dogmatism. It would show at the same time how secure are the conquests of science in the control they give over natural processes and how insecure and provisional, however necessary, are the rational interpretations, the theories and hypotheses put forward at each stage. Past history by itself is not enough, the latest developments of science should not be excluded because they have not yet passed the test of time. It is absolutely necessary to emphasize the fact that science not only has changed but is continually changing, that it is an activity and not merely a body of facts. Throughout, the social implications of science, the powers that it puts into men’s hands, the uses... should be brought out and made real by a reference to immediate experience of ordinary life. ...[I]t should be possible to introduce the teaching of practical scientific methods by making students find out for themselves new relationships in things that already concern them and not in artificially simplified and unnecessarily abstract experiment."
"A new science must be pursued historically, the only thing to be done being to study in chronological order the different works which have contributed to the progress... But when such materials have become recast to form a general system, to meet the demand for a more natural logical order, it is because the science is too far advanced for the historical order to be practicable or suitable. ...By the dogmatic method ...must every advanced science be attained, with so much of the historical combined with it as is rendered necessary..."
"A stage of precision is barren without a previous stage of romance: unless there are facts which have already been vaguely apprehended in their broad generality, the previous analysis is an analysis of nothing. It is simply a series of meaningless statements about bare facts, produced artificially and without any further relevance."
"We'll imagine that the box is made of a material that has no effect on any electric fields; it's of the same breed as the massless rope, the frictionless incline, and the free college education."
"[Engineering concerns] the creative application of scientific principles to design or develop structures, machines, apparatus, or manufacturing processes, or works utilizing them singly or in combination; or to construct or operate the same with full cognizance of their design; or to forecast their behavior under specific operating conditions; all as respects an intended function, economics of operation and safety to life and property.""
"As with anything else, there are good and bad ways to forecast."
"Psychologist Philip Tetlock (following the lead of Isaiah Berlin), divided the world of political forecasters into hedgehogs and foxes."
"If you make a great number of predictions, the ones that were wrong will soon be forgotten, and the ones that turn out to be true will make you famous."
"Question 8. Is There a Measurable, Qualitatively Distinctive Prediction of String Theory? String theories can, in principle, make many "s" (such as the calculation of the mass ratios of s and s, Higgs masses and couplings, s, etc.). They can also make many new predictions (such as the masses of the supersymmetric partners of the observed particles, new gauge interactions, etc.). These would be sufficient to establish the validity of the theory, however in each case one can imagine (although with some difficulty) conventinal field theories coming up with similar pre or post dictions. It would be nice to predict a phenomenon, which would be accessible at observable energies and is uniquely characteristic of string theory."
"I have always believed that people have misjudged the accuracy of economic forecasting... During the 1980s and 1990s, I researched and applied methods of high frequency economic forecasting, to be used by themselves, and for objective establishment of initial conditions for longer range forecasts from structural dynamic models that carry forward the pioneering contributions of Jan Tinbergen."
"A forecast can only be based on a diagnosis about current trends if it is to be based on something other than wishful thinking. This is why I was never a strong supporter of the distinction between forecasts and projections: our best forecasts are intelligent projections. Moreover, it turns out that learning about the diagnosis that underlies a forecast is often much more rewarding than learning about the forecast itself."
"Dynamic systems studies usually are not designed to predict what will happen. Rather, they're designed to explore what would happen, if a number of driving factors unfold in a range of different ways."
"I am profoundly skeptical about our abilities to predict the future in general, and human behavior in particular."
"Without precise predictability, control is impotent and almost meaningless. In other words, the lesser the predictability, the harder the entity or system is to control, and vice versa. If our universe actually operated on linear causality, with no surprises, uncertainty, or abrupt changes, all future events would be absolutely predictable in a sort of waveless orderliness."
"The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable."
"Forecasting by bureaucrats tends to be used for anxiety relief rather than for adequate policy making."
"This led me to the thought that it might be easy to pretend to be a Seer. After all, if one pretended to have visions of the far distant future, how would anyone know if they came true or not?"
"The intellectually aggressive hedgehogs knew one big thing and sought, under the banner of parsimony, to expand the explanatory power of that big thing to “cover” new cases; the more eclectic foxes knew many little things and were content to improvise ad hoc solutions to keep pace with a rapidly changing world."
"It is my hope that in such a way we may again, as Marx claimed, find scientific arguments in the competition between various systems, but up-to-date scientific arguments rather than obsolete ones. This more fundamental research in economics deserves relatively more attention and resources than the more superficial versions of economic research directed at forecasting or analysing very short-term fluctuations in market prices, on which quite some money is being spent to-day."
"The successes of modern control theory in the design of highly accurate space navigation systems have stimulated its use in the theoretical analyses of economic and biological systems. Similarly, the effectiveness of computer simulation techniques in the macroscopic analyses of physical systems has brought into vogue the use of computer-based econometric models for purposes of forecasting, economic planning, and management."
"Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future."
"It was Pythagoras who first called heaven kosmos, because it is perfect, and "adorned" with infinite beauty and living beings."
"Man's relations to man do not captivate my fancy. It is man's relation to the cosmos — to the unknown — which alone arouses in me the spark of creative imagination. The humanocentric pose is impossible to me, for I cannot acquire the primitive myopia which magnifies the earth and ignores the background."
"We can allow satellites, planets, suns, the Universe, nay whole systems of Universes to be governed by laws; but the smallest insect, we wish to be created at once by special act."
"It is because the cosmos is meaningless that we must secure our individual illusions of values, direction, and interest by upholding the artificial streams which give us such worlds of salutary illusion. That is — since nothing means anything in itself, we must preserve the proximate and arbitrary background which makes things around us seem as if they did mean something."
"The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us — there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation of a distant memory, as if we were falling from a great height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries."
"Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who pretend to nonexistent knowledge and envision a Cosmos centered on human beings will prefer the fleeting comforts of superstition. They avoid rather than confront the world. But those with the courage to explore the weave and structure of the Cosmos, even where it differs profoundly from their wishes and prejudices, will penetrate its deepest mysteries."
"Whatever is inconsistent with the facts must be discarded or revised. We must understand the Cosmos as it is and not confuse how it is with how we wish it to be."
"The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home. In a cosmic perspective, most human concerns seem insignificant, even petty. And yet our species is young and curious and brave and shows much promise. In the last few millennia we have made the most astonishing and unexpected discoveries about the Cosmos and our place within it, explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have evolved to wonder, that understanding is a joy, that knowledge is prerequisite to survival. I believe our future depends powerfully on how well we understand this Cosmos in which we float like a mote of dust in the morning sky."
"Of the cosmic Gods some make the world be, others animate it, others harmonize it, consisting as it does of different elements; the fourth class keep it when harmonized."
"The cosmos itself must of necessity be indestructible and uncreated. Indestructible because, suppose it destroyed: the only possibility is to make one better than this or worse or the same or a chaos. If worse, the power which out of the better makes the worse must be bad. If better, the maker who did not make the better at first must be imperfect in power. If the same, there will be no use in making it; if a chaos... it is impious even to hear such a thing suggested. These reasons would suffice to show that the world is also uncreated: for if not destroyed, neither is it created. Everything that is created is subject to destruction."
"Longer than memory we have known that each animal has its power and place, each a skill, virtue, wisdom, innocence — a special access to the structure and flow of the world. Each surpasses ourselves in some way. Together, sacred, they help hold the cosmos together, making it a joy and beauty to behold, but above all a challenge to understand as story, drama, and sacred play."
"This is the goal of all living, that the cosmos may be known, and admired, and that it may be crowned with further beauties. Nowhere and at no time, so far as we can tell, at least within our own galaxy, has the adventure reached further than in ourselves. And in us, what has been achieved is but a minute beginning. But it is a real beginning."
"There is no God-Creator, but there is the Cosmos, which creates suns, planets and living beings. There is no omnipotent God, but there is the Universe, which governs the fates of all celestial bodies and their inhabitants. There are no sons of God, but there are mature and thus rational and perfect sons of the Cosmos. There are no personal gods, but there are elected leaders of planets, solar systems, stellar groups, milky ways, islands of ether and the whole Cosmos. There is no Christ, but there is a brilliant man and a greater teacher of mankind."
"This mysterious something has been called God, the Absolute, Nature, Substance, Energy, Space, Ether, Mind, Being, the Void, the Infinite — names and ideas which shift in popularity and respectability with the winds of intellectual fashion, of considering the universe intelligent or stupid, superhuman or subhuman, specific or vague. All of them might be dismissed as nonsense-noises if the notion of an underlying Ground of Being were no more than a product of intellectual speculation. But these names are often used to designate the content of a vivid and almost sensorily concrete experience — the "unitive" experience of the mystic, which, with secondary variations, is found in almost all cultures at all times. This experience is the transformed sense of self which I was discussing in the previous chapter, though in "naturalistic" terms, purified of all hocus-pocus about mind, soul, spirit, and other intellectually gaseous words."
"Thus we are brought to the third circle of this hell, which, perhaps, will some day find its Dante. In this third social circle, a sort of Parisian belly, in which the interests of the town are digested, and where they are condensed into the form known as /business/, there moves and agitates, as by some acrid and bitter intestinal process, the crowd of lawyers, doctors, notaries, councillors, business men, bankers, big merchants, speculators, and magistrates. Here are to be found even more causes of moral and physical destruction than elsewhere... Their genuine stupidity lies hid beneath their specialism. They know their business, but are ignorant of everything which is outside it. So that to preserve their self-conceit they question everything, are crudely and crookedly critical. They appear to be sceptics and are in reality simpletons; they swamp their wits in interminable arguments..."
"Everyone who achieves strives for totality, and the value of his achievement lies in that totality—that is, in the fact that the whole, undivided nature of a human being should be expressed in his achievement. But when determined by our society, as we see it today, achievement does not express a totality; it is completely fragmented and derivative. It is not uncommon for the community to be the site where a joint and covert struggle is waged against higher ambitions and more personal goals. ... The socially relevant achievement of the average person serves in the vast majority of cases to repress the original and nonderivative, inner aspirations of the human being."
"The disease of the modern character is specialization. Looked at from the standpoint of the social system, the aim of specialization may seem desirable enough. The aim is to see that the responsibilities of government, law, medicine, engineering, agriculture, education, etc., are given into the hands of the most skilled, best prepared people. The difficulties do not appear until we look at specialization from the opposite standpoint—that of individual persons. We then begin to see the grotesquery—indeed, the impossibility—of an idea of community wholeness that divorces itself from any idea of personal wholeness."
"The first, and best known, hazard of the specialist system is that it produces specialists—people who are elaborately and expensively trained to do one thing. We get into absurdity very quickly here. There are, for instance, educators who have nothing to teach, communicators who have nothing to say, medical doctors skilled at expensive cures for diseases that they have no skill, and no interest, in preventing. More common, and more damaging, are the inventors, manufacturers, and salesmen of devices who have no concern for the possible effects of those devices. Specialization is thus seen to be a way of institutionalizing, justifying, and paying highly for a calamitous disintegration and scattering-out of the various functions of character: workmanship, care, conscience, responsibility."
"The market system, as it gets more specialized, will give more and more to the top people. If we were back in 1800 and we were all working on farms, you'd probably be worth more a little more than I am, because you'd work harder and be stronger. But the top person working at a farm would be worth one-and-a-half to maybe two times what the bottom person was. But as we get more and more specialized, the guy that is the best at knocking out some other guy who weighs two hundred pounds is worth ... thirty million dollars a fight. Now, he's worth thirty million dollars a fight because someone invented television and cablevision. As we get more specialized, the rich will get even richer."
"This is an era of specialists, each of whom sees his own problem and is unaware of or intolerant of the larger frame into which it fits."
"Nowadays, the phenomenon (of division of labor) has developed so generally it is obvious to all. We need have no further illusions about the tendencies of modern industry; it advances steadily towards powerful machines, towards great concentrations of forces and capital, and consequently to the extreme division of labor. Occupations are infinitely separated and specialized, not only inside the factories, but each product is itself a specialty dependent upon others. Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill still hoped that agriculture, at least, would be an exception to the rule, and they saw it as the last resort of small-scale industry. Although one must be careful not to generalize unduly in such matters, nevertheless it is hard to deny today that the principal branches of the agricultural industry are steadily being drawn into the general movement. Finally, business itself is ingeniously following and reflecting in all its shadings the infinite diversity of industrial enterprises; and, while this evolution is realizing itself with unpremeditated spontaneity, the economists, examining its causes and appreciating its results, far from condemning or opposing it, uphold it as necessary. They see in it the supreme law of human societies and the condition of their progress."
"[O]ur failures are a consequence of many factors, but possibly one of the most important is the fact that society operates on the theory that specialization is the key to success, not realizing that specialization precludes comprehensive thinking. ...All universities have been progressively organized for ever finer specialization. ...Yet ...a little child ...is interested in everything and spontaneously apprehends, comprehends, and co-ordinates an ever-expanding inventory of experiences. ...Nothing seems to be more prominent about human life than its wanting to understand all and put everything together. One of humanity's prime drives is to understand and be understood. ...We had assumed the child to be an empty brain receptacle into which we could inject ...wisdom until ...educated ...In the light of modern behavioral science ...that was not a good working assumption. ...[W]hy is it that we have disregarded all children's significantly spontaneous and comprehensive curiosity ...We do not have to go back very far in history for the answer."
"We are in an age that assumes the narrowing trends of specialization to be logical, natural, and desirable. Consequently, society expects all earnestly responsible communication to be crisply brief. . . . In the meantime, humanity has been deprived of comprehensive understanding. Specialization has bred feelings of isolation, futility, and confusion in individuals. It has also resulted in the individual's leaving responsibility for thinking and social action to others. Specialization breeds biases that ultimately aggregate as international and ideological discord, which, in turn, leads to war."
"Lack of knowledge concerning all the factors and the failure to include them in our integral imposes false conclusions."
"The youth of humanity all around our planet are intuitively revolting from all sovereignties and political ideologies. The youth of Earth are moving intuitively toward an utterly classless, raceless, omnicooperative, omniworld humanity. Children freed of the ignorantly founded educational traditions and exposed only to their spontaneously summoned, computer-stored and -distributed outflow of reliable-opinion-purged, experimentally verified data, shall indeed lead society to its happy egress from all misinformedly conceived, fearfully and legally imposed, and physically enforced customs of yesterday. They can lead all humanity into omnisuccessful survival as well as entrance into an utterly new era of human experience in an as-yet and ever-will-be fundamentally mysterious Universe."
"The inevitable counterpart of specialization is organization. This is what brings the work of specialists to a coherent result. If there are many specialists, this coordination will be a major task. So complex, indeed, will be the job of organizing specialists that there will be specialists on organization and organizations of specialists on organization. More perhaps than machinery, massive and complex business organizations are the tangible manifestation of advanced technology."
"Previously men could be divided into the learned and the unlearned, … But your specialist cannot be brought in under either of these categories … We shall have to say that he is a learned ignoramus, which is a very serious matter, as it implies that he is a person who is ignorant, not in the fashion of the ignorant man, but with all the petulance of one who is learned."
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."
"The underlying principle of specialization is division of labor; but the term division of labor has become associated with the individual worker, whereas specialization is, in general, far reaching in its effects, and influences industrial enterprises of all kinds."
"Just as it is inconceivable that human society would have evolved to its present state without language, it is inconceivable that we would have gotten to this point without specialization and trade. Moreover, in order for society to progress further, patterns of specialization and trade must continue to evolve."
"A second, related assumption of modern progress-philosophy is that intellectual production functions in essentially the same way as economic production: the progress of both results from “teamwork,” from the practice of the division of labor or specialization within a group. And just as the essential precondition of the economic division of labor is exchange, so the precondition of intellectual specialization is the efficient exchange of knowledge—through publication."
"... I think the right strategy for the mass of humanity is to specialize. Nobody wants to go a doctor who is half proctologist and half dentist. ... The ordinary way to succeed is to narrowly specialize."
"Specialization in this world is rudimentary and self-sufficiency characterizes most individual households"
"International specialization and division of labor requires institutions and organizations to safeguard property rights across international boundaries so that capital markets as well as other kinds of exchange can take place with credible commitment on the part of the players."
"The idea of expertise in any one area of the humanities, with its subsequent phenomenon of faculty recruitment by time framed "slots," was always mistaken. It was inspired, in this masculine pioneer country that has never taken the arts seriously, by nervous emulation of the sciences, where one can indeed deeply and profitably specialize in moths, ferns, or igneous rocks. But there is no true expertise in the humanities without knowing all of the humanities."
"If a man is trained, purely and simply, to be expert and contented in a particular task he will not innovate; Freud would have remained an anatomist, Marx a philosopher, Darwin a field-naturalist."
"No man can be a pure specialist without being in the strict sense an idiot."
"The last of Smith’s regrettable failures is one for which he is overwhelmingly famous – the division of labor. How can it be that the famous opening chapters of his book, and the pin factory he gave immortality, can be considered a failure? Are they not cited as often as any passages in all economics? Indeed, over the generations they are. The failure is different: almost no one used or now uses theory of division of labor, for the excellent reason that there is scarcely such a theory. … there is no standard, operable theory to describe what Smith argued to be the mainspring of economic progress. Smith gave the division of labor an immensely convincing presentation – it seems to me as persuasive a case for the power of specialization today as it appeared to Smith. Yet there is no evidence, so far as I know, of any serious advance in theory of the subject since his time, and specialization is not an integral part of the modern theory of production, which may well be an explanation for the fact that the modern theory of economies of scale is little more than a set of alternative possibilities."
"It is an ancient belief, going back to classical antiquity, that specialization of any kind is illiberal in a freeman. A man willing to bury himself in the details of some small endeavor has been considered lost to these larger considerations which must occupy the mind of the ruler."
"For the Confucian, the specialistic expert could not be raised to truly positive dignity, no mater what his social usefulness. The decisive factor was that the "cultured man" (gentleman) was "not a tool"; that is, in his adjustment to the world and in his self-perfection he was an end unto himself, not a means for any functional end. This core of Confucian ethics rejected professional specialization, modern expert bureaucracy, and special training; above all, it rejected training in economics for the pursuit of profit."
"Specialization develops only part of a man; a man partially developed is deformed."
"The former distrust of specialization has been supplanted by its opposite, a distrust of generalization. Not only has man become a specialist in practice, he is being taught that special facts represent the highest form of knowledge."
"Just as the various trades are most highly developed in large cities, in the same way food at the palace is prepared in a far superior manner. In small towns the same man makes couches, doors, plows and tables, and often he even builds houses, and still he is thankful if only he can find enough work to support himself. And it is impossible for a man of many trades to do all of them well. In large cities, however, because many make demands on each trade, one alone is enough to support a man, and often less than one: for instance one man makes shoes for men, another for women, there are places even where one man earns a living just by mending shoes, another by cutting them out, another just by sewing the uppers together, while there is another who performs none of these operations but assembles the parts, Of necessity, he who pursues a very specialised task will do it best."
"[General System Theory]... is a logico-mathematical field, the subject matter of which is the formulation and derivation of those principles which hold for systems in general."
"General Systems Theory is a name which has come into use to describe a level of theoretical model-building which lies somewhere between the highly generalized constructions of pure mathematics and the specific theories of the specialized disciplines. Mathematics attempts to organize highly general relationships into a coherent system, a system however which does not have any necessary connections with the "real" world around us. It studies all thinkable relationships abstracted from any concrete situation or body of empirical knowledge."
"The idea of a systems can be seen as a further generalized and extended thought of the following consideration. First, there is the rather sweeping claim, that "Every system has subsystems". Taking this together with "Every system has its environment", we are indeed confronted with limitless vistas of systems. One us unable to think of anything, or of any combination of things, which could not be regarded as a system. And, of course, a concept that applies to everything is logically empty. What characteristics are there which any object or group of objects could have, such that they would fail to form some kind of system? In my view, general systems theory not only does not, but further could not, answer this question. And it is partly for this reason that I believe that general systems theory is not in fact science at all, but rather naive and speculative philosophy."
"General systems theory is a series of related definitions, assumptions, and postulates about all levels of systems from atomic particles through atoms, molecules, crystals, viruses, cells, organs, individuals, small groups, societies, planets, solar systems, and galaxies. General behavior systems theory is a subcategory of such theory, dealing with living systems, extending roughly from viruses through societies. A significant fact about living things is that they are open systems, with important inputs and outputs. Laws which apply to them differ from those applying to relatively closed systems."
"[The objective of the Society for General Systems Research]. To encourage the development of theoretical systems which are applicable to more than one of the traditional departments of knowledge. All sciences develop theoretical systems of concepts, relationships, and models. Many of these systems are isomorphic, but their similarity is undetected because of differences in terminology and if other barriers to communications among specialists. Furthermore, systems which have been well worked out can be of assistance in the development of others. The major functions or general systems research are therefore: 1) to investigate the isomorphy of concepts, laws, and models in various fields, and to help in useful transfers from one field to another; 2) to encourage the development of adequate theoretical models in areas which lack them; 3) to eliminate the duplication of theoretical efforts in different fields; 4) to promote the unity of science through improving the communication among specialists."
"A number of proposals have been advanced in recent years for the development of ‘general systems theory’ which, abstracting from properties peculiar to physical, biological, or social systems, would be applicable to all of them. We might well feel that, while the goal is laudable, systems of such diverse kinds could hardly be expected to have any nontrivial properties in common. Metaphor and analogy can be helpful, or they can be misleading. All depends on whether the similarities the metaphor captures are significant or superficial. It may not be entirely vain, however, to search for common properties among diverse kinds of complex systems... The ideas of feedback and information provide a frame of reference for viewing a wide range of situations, just as do the ideas of evolution, of relativism, of axiomatic method, and of operationalism... hierarchic systems have some common properties that are independent of their specific content..."
"System theory is basically concerned with problems of relationships, of structure, and of interdependence rather than with the constant attributes of objects. In general approach it resembles field theory except that its dynamics deal with temporal as well as spatial patterns. Older formulations of system constructs dealt with the closed systems of the physical sciences, in which relatively self-contained structures could be treated successfully as if they were independent of external forces. But living systems, whether biological organisms or social organizations, are acutely dependent on their external environment and so must be conceived of as open systems"
"There is a revolutionary scientific perspective (stemming) from the General Systems Research movement and (with a) wealth of principles, ideas and insights that have already brought higher degree of scientific order and understanding to many areas as of biology, psychology and some physical sciences... Modern systems research can provide the basic of a framework more capable of doing justice to the complexities and dynamic properties of the socio-cultural system."
"Systems theory provides:"
"# A common vocabulary unifying the several "behavioral" disciplines."
"# A technique for treating large, complex organizations;"
"# A synthetic approach where piecemeal analysis is not possible due to the intricate interrelationships of parts that cannot be treated out of context of the whole;"
"# A viewpoint that gets at the heart of sociology because it sees the sociocultural system in terms of information and communication nets;"
"# The study of relations rather than "entities" with an emphasis on process and transition probabilities as the basis of a flexible structure of many degrees of freedom."
"# "An operationally definable, objective, non-anthropomorphic study of purposiveness, goal-seeking system behavior, symbolic cognitive processes, consciousness and self-awareness, and sociocultural emergence and dynamics in general."
"Of the so-called global theories the one initially stated and defined by Bertalanffy in 1947 under the title of "general systems theory" has taken hold... Since then he has refined, modified and applied his concepts, established a society for general systems theory and published a General Systems Yearbook. Many social scientists but only a handful of psychiatrists studied, understood or applied systems theory. Suddenly, under the leadership of Dr. William Gray of Boston, a threshold was reached so that at the 122nd annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in 1966 two sessions were held at which this theory was discussed and regular meetings for psychiatrists were ensured for future participation in and development of this "Unified Theory of Human Behavior." If there be a third revolution (i.e. after the psychoanalytic and behavioristic), it is in the development of a general theory."
"It is sheer nonsense to expect that any human being has yet been able to attain such insight into the problems of society that he can really identify the central problems and determine how they should be solved. The systems in which we live are far too complicated as yet for our intellectual powers and technology to understand."
"A great many writers have manifestly believed that there is a way of considering phenomena which is sufficiently different from the well-established modes of scientific analysis to deserve the particular title of systems thinking."
"The basic managerial idea introduced by systems thinking, is that to manage a system effectively, you might focus on the interactions of the parts rather than their behavior taken separately."
"General systems theory is the scientific exploration of "wholes" and "wholeness" which, not so long ago, were considered metaphysical notions transcending the boundaries of science. Hierarchic structure, stability, teleology, differentiation, approach to and maintenance of steady states, goal-directedness — these are a few of such general system properties."
"There has been an increased but still rather limited response to general systems theory, as variously reflected in the work of Bateson, Vayda, Rappaport, Adams, and an interest in the use of computers, programming, matrices, etc. But the interaction between general systems theory (as represented, for example, by the theoretical work of Von Bertalanffy) has been compromised, partly by the state of field data, extraordinarily incomparable as it inevitably is, as well as historical anthropological methods of dealing with wholes. General systems theory has taken its impetus from the excitement of discovering larger and larger contexts, on the one hand, and a kind of microprobing into fine detail within a system, on the other. Both of these activities are intrinsic to anthropology to the extent that field work in living societies has been the basic disciplinary method. It is no revelation to any field-experienced anthropologist that everything is related to everything else, or that whether the entire sociocultural setting can be studied in detail or not, it has to be known in general outline."
"What I consider completely sterile is the attitude, for instance, of Bertalanffy who is going around and jumping around for years saying that all the analytical science and molecular biology doesn’t really get to interesting results; let’s talk in terms of general systems theory … there cannot be anything such as general systems theory, it’s impossible. Or, if it existed, it would be meaningless."
"General systems theory deals with the most fundamental concepts and aspects of systems. Many theories dealing with more specific types of systems (e.g., dynamical systems, automata, control systems, game-theoretic systems, among many others) have been under development for quite some time. General systems theory is concerned with the basic issues common to all these specialized treatments."
"The Society for General Systems Theory and its publication General Systems was a mixed bag. Few authors were actually doing research -they philosophized, and many prematurely resolved dilemmas by mathematical equations in a language poorly understood by the empirical investigator."
"Systems theory is an attempt to provide a general explanation for social behaviour (certain types of this theory are referred to as grand theory)."
"Project management utilises the systems approach to management by having functional personnel (the vertical hierarchy) assigned to a specific project (the horizontal hierarchy)."
"General systems theory is considered as a formal theory (Mesarovic, Wymore), a methodology (Ashby, Klir), a way of thinking (Bertalanffy, Churchman), a way of looking at the world (Weinberg), a search for an optimal simplification (Ashby, Weinberg), didactic method (Boulding, Klir, Weinberg), metalanguage (Logren), and profession (Klir)."
"For a long time, people have been trying to characterize or define the notion of system. After all, “systems” are supposed to be what System Theory is about. The results so far have been contradictory and unsatisfactory. This confusion at the foundations has led many to conclude that there is no such thing as a "system" and hence to deny that System Theory is about anything. Even those most sympathetic to the notion have difficulties at this level. The very founders of System Theory did not try to say what a system was; and as for System Theory, they characterized it only obliquely, by saying it comprised all studies of interest to more than one discipline. They thereby begged the entire question."
"(Systems science) does not aim to find the one true representation for a given type of systems (e.g. physical, chemical or biological systems), but to formulate general principles about how different representations of different systems can be constructed so as to be effective in problem-solving."
"Systems inquiry has demonstrated its capability in dealing effectively with highly complex and large-scale problem situations. It has orchestrated the efforts of various disciplines within the framework of systems thinking. It has introduced systems approaches and methods to the analysis, design, development, evaluation, and management of systems of all kinds... Systems theory pursues the scientific exploration and understanding of systems that exist in the various realms of experience, in order to arrive at a general theory of systems: an organized expressing of sets of interrelated concepts and principles that apply to all systems."
"Critical systems thinking is a robust recent trend in humanistically oriented systems work. Spearheaded by work of Ulrich (1983), Flood (1990), and Flood and Jackson (1991), this approach manages to accommodate the knowledge-constitutive interests of Jürgen Habermas (1971) and the interpretive analytical orientations of Michel Foucault (1972) through a meta-methodology involving constant critical reflection. The meta-methodology serves as the basis for the generation of a new methodology that critically applies various systems approaches to problem solving."
"Systems science and technology constitute one aspect of systems thinking, but the humanities and arts make up the other. The fact that design plays such a large part in the systemic treatment of problems makes it apparent that art has a major role in it as well. Ethics and aesthetics are integral aspects of evaluating systems... the systems approach involves the pursuit of truth (science) and its effective use (technology), plenty (economics), the good (ethics and morality), and beauty and fun (aesthetics). To compare systems methodology with that of any of the so-called ‘hard’ disciplines—for example, physics—is to misunderstand the nature of systems. The worry is not that the systems approach is not scientific in the sense which physics or chemistry or biology is, but that some try to make it scientific in that sense. To the extent they succeed, they destroy it."
"Complexity theory is really a movement of the sciences. Standard sciences tend to see the world as mechanistic. That sort of science puts things under a finer and finer microscope. In biology the investigations go from classifying organisms to functions of organisms, then organs themselves, then cells, and then organelles, right down to protein and enzymes, metabolic pathways, and DNA. This is finer and finer reductionist thinking. The movement that started complexity looks in the other direction. It’s asking, how do things assemble themselves? How do patterns emerge from these interacting elements? Complexity is looking at interacting elements and asking how they form patterns and how the patterns unfold. It’s important to point out that the patterns may never be finished. They’re open-ended. In standard science this hit some things that most scientists have a negative reaction to. Science doesn’t like perpetual novelty."
"What is systems science? This question, which I have been asked on countless occasions, can basically be answered either in terms of activities associated with systems science or in terms of the domain of its inquiry. The most natural answers to the question are, almost inevitably, the following definitions:"
"# Systems science is what systems scientists do when they claim they do science."
"# Systems science is that field of scientific inquiry whose objects of study are systems."
"Within sociology there have been several system theories, differing from one another in the extent to which, for example, human agency, creativity, and entrepreneurship are assumed to play a role in system formation and reformation; conflict and struggle are taken into account; power and stratification are part and parcel of the theory; structural change and transformation – and more generally, historically developments – are taken into account and explained. What the various system theories have in common is a systematic concern with complex and varied interconnections and interdependencies of social life. Complexity has been a central concept for many working in the systems perspective. The tradition is characterized to a great extent by a burning ambition and hope to provide a unifying language and conceptual framework for all the social sciences."
"System theories have been applied to a wide spectrum of empirical cases and policy issues. Parsons and his followers, in particular, applied their systems theory to diverse empirical phenomena in sociology as well as in other disciplines: modernization, economics, politics, social order, industrialization and development, Fascism and McCarthyism, international relations, social change and evolution, complex organizations, health care, universities, religion, professions, small groups, and family as well as abstract questions such as the place of norms in maintaining social order both historically and cross-nationally. Marxian theory and dynamic system theories have also been applied to a spectrum of diverse empirical and policy subjects."
"The overall field of systems science is still in formation."
"Systems theory is antireductionist; it asserts that no system can be adequately understood or totally explained once it has been broken down into its component parts"
"Systems theory is a science which has the comparative study of systems as its object."
"Complexity by itself is not the catalyst in which a system might crash. Rather, it is how the complexity emerges in a system that determines whether that system will do what it was intended to do or morph into an unworkable organization clogged by bottlenecks and blockages. Does the system emerge through a natural course of events vetted by trial and error, or does it emerge by artificial means that detach the system from its external, self-assembled process?"
"By the term architectonic I mean the art of constructing a system. Without systematic unity, our knowledge cannot become science; it will be an aggregate, and not a system. Thus architectonic is the doctrine of the scientific in cognition, and therefore necessarily forms part of our methodology. Reason cannot permit our knowledge to remain in an unconnected and rhapsodistic state, but requires that the sum of our cognitions should constitute a system. It is thus alone that they can advance the ends of reason. By a system I mean the unity of various cognitions under one idea. This idea is the conception--given by reason--of the form of a whole, in so far as the conception determines a priori not only the limits of its content, but the place which each of its parts is to occupy. The scientific idea contains, therefore, the end and the form of the whole which is in accordance with that end. The unity of the end, to which all the parts of the system relate, and through which all have a relation to each other, communicates unity to the whole system, so that the absence of any part can be immediately detected from our knowledge of the rest; and it determines a priori the limits of the system, thus excluding all contingent or arbitrary additions. The whole is thus an organism (articulatio), and not an aggregate (coacervatio); it may grow from within (per intussusceptionem), but it cannot increase by external additions (per appositionem). It is, thus, like an animal body, the growth of which does not add any limb, but, without changing their proportions, makes each in its sphere stronger and more active. We require, for the execution of the idea of a system, a schema, that is, a content and an arrangement of parts determined a priori by the principle which the aim of the system prescribes."
"There is no greater fallacy than the belief that aims and purposes are one thing, while methods and tactics are another, This conception is a potent menace to social regeneration. All human experience teaches that methods and means cannot be separated from the ultimate aim. The means employed become, through individual habit and social practice, part and parcel of the final purpose; they influence it, modify it, and presently the aims and means become identical."
"The game of science is, in principle, without end. He who decides one day that scientific statements do not call for any further test, and that they can be regarded as finally verified, retires from the game."
"I fully agree with you about the significance and educational value of methodology as well as history and philosophy of science. So many people today — and even professional scientists — seem to me like someone who has seen thousands of trees but has never seen a forest. A knowledge of the historic and philosophical background gives that kind of independence from prejudices of his generation from which most scientists are suffering. This independence created by philosophical insight is — in my opinion — the mark of distinction between a mere artisan or specialist and a real seeker after truth."
"I think that the philosopher must, for his own purposes, carry methodological strictness to an extreme when he is investigating and pursuing his truths, but when he is ready to enunciate them and give them out, he ought to avoid the cynical skill with which some scientists, like a Hercules at the fair, amuse themselves by displaying to the public the biceps of their technique."
"The radical empiricist onslaught … provides the methodological justification for the debunking of the mind by the intellectuals—a positivism which, in its denial of the transcending elements of Reason, forms the academic counterpart of the socially required behavior."
"Abjection is a methodological conversion, like Cartesian doubt and Husserlian epoche: it establishes the world as a closed system which consciousness regards from without, in the manner of divine understanding"
"International affairs must be completely permeated with scientific methodology and a democratic spirit, with a fearless weighing of all facts, views, and theories, with maximum publicity of ultimate and intermediate goals, and with a consistency of principles."
"A scientist, an artist, a citizen is not like a child who needs papa methodology and mama rationality to give him security and direction, he can take care of himself, for he is the inventor not only of laws, theories, pictures, plays, forms of music, ways of dealing with his fellow man, institutions, but also entire world view, he is the inventor of entire forms of like."
"When talking about the methodology in the particular fields mentioned - about which I am supposed to have a little more than second hand knowledge - I have always found it utterly inadequate to focus attention only on these special fields without seeing them in a much broader perspective."
"A methodology will lack the precision of a technique but will be a firmer guide to action than a philosophy. Where a technique tells you 'how' and a philosophy tells you 'what', a methodology will contain elements of both 'what' and 'how'."
"methodology n. A method suffering from the prevalent 83 percent circumlocuflationary spiral."
"Weber... formulated the idea of methodology to serve, not simply as a guide to investigation but as a moral practice and a mode of political action."
"I think time will show that the new approach, emphasizing emergent "macro" control, is equally valid in all the physical sciences, and that the behavioral and cognitive disciplines are leading the way to a more valid framework for all science. Although the theoretic changes make little difference in physics, chemistry, molecular biology, and so on, they are crucial for the behavioral, social, and human sciences. They don't change the analytic, reductive methodology, just the interpretations and conclusions. There seems little to lose, and much to gain."
"When we seek a textbook case for the proper operation of science, the correction of certain error offers far more promise than the establishment of probable truth. Confirmed hunches, of course, are more upbeat than discredited hypotheses. Since the worst traditions of “popular” writing falsely equate instruction with sweetness and light, our promotional literature abounds with insipid tales in the heroic mode, although tough stories of disappointment and loss give deeper insight into a methodology that the celebrated philosopher Karl Popper once labeled as “conjecture and refutation.”"
"… The methods of science, like everything else under the sun, are themselves objects of scientific scrutiny, as method becomes methodology, the analysis of methods. Methodology in turn falls under the gaze of epistemology, the investigation of investigation itself--nothing is off limits to scientific questioning. The irony is that these fruits of scientific reflection, showing us the ineliminable smudges of imperfection, are sometimes used by those who are suspicious of science as their grounds for denying it a privileged status in the truth-seeking department--as if the institutions and practices they see competing with it were no worse off in these regards. But where are the examples of religious orthodoxy being simply abandoned in the face of irresistible evidence? Again and again in science, yesterday's heresies have become today's new orthodoxies. No religion exhibits that pattern in its history."
"Beware of Methodologies. They are a great way to bring everyone up to a dismal, but passable, level of performance, but at the same time, they are aggravating to more talented people who chafe at the restrictions that are placed on them."
"An integral approach is based on one basic idea: no human mind can be 100% wrong. Or, we might say, nobody is smart enough to be wrong all the time. And that means, when it comes to deciding which approaches, methodologies, epistemologies, or ways or knowing are "correct," the answer can only be, "All of them.""
"I don't claim to be a methodologist, but I act like one only because I do methodology to protect myself from crazy methodologists."
"First, have a grasp of context, detail and the rationale which makes design and image-making worthwhile to yourself and commercially, to someone else. Try not to become a "linear" professional. Learn a variety of technique, of thinking methodology and most of all, don't become complacent. Honestly, I get scared shitless every time I start a new, big job. I read, I gather information and push the client to tell me what they want. (Sometimes they really don't know, and those jobs are usually nightmares!) Remember details, notice how people move, how sunlight cascades over moving objects, why foliage looks the way it does (it's nature's own fractal magic) and how come velvet has about the same range of value as metallic surfaces but one is soft and the other is brittle. And finally, don't assume that technique alone will save your ass. It still is the idea that wins...every time. Remember that elaborate technique and dumb story produces a demo reel, not a narrative."
"Religion, aesthetics, ethics, and science are all ways in which human beings seek order in the natural world. Science differs from these other ways of knowing and learning because the scientific process uses the scientific method, a standard series of steps used in gaining new knowledge that is widely accepted among scientists. The steps of the scientific method are often applicable to other situations, and begin with observation."
"Systems engineering as an approach and methodology grew in response to the increase size and complexity of systems and projects... This engineering approach to the management of complexity by modularization was re-deployed in the software engineering discipline in the 1960s and 1970s with a proliferation of structured methodologies that enabled the the analysis, design and development of information systems by using techniques for modularized description, design and development of system components. Yourdon and DeMarco's Structured Analysis and Design, SSADM, James Martin's Information Engineering, and Jackson's Structured Design and Programming are examples from this era. They all exploited modularization to enable the parallel development of data, process, functionality and performance components of large software systems. The development of object orientation in the 1990s exploited modularization to develop reusable software. The idea was to develop modules that could be mixed and matched like Lego bricks to deliver to a variety of whole system specifications. The modularization and reusability principles have stood the test of time and are at the heart of modern software development."
"Skepticism is my nature. Freethought is my methodology. Agnosticism is my conclusion. Atheism is my opinion. Humanitarianism is my motivation."
"Scientists pursue ideas in an ill-defined but effective way that is often called the scientific method. There is no strict rule of procedure that will lead you from a good idea to a Nobel prize or even to a publishable discovery. Some scientists are meticulously careful; others are highly creative. The best scientists are probably both careful and creative. Although there are various scientific methods in use, a typical approach consists of a series of steps."
"Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine"
"The machines of which we are now speaking are not the dream of the sensationalist,nor the hope of some future time. They alreadyexist as thermostats, automatic gyro-compass ship-steering systems, self-propelled missiles – especially such as seek their target – anti aircraft fire-control systems, automatically controlled oil-crackingstills, ultra-rapid computing machines, and the like. They had begun to be used long before the war – indeed, the very old steam-engine governor belongs among them –but the great mechanization of the Second World War brought them into their own,and the need of handling the extremely dangerous energy of the atom will probably bring them to a still higher point of development. . .the present age is as truly the age of the servomechanisms as the nineteenth century was the age of the steam engine or the eighteenth century the age of the clock."
"The concepts of purposive behavior and teleology have long been associated with a mysterious, self-perfecting or goal-seeking capacity or final cause, usually of superhuman or super-natural origin. To move forward to the study of events, scientific thinking had to reject these beliefs in purpose and these concepts of teleological operations for a strictly mechanistic and deterministic view of nature. This mechanistic conception became firmly established with the demonstration that the universe was based on the operation of anonymous particles moving at random, in a disorderly fashion, giving rise, by their multiplicity, to order and regularity of a statistical nature, as in classical physics and gas laws. The unchallenged success of these concepts and methods in physics and astronomy, and later in chemistry, gave biology and physiology their major orientation. This approach to problems of organisms was reinforced by the analytical preoccupation of the Western European culture and languages. The basic assumptions of our traditions and the persistent implications of the language we use almost compel us to approach everything we study as composed of separate, discrete parts or factors which we must try to isolate and identify as potential causes. Hence, we derive our preoccupation with the study of the relation of two variables. We are witnessing today a search for new approaches, for new and more comprehensive concepts and for methods capable of dealing with the large wholes of organisms and personalities."
"The concept of teleological mechanisms however it be expressed in many terms, may be viewed as an attempt to escape from these older mechanistic formulations that now appear inadequate, and to provide new and more fruitful conceptions and more effective methodologies for studying self-regulating processes, self-orienting systems and organisms, and self-directing personalities. Thus, the terms feedback, servomechanisms, circular systems, and circular processes may be viewed as different but equivalent expressions of much the same basic conception"
"… Norbert Wiener of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a brilliant mathematician who recently won fame with his invention of cybernetics, a new science of communications... His prolonged studies of the striking analogies between the control systems in animal bodies and those in complex machines became the basis of his newly created cybernetics, a science of communications."
"CYBERNETICS. Catch on to this word now. It's a new coined to label the fast-growing electronic brain system of industry which mat have more effect on the way we live than will atomic energy."
"The celebrated physicist and mathematician A.M. Ampere coined the word cybernetique to mean the science of civil government (Part II of "Essai sur la philosophic des sciences", 1845, Paris). Ampere's grandiose scheme of political sciences has not, and perhaps never will, come to fruition. In the meantime, conflict between governments with the use of force greatly accelerated the development of another branch of science, the science of control and guidance of mechanical and electrical systems. It is thus perhaps ironical that Ampere's word should be borrowed by N. Wiener to name this new science, so important to modern warfare. The "cybernetics" of Wiener ("Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the animal and the Machine," John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 1948) is the science of organization of mechanical and electrical components for stability and purposeful actions. A distinguishing feature of this new science is the total absence of considerations of energy, heat, and efficiency, which are so important in other natural sciences. In fact, the primary concern of cybernetics is on the qualitative aspects of the interrelations among the various components of a system and the synthetic behavior of the complete mechanism."
"Naturally there are detailed differences in messages and in problems of control, not only between a living organism and a machine, but within each narrower class of beings. It is the purpose of Cybernetics to develop a language and techniques that will enable us indeed to attack the problem of control and communication in general, but also to find the proper repertory of ideas and techniques to classify their particular manifestations under certain concepts."
"Cybernetics is likely to reveal a great number of interesting and suggestive parallelisms between machine and brain and society. And it can provide the common language by which discoveries in one branch can readily be made use of in the others... [There are] two peculiar scientific virtues of cybernetics that are worth explicit mention. One is that it offers a single vocabulary and a single set of concepts suitable for representing the most diverse types of system... The second peculiar virtue of cybernetics is that it offers a method for the scientific treatment of the system in which complexity is outstanding and too important to be ignored. Such systems are, as we well know, only too common in the biological world!"
"Cybernetics is one of the youngest sciences in the world. Generally speaking, it was born in 1948, when the American mathematician Norbert Wiener, the pioneer of modern cybernetics, published a book under that title. The name soon became a fashion in the West, where even science is an object of fashion. Cybernetics, as such, is a concept that dates back many, many centuries. In ancient Greece it meant the art of steering, the skill of sailing ships — a skill so highly esteemed in that land of seafaring people that there were special festivities in its honour. In 1834 the famous French scientist Andre Ampere classified 128 branches of science, among which he named cybernetics as the science of steering, alongside with others for which he invented names. Wiener, thus, did not think up a new name. He simply applied the old one to a modern science."
"[Cybernetics is] the art of ensuring the efficacy of action."
"The word 'cybernetics' is still new to many people, even though it has now been an accepted word of our language for some ten or fifteen years. Speaking generally, cybernetics is the scientific study of control and communication. It is an attempt to give an integrated account of both physical and biological systems in terms of their capacity to communicate between different points of the system, and in terms of their control. There has been considerable research into general methods of communication in recent years, and this has been primarily the work of communication engineers, who are trying to discover in general terms what they themselves are doing."
"Cybernetics is the science of the process of transmission, processing and storage of information."
"For Stafford Beer, cybernetics was ‘the science of which operational research is the method’: ‘The representation and analysis of real world processes using logic, mathematics and computer science’, Operations Research (OR) and its offspring Systems Analysis (SA) transformed the manner in which war was prepared for, planned and imagined."
"All this (the early excitement of Cybernetics) is now history, and in the decade which elapsed since these early baby steps of interdisciplinary communication, many more threads were picked up and interwoven into a remarkable tapestry of knowledge and endeavour: Bionics. It is good omen that at the right time the right name was found. For, bionics extends a great invitation to all who are willing not to stop at the investigation of a particular function or its realization, but to go on and to seek the universal significance of these functions in living or artificial organisms. The reader who goes through the following papers which constitute the transactions of the first symposium held under the name Bionics will be surprised by the multitude of astonishing and unforeseen connections between concepts he believed to be familiar with. For instance, a couple of years ago, who would have thought to relate the reliability problem to multi-valued logics; or, who would have thought that integral or differential geometry would serve as an adequate tool in the theory of abstraction? It is hard to say in all these cases who was teaching whom: The life-sciences the engineering sciences, or vice versa? And rightly so, for it guarantees optimal information flow, and everybody gains..."
"Cybernetics is still headline news, and increasingly we hear about its applications to new fields of scientific and industrial endeavour. Stafford Beer's new book Cybernetics and Management is an admirable account on the relation that exist between cybernetics and the problems of management in industry [and]... covers a range of applications that have not previously been dealt with in print."
"Cybernetics is the general science of communication. But to refer to communication is consciously or otherwise to refer to distinguishable states of information inputs and outputs and /or to information being processed within some relatively isolated system."
"Cybernetics is concerned primarily with the construction of theories and models in science, without making a hard and fast distinction between the physical and the biological sciences. The theories and models occur both in symbols and in hardware, and by 'hardware* we shall mean a machine or computer built in terms of physical or chemical, or indeed any handleable parts. Most usually we shall think of hardware as meaning electronic parts such as valves and relays. Cybernetics insists, also, on a further and rather special condition that distinguishes it from ordinary scientific theorizing: it demands a certain standard of effectiveness. In this respect it has acquired some of the same motive power that has driven research on modern logic, and this is especially true in the construction and application of artificial languages and the use of operational definitions. Always the search is for precision and effectiveness, and we must now discuss the question of effectiveness in some detail. It should be noted that when we talk in these terms we are giving pride of place to the theory of automata at the expense, at least to some extent, of feedback and information theory."
"A great deal of the thinking [in Organizational Development] has been influenced by cybernetics and information theory, though this has been used as much to extend the scope of as to improve the sophistication of formulations. It was von Bertalanffy (1950) who, in terms of the general transport equation which he introduced, first fully disclosed the importance of openness or closedness to the environment as a means of distinguishing living organisms from inanimate objects."
"In 1946, a Macy Foundation interdisciplinary conference was organized to use the model provided by "feedback systems," honorifically referred to in earlier conferences as "teleological mechanisms," and later as "cybernetics," with the expectation that this model would provide a group of sciences with useful mathematical tools and, simultaneously, would serve as a form of cross-disciplinary communication. Out of the deliberations of this group came a whole series of fruitful developments of a very high order. Kurt Lewin (who died in 1947) took away from the first meeting the term "feedback". He suggested ways in which group processes, which he and his students were studying in a highly disciplined, rigorous way, could be improved by a "feedback process," as when, for example, a group was periodically given a report on the success or failure of its particular operations."
"If cybernetics is the science of control, management is the profession of control"
"Cybernetics is the science or the art of manipulating defensible metaphors; showing how they may be constructed and what can be inferred as a result of their existence."
"As an anthropologist, I have been interested in the effects that the theories of Cybernetics have within our society. I am not referring to computers or to the electronic revolution as a whole, or to the end of dependence on script for knowledge, or to the way that dress has succeeded the mimeographing machine as a form of communication among the dissenting young. Let me repeat that, I am not referring to the way that dress has succeeded the mimeographing machine as a form of communication among the dissenting young. I specifically want to consider the significance of the set of cross-disciplinary ideas which we first called “feed-back” and then called “teleological mechanisms” and then called it “cybernetics,” a form of crossdisciplinary thought which made it possible for members of many disciplines to communicate with each other easily in a language which all could understand."
"As Alain Enthoven was himself to recognize, ‘you assume that there is an information system that will tell you what you want to know. But that just isn’t so. There are huge amounts of misinformation and wronginformation’. Thus, far from eliminating the Clausewitzian ‘fog of war’, cybernetic warfare itself generated ‘a kind of twilight, which, like fog or moonlight, often tends to make things seem grotesque and larger than they really are’."
"Perhaps the most important single characteristic of modern organizational cybernetics is this: That in addition to concern with the deleterious impacts of rigidly-imposed notions of what constitutes the application of good "principles of organization and management" the organization is viewed as a subsystem of a larger system(s), and as comprised itself of functionally interdependent subsystems."
"The theory of information became the cornerstone of cybernetics because the latter deals with "the study of systems of any nature that are capable of receiving, storing and processing information and utilizing it for control"."
"The meaning of the term "cybernetics" is today somewhat different from that used when Wiener, McCulloch, Rosenblueth, Bigelow and others used the Greek word "Kybernetes," or helmsmen, to describe an automatic computer... the definition, which I first gave in 1966: "Cybernetics describes an intelligent activity or event which can be expressed in algorithms. Algorithms, in turn, refer to a system of instructions which describes unambiguously and accurately an interaction which is equivalent to a given type of flux of intelligence and a subsequent, controlled activity. The development of cybernetics aims, among other things, at the design and reproduction of functions which are peculiar to intelligent organism.""
"The essence of cybernetic organizations is that they are self-controlling, self-maintaining, self-realizing. Indeed, cybernetics has been characterized as the “science of effective organization,” in just these terms. But the word “cybernetics” conjures, in the minds of an apparently great number of people, visions of computerized information networks, closed loop systems, and robotized man-surrogates, such as “artorgas” and “cyborgs.”"
"Another scientific development that we find difficult to absorb into our traditional value system is the new science of cybernetics: machines that may soon equal or surpass man in original thinking and problem-solving. [...] In the hands of the present establishment there is no doubt that the machine could be used – is being used – to intensify the apparatus of repression and to increase established power. But again, as in the issue of population control, misuse of science has often obscured the value of science itself. In this case, though perhaps the response may not be quite so hysterical and evasive, we still often have the same unimaginative concentration on the evils of the machine itself, rather than a recognition of its revolutionary significance."
"Now "cybernetics" is the term coined by Wiener to denote "steersmanship" or the science of control. Although current engineering usage restricts it to the study of flows in closed systems, it can be taken in a wider context, as the study of processes interrelating systems with inputs and outputs, and their structural-dynamic structure. It is in this wider sense that "cybernetics" will be used here, to wit, as system-cybernetics, understanding by "system" an ordered whole in relation to its relevant environment (hence one actually or potentially open)."
"The main object of cybernetics is to supply adaptive, hierarchical models, involving feedback and the like, to all aspects of our environment. Often such modelling implies simulation of a system where the simulation should achieve the object of copying both the method of achievement and the end result. Synthesis, as opposed to simulation, is concerned with achieving only the end result and is less concerned (or completely unconcerned) with the method by which the end result is achieved. In the case of behaviour, psychology is concerned with simulation, while cybernetics, although also interested in simulation, is primarily concerned with synthesis. Most of the major developments in models and theories of artificial intelligence have taken place in the western world — mostly, indeed, in the US and Britain — and it was only relatively recently that "core developments", as opposed to more peripheral developments and applications, have spread over Europe and the Soviet Union."
"During the 1950s and 1960s most of the work which was called cybernetics tended to focus on control systems in engineering or on applications of the concept of feedback in fields ranging from mathematics to sociology. At the 1970 meeting of the American Society for Cybernetics in Philadelphia Heinz von Foerster sought to redirect attention to the original interests which had led to the founding of the field of cybernetics. In a paper titled "Cybernetics of Cybernetics" he made a distinction between first order cybernetics, the cybernetics of observed systems, and second order cybernetics, the cybernetics of observing systems."
"The cybernetics phase of cognitive science produced an amazing array of concrete results, in addition to its long-term (often underground) influence:"
"Think about the technology of sports footwear," she says. "Before the Civil War, right and left feet weren't even differentiated in shoe manufacture. Now we have a shoe for every activity." Winning the Olympics in the cyborg era isn't just about running fast. It's about "the interaction of medicine, diet, training practices, clothing and equipment manufacture, visualization and timekeeping." When the furor about the cyborgization of athletes through performance-enhancing drugs reached fever pitch last summer, Haraway could hardly see what the fuss was about. Drugs or no drugs, the training and technology make every Olympian a node in an international technocultural network just as "artificial" as sprinter Ben Johnson at his steroid peak."
"From the start, the cyborg was more than just another technical project; it was a kind of scientific and military daydream. The possibility of escaping its annoying bodily limitations led a generation that grew up on Superman and Captain America to throw the full weight of its grown-up R&D budget into achieving a real-life superpower. By the mid-1960s, cyborgs were big business, with millions of US Air Force dollars finding their way into projects to build exoskeletons, master-slave robot arms, biofeedback devices, and expert systems. For all the big bucks and high seriousness, the prevailing impression left by old cyborg technical papers is of a rather expensive kind of science fiction. Time and again, scientific reasoning melts into metaphysical speculation about evolution, human boundaries, and even the possibility of what Clynes and Kline call "a new and larger dimension for man's spirit." The cyborg was always as much a creature of scientific imagination as of scientific fact. It wasn't only the military that was captivated by the possibilities of the cyborg. The dream of improving human capabilities through selective breeding had long been a staple of the darker side of Western medical literature. Now there was the possibility of making better humans by augmenting them with artificial devices. Insulin drips had been used to regulate the metabolisms of diabetics since the 1920s. A heart-lung machine was used to control the blood circulation of an 18-year-old girl during an operation in 1953. A 43-year-old man received the first heart pacemaker implant in 1958. By the 1970s, the idea of an augmented human had entered the mainstream. Steve Austin, The Six Million Dollar Man, and his cohort Jaime Sommers, The Bionic Woman (with bionic limbs and a super-sensitive bionic ear), were popular heroes, their custom superpowers bought off the shelf like a digital watch. The cyborg had grown from a lecture-room fantasy into the stuff of prime-time TV."
"Wiener's dream of a universal science of communication and control has faded with the years. Cybernetics has given rise to new areas like cognitive science and stimulated valuable research in numerous other fields. But almost no one today calls themselves a cyberneticist. Some believe that Wiener's project fell victim to scientific fashion, its funding sucked away by flashy but ultimately pointless AI research. Others think cybernetics was killed by the basic problem that the nuts-and-bolts mechanisms of control and communication in machines are significantly different from those in animals, and neither are very like control and communication in society. So cybernetics, which was based on an inspired generalization, fell victim to its inability to deal with details. Whichever perspective is true (and as with most such stories, the truth is likely to be a mixture of both), cybernetics has left two important cultural residues behind. The first is its picture of the world as a collection of networks. The second is its intuition that there's not as much clear blue water between people and machines as some would like to believe. These still-controversial concepts are at the bionic heart of the cyborg, which is alive and well, and constructing itself in a laboratory near you."
"An opportunity for cybernetics to change the course of the philosophy of mind was missed when intentionality was misinterpreted as "the providing of coded knowledge"."
"Many of the core ideas of cybernetics have been assimilated by other disciplines, where they continue to influence scientific developments. Other important cybernetic principles seem to have been forgotten, though, only to be periodically rediscovered or reinvented in different domains. Some examples are the rebirth of neural networks, first invented by cyberneticists in the 1940's, in the late 1960's and again in the late 1980's; the rediscovery of the importance of autonomous interaction by robotics and AI in the 1990's; and the significance of positive feedback effects in complex systems, rediscovered by economists in the 1990's. Perhaps the most significant recent development is the growth of the complex adaptive systems movement, which, in the work of authors such as John Holland, Stuart Kauffman and Brian Arthur and the subfield of , has used the power of modern computers to simulate and thus experiment with and develop many of the ideas of cybernetics. It thus seems to have taken over the cybernetics banner in its mathematical modelling of complex systems across disciplinary boundaries, however, while largely ignoring the issues of goal-directedness and control."
"Cybernetics is the study of systems and processes that interact with themselves and produce themselves from themselves."
"Since the 1960s, Japan has produced a considerable number of cyborg narratives in manga and anime, particularly in works targeting male children and adolescents. From early manga examples such as Kazumasa Hirai and Hiro Kuwata's 8 Man and Shotaro Ishinomori's Cyborg 009, and their subsequent anime versions, the protagonist is commonly cyborged against their will or desires. This positions them as victims, regardless of how physically powerful they are. Their sense of inferiority and vulnerability usually underpins these narratives, either subtly or explicitly. The depiction of female cyborgs adds complexity to the positioning of cyborgs in manga and anime, especially in terms of gender. Female cyborgs may be equipped with remarkable physical strength, combined with voluptuous, eroticized bodies (for instance Major Motoko Kusanagi in Masamune Shirow's original manga and Mamoru Oshii's anime version of Ghost in the Shell); and these powerful female cyborgs are also frequently ascribed roles as protectors or supporters of incompetent and insecure male protagonists. Although some female cyborgs may possess characteristics that indicate a transgression of the conventional boundaries of gender, this transgression is often limited and undermined by other elements of their depiction. As Kumiko Sato points out in her essay "How Information Technology Has "Not, Changed Feminism and Japanism", "female cyborgs and androids have been domesticated and fetishized into maternal and sexual protectors of the male hero" and thus "their functions is usually reduced to either a maid or a goddess obediantly serving her beloved male master, the sole reason for her militant nature.""
"For me, as I later came to say, cybernetics is the art of creating equilibrium in a world of possibilities and constraints. This is not just a romantic description, it portrays the new way of thinking quite accurately. Cybernetics differs from the traditional scientific procedure, because it does not try to explain phenomena by searching for their causes, but rather by specifying the constraints that determine the direction of their development."
"In the late 1950s, experiments such as the cybernetic sculptures of Nicolas Schöffer or the programmatic music compositions of John Cage and Iannis Xenakis transposed systems theory from the sciences to the arts. By the 1960s, artists as diverse as , Hans Haacke, Robert Morris, Sonia Sheridan, and were breaking with accepted aesthetics to embrace open systems that emphasized organism over mechanism, dynamic processes of interaction among elements, and the observer’s role as an inextricable part of the system. Jack Burnham’s 1968 Artforum essay “Systems Aesthetics” and his 1970 “Software” exhibition marked the high point of systems-based art until its resurgence in the changed conditions of the twenty-first century."
"Cyborg. The word has a whiff of the implausible about it that leads many people to discount it as mere fantasy. Yet cyborgs, real ones, have been among us for almost 50 years. The world's first cyborg was a white lab rat, part of an experimental program at New York's Rockland State Hospital in the late 1950s. The rat had implanted in its body a tiny osmotic pump that injected precisely controlled doses of chemicals, altering various of its physiological parameters. It was part animal, part machine."
"The '90s cyborg is both a more sophisticated creature than its '50s ancestor - and a more domestic one. Artificial hip joints, cochlear implants for the deaf, retinal implants for the blind, and all kinds of cosmetic surgery are part of the medical repertoire. Online information retrieval systems are used as prosthetics for limited human memories. In the closed world of advanced warfare, cyborg assemblages of humans and machines are used to pilot fighter aircraft - the response times and sensory apparatus of unaided humans are inadequate for the demands of supersonic air combat. These eerie military cyborgs may be harbingers of a new world stranger than any we have yet experienced."
"The concept of action research arises in the behavioural sciences and is obviously applicable to an examination of human activity systems carried out through the process of attempting to solve problems. This core is the idea that the researcher does not remain an observer outside the subject of investigation but becomes a participant in the relevant human group. The researcher becomes a participant in the action, and the process of change itself becomes the subject of research. In action research the roles of researcher and subject are obviously not fixed: the roles of the subject and the practitioner are sometimes switched: the subjects become researchers... and researchers become men of action."
"The research needed for social practice can best be characterized as research for social management or social engineering. It is a type of action research, a comparative research of the conditions and effects of various forms of social action, and research leading to social action."
"Trist both pioneered and embodied action research – an interplay between his deep interaction with real problems in organisations, and the forefront of academic thought in social science. through coal mines in Yorkshire to an entire manufacturing town in New York State – he was an active contributor to both theory and practice. He said that “I used to look with longing at what I called the ‘white-coated peace’, the tranquillity of the white-coated scientists working in the lab. But that was not for me. I didn’t have a white lab coat. I was in the messy, ambiguous, problematic stuff that you have to endure if you are going to be a psychologist”."
"Action research is a participatory, democratic process concerned with developing practical knowing in the pursuit of worthwhile human purposes, grounded in a participatory worldview which we believe is emerging at this historical moment. It seeks to bring together action and reflection, theory and practice, in participation with others, in the pursuit of practical solutions to issues of pressing concern to people, and more generally the flourishing of individual persons and their communities."
"The clever man will tell you what he knows; he may even try to explain it to you. The wise man encourages you to discover it for yourself, even though he knows it inside out."
"CRAR [Critically Reflexive Action Research] does not aim to create one representation of reality but, rather, the unravelling (and documentation) of multiple realities and rhetorics that are in mutual and simultaneous interaction."
"The strength of the action research approach to professional development rests upon a creative and critical dialogue between members of a community which includes teachers, academics, parents, industrialists, and politicians. We move ahead through creative leaps of imagination. We learn from our mistakes in detailed criticisms of our positions."
"It was appropriate to say up front that systems thinking is the parent of design thinking and systems inquiry embeds design inquiry."
"Tektology must clarify the modes of organization that are perceived to exist in nature and human activity; then it must generalize and systematize these modes; further it must explain them, that is, propose abstract schemes of their tendencies and laws; finally, based on these schemes, determine the direction of organizational methods and their role in the universal process. This general plan is similar to the plan of any natural science; but the objective of tektology is basically different. Tektology deals with organizational experiences not of this or that specialized field, but of all these fields together. In other words, tektology embraces the subject matter of all the other sciences and of all the human experience giving rise to these sciences, but only from the aspect of method, that is, it is interested only in the modes of organization of this subject matter."
"The modern systems view, which flowered during World War II (though building on principles in the wind much earlier), has already borne its first fruits and is in danger of a superficial acceptance into the corpus of sociology by way of the incorporation of some of its now common vocabulary."
"Critical systems thinkers like Midgley identify three waves of systems thinking over the last 50 years or so. Early systems theorists (e.g. Bertalanffy) described systems in physical terms, resorting to metaphors from electronic computation or biology. This 'hard systems' tradition still has its advocates and practitioners... Subsequently the limits of the physical metaphor... were reached, and the second wave of systems thinking developed. This 'soft systems thinking' employed social metaphors to develop appropriate systems approaches for human systems. The move to a more phenomenological, interpretative understanding of human systems, where meaning is central and is negotiated intersubjectively, parallels the new paradigm / crisis of social psychology of the 1970s. The Third wave, or critical systems school, in which Midgley locates himself, has drawn on the critical theory of Habermas, particularly in relation to theories of knowledge and of communicative rationality, and on the work of Foucault and followers on the nature of power."
"Systems thinking, as written about and practiced by Russell Ackoff, C. West Churchman, Peter Checkland and others, contained within it many of the impulses that motivate the application of design ideas to strategy, organization, society, and management. Ideas such as engaging a broad set of stakeholders, moving beyond simple metrics and calculations, considering idealized options and using scenarios to explore them, shifting boundaries to reframe problems, iteration, the liberal use of diagrams and rich pictures, and tirelessly searching for a better set of alternatives were all there. If the business and management community had bought it, we would not be having the many discussions about design, design thinking, and expanding management education to engage the intuitive, to embrace values, to look beyond available choices."
"Systems thinking means the ability to see the synergy of the whole rather than just the separate elements of a system and to learn to reinforce or change whole system patterns. Many people have been trained to solve problems by breaking a complex system, such as an organization, into discrete parts and working to make each part perform as well as possible. However, the success of each piece does not add up to the success of the whole. to the success of the whole. In fact, sometimes changing one part to make it better actually makes the whole system function less effectively."
"Systems thinking is a mental discipline and framework for seeing patterns and interrelationships. It is important to see organizational systems as a whole because of their complexity. Complexity can overwhelm managers, undermining confidence. When leaders can see the structures that underlie complex situations, they can facilitate improvement. But doing that requires a focus on the big picture."
"In the selection of papers for this volume, two problems have arisen, namely what constitutes systems thinking and what systems thinking is relevant to the thinking required for organizational management. The first problem is obviously critical. Unless there were a meaningful answer there would be no sense in producing a volume of readings in systems thinking in any subject. A great many writers have manifestly believed that there is a way of considering phenomena which is sufficiently different from the well-established modes of scientific analysis to deserve the particular title of systems thinking."
"An example from soft systems thinking is Checkland's appreciation of soft systems methodology. He wants to introduce hard systems approaches to deal with hard problems only after and through a soft systems analysis."
"If Critical Systems Thinking is to contribute to enlightened societal practice, e.g., with respect to the pressing environmental and social issues of our time, it should be accessible not only to well-trained decision makers and academics but also to a majority of citizens."
"In a previous paper on progress in general systems research... I avoided the issue of defining a system. I noted that no definitions are satisfactory, and it seemed to me the essence of the subject area that none can be so. I went on to say that it is the systems approach—emphasizing lack of disciplinary boundaries, the freedom to apply knowledge, and techniques gathered in one field to problems in another, or to suggest that two distinct fields are in fact one, the disciplined freedom of the unconstrained intellect—that has been the source of dynamism and progress. I noted that perhaps the most telling progress of all is that we can so confidently speak of a common field of interest knowing that we could not, and would not wish to, agree on a definition of what a system is."
"An ecological approach to public administration builds, then, quite literally from the ground up; from the elements of a place — soils, climate, location, for example — to the people who live there — their numbers and ages and knowledge, and the ways of physical and social technology by which from the place and in relationships with one another, they get their living. It is within this setting that their instruments and practices of public housekeeping should be studied so that they may better understand what they are doing, and appraise reasonably how they are doing it. Such an approach is of particular interest to us as students seeking to co-operate in our studies; for it invites — indeed is dependent upon — careful observation by many people in different environments of the roots of government functions, civic attitudes, and operating problems."
"Systems thinking is a lost art with a very practical set of tools which our consultants and l use. lt assists us and our clients' thinking, diagnoses, and actions in whatever we do... and wherever we go in a much better, more holistic and practical way than traditional methods."
"Systems Thinking is based on 50+ years of scientific research by the Society for General Systems Research on the 12 Characteristics of life on earth, leading to the natural way the world works."
"Systems thinking is relatively recent, at least as an identifiable practice. There are books on the subject, but different authors view the subject differently, so it is an as-yet unconstrained discipline."
"Systems thinking is not new; it has been around for thousands of years in many different guises. Ancient creation myths were instances of systems thinking. Operations analysis, systems analysis, failure analysis, risk analysis, corporate benefit analysis, financial modeling, quantity surveying, investment appraisal, finite element analysis, civil engineering models, economic modeling, simulations, and many more are all modern ways of thinking about systems. Imaginative visualization should be on the list, too. What is new, perhaps, is the ready availability of powerful desktop tools that permit and enable us to think about the most complex and complicated issues and systems. Processors allow us to tackle problems of such complexity and magnitude that, without them, we would be obliged to guess. The same tools reveal unexpected complex behavior from simple systems."
"Practitioners and proponents embrace a holistic vision. They focus on the interconnections among subsystems and components, taking special note of the interfaces among various parts. What is significant is that system builders include heterogeneous components, such as mechanical, electrical, and organizational parts, in a single system. Organizational parts might be managerial structures, such as a military command, or political entities, such as a government bureau. Organizational components not only interact with technical ones but often reflect their characteristics. For instance, a management organization for presiding over the development of an intercontinental missile system might be divided into divisions that mirror the parts of the missile being designed."
"Hard systems thinking is also accused of conservatism. It privileges the values and interests of its clients and customers, and lends its apparent expertise to their realization. It thus gives the facade of objectivity to changes that help to secure the status quo. In general terms, despite its many strengths and achievements, hard systems thinking is today thought of as having a limited domain of application."
"Peter Senge (1990), Fritjof Capra (1996), Peter Checkland (1999), and other researchers have transferred systems thinking principles and theories into practice by applying them to real-world organizational- wide issues, thus encouraging the thus encouraging the creation and development of learning organizations."
"The assumptions which underpin hard systems thinking and distinguish it from soft systems thinking can now be clearly recognized. A basic assumption is that the world can be understood objectively and that knowledge about the world can be validated by empirical means. This assumption supports the role of models in the hard tradition, which are seen to be representations of and which can be treated as proxies for the world. Methodologies based in hard systems thinking will reflect this assumption by placing great emphasis upon the modeling and validation processes, for these are central to the ability of the approaches to reproduce behavior in the models they involve A second assumption of hard systems thinking is the ability to define objectives and then to identify the best way of proceeding in order to achieve them. The notions of goal seeking and rational decision making depend upon this assumption, for if objectives cannot be defined, then a process which sets out to find the best way of achieving them is of no value..."
"As our world continues to change rapidly and become more complex, systems thinking will help us manage, adapt, and see the wide range of choices we have before us. It is a way of thinking that gives us the freedom to identify root causes of problems and see new opportunities."
"Systems thinking is only an epistemology, a particular way of describing the world. It does not tell us what the world is. Hence, strictly speaking, we should never say of something in the world: “It is a system,” only: “It may be described as a system.”"
"Systems thinking is a special form of holistic thinking - dealing with wholes rather than parts. One way of thinking about this is in terms of a hierarchy of levels of biological organization and of the different 'emergent' properties that are evident in say, the whole plant (e.g. wilting) that are not evident at the level of the cell (loss of turgor). It is also possible to bring different perspectives to bear on these different levels of organization. Holistic thinking starts by looking at the nature and behaviour of the whole system that those participating have agreed to be worthy of study. This involves: (i) taking multiple partial views of 'reality'... (ii) placing conceptual boundaries around the whole, or system of interest and (iii) devising ways of representing systems of interest."
"is the ordered arrangement of knowledge acquired from the study of systems in the observable world, together with the application of this knowledge to the design of man-made systems."
"Claude Shannon, the founder of information theory, invented a way to measure 'the amount of information' in a message without defining the word 'information' itself, nor even addressing the question of the meaning of the message."
"In fact, an information theory that leaves out the issue of noise turns out to have no content."
"If quantum communication and quantum computation are to flourish, a new information theory will have to be developed."
"The 19th and first half of the 20th century conceived of the world as chaos. Chaos was the oft-quoted blind play of atoms, which, in mechanistic and positivistic philosophy, appeared to represent ultimate reality, with life as an accidental product of physical processes, and mind as an epi-phenomenon. It was chaos when, in the current theory of evolution, the living world appeared as a product of chance, the outcome of random mutations and survival in the mill of natural selection. In the same sense, human personality, in the theories of behaviorism as well as of psychoanalysis, was considered a chance product of nature and nurture, of a mixture of genes and an accidental sequence of events from early childhood to maturity. Now we are looking for another basic outlook on the world -- the world as organization. Such a conception -- if it can be substantiated -- would indeed change the basic categories upon which scientific thought rests, and profoundly influence practical attitudes. This trend is marked by the emergence of a bundle of new disciplines such as cybernetics, information theory, general system theory, theories of games, of decisions, of queuing and others; in practical applications, systems analysis, systems engineering, operations research, etc. They are different in basic assumptions, mathematical techniques and aims, and they are often unsatisfactory and sometimes contradictory. They agree, however, in being concerned, in one way or another, with "systems," "wholes" or "organizations"; and in their totality, they herald a new approach."
"We completely ignore the human value of the information. A selection of 100 letters is given a certain information value, and we do not investigate whether it makes sense in English, and, if so, whether the meaning of the sentence is of any practical importance. According to our definition, a set of 100 letters selected at random (according to the rules of Table 1.1), a sentence of 100 letters from a newspaper, a piece of Shakespeare or a theorem of Einstein are given exactly the same informational value."
"In fact, the science of thermodynamics began with an analysis, by the great engineer Sadi Carnot, of the problem of how to build the best and most efficient engine, and this constitutes one of the few famous cases in which engineering has contributed to fundamental physical theory. Another example that comes to mind is the more recent analysis of information theory by Claude Shannon. These two analyses, incidentally, turn out to be closely related."
"Whether computers are used for engineering design, medical data processing, composing music, or other purposes, the structure of computing is much the same. We are extremely short of talented people in this field, and so we need departments, curricula, and research and degree programs in computer science... I think of the Computer Science Department as eventually including experts in Programming, Numerical Analysis, Automata Theory, Data Processing, Business Games, Adaptive Systems, Information Theory, Information Retrieval, Recursive Function Theory, Computer Linguistics, etc., as these fields emerge in structure... Universities must respond [to the computer revolution] with far reaching changes in the educational structure."
"Incomplete knowledge of the future, and also of the past of the transmitter from which the future might be constructed, is at the very basis of the concept of information. On the other hand, complete ignorance also precludes communication; a common language is required, that is to say an agreement between the transmitter and the receiver regarding the elements used in the communication process... [The information of a message can] be defined as the 'minimum number of binary decisions which enable the receiver to construct the message, on the basis of the data already available to him.' These data comprise both the convention regarding the symbols and the language used, and the knowledge available at the moment when the message started."
"I have tried to show that psychiatric research can be empirical and experimental, controlled, and operational and not dependent on inferences, analogies, or anecdotes. Hypotheses can be derived which are testable. Theory is a different matter. At the present we rely heavily on psychoanalytic theory or on still poorly formulated and defined general systems theory, information theory, or transactional theory. To explain the depth and variety of the interrelationship of somatopsychosocial facets of the totality of human behavior in process requires a unified theory of human behavior which we have not yet even approached. Integration or synthesis of biological, psychological, and social theory is not enough."
"Every time we fire a phonetician/linguist, the performance of our system goes up"
"Pure mathematics, being mere tautology, and pure physics, being mere fact, could not have engendered them; for creatures to live, must sense the useful and the good; and engines to run must have energy available as work : and both, to endure, must regulate themselves. So it is to Thermodynamics and to its brother Σp log p, called Information theory, that we look for the distinctions between work and energy and between signal and noise."
"The field of 'information theory' began by using the old hardware paradigm of transportation of data from point to point."
"Without an understanding of causality there can be no theory of communication. What passes as information theory today is not communication at all, but merely transportation."
"Some authors state that the last stage in this chain of measurements involves "consciousness," or the "intellectual inner life" of the observer, by virtue of the "principle of psycho-physical parallelism." Other authors introduce a wave function for the entire universe. In this book, I shall refrain from using concepts that I do not understand."
"My greatest concern was what to call it. I thought of calling it 'information,' but the word was overly used, so I decided to call it 'uncertainty.' When I discussed it with John von Neumann, he had a better idea. Von Neumann told me, 'You should call it entropy, for two reasons. In the first place your uncertainty function has been used in statistical mechanics under that name, so it already has a name. In the second place, and more important, no one really knows what entropy really is, so in a debate you will always have the advantage.'"
"Characteristically, major social movements are spawned in obscurity at the periphery of public awareness, seem to burst suddenly and dramatically into public view, and eventually fade into the landscape not because they have diminished but because they have become a permanent part of our perceptions and experience."
"Wherever people prefer to call upon "offenses against moral sentience", upon "moral terms" rather than adhere to one's rationally derived scientific criminological approach [dividing irrational, ethnocentric "moral offenses" from actual crimes], one is fully justified in speaking of prejudice's total victory over reason."
"In Victorian criminology there was an enthusiasm for spotting criminal tendencies in a person’s features."
"One semester we took Criminology, for God's sake! Criminology! Who the fuck were we studying to be: Batman?"
""Lawsuit mania"… a continual craving to go to law against others, while considering themselves the injured party."
"Unfortunately, goodness and honor are rather the exception than the rule among exceptional men, not to speak of geniuses."
"Existing criminology is insufficient to isolate barbarism. It is insufficient because the idea of "crime" in existing criminology is artificial, for what is called crime is really an infringement of "existing laws", whereas "laws" are very often a manifestation of barbarism and violence. Such are the prohibiting laws of different kinds which abound in modern life. The number of these laws is constantly growing in all countries and, owing to this, what is called crime is very often not a crime at all, for it contains no element of violence or harm. On the other hand, unquestionable crimes escape the field of vision of criminology, either because they have not recognized the form of crime or because they surpass a certain scale. In existing criminology there are concepts: a criminal man, a criminal profession, a criminal society, a criminal sect, and a criminal tribe, but there is no concept of a criminal state, or a criminal government, or criminal legislation. Consequently what is often regarded as "political" activity is in fact a criminal activity."
"Scientific research is the art of asking the right question in the right way."
"The scientific method does not exist. But “the scientific method” does. This is a distinction with a difference. Scientists will tell you that there is no single method that characterizes all that they do, much less a simple set of steps that binds everything called “science” together. Scientific labor is complex and diverse, brutally difficult and impossible to encapsulate. If you think you have found a unifying principle, no doubt it leaves out some important aspect of scientific thinking or excludes a branch of what we now call the sciences. In the unlikely event that it does not, then the principle is probably overly inclusive, capturing too many practices to mean much at all. And it is not just scientists who doubt whether such a method exists. Historians are skeptical of it as well—for good reason. One glance back at the history of science reveals even more diversity than exists today, making a single set of steps uniting all the sciences that much harder to imagine. Scientists and historians do not always agree, but they do on this: there is no such thing as the scientific method, and there never was. And yet, “the scientific method” is alive and well. The idea of a set of steps that justifies science’s authority has persisted in the face of constant denials of its existence. Why? Because “the scientific method” is a myth—and myths are powerful things. How we talk about science, how we account for its origins and argue for its results, instills mythical authority in some claims and invalidates others. The myth of “the scientific method” matters, even if (or perhaps, because) the reality it attests is ambiguous at best. Between the doubtful existence of the scientific method and the unquestionable power of “the scientific method,” a history remains to be told. Doing so means exploring how these two phenomena interact, how the way we talk about thinking has shaped the quiet, even tacit process of thinking itself. As the historian of science Steven Shapin has argued: “A practice without an attendant myth is likely to be weak, hard to justify, hard even to make visible as a distinct kind of activity.” If Shapin is right that we are now “dubious of claims that there is anything like ‘a scientific method’—a coherent, universal, and efficacious set of procedures for making scientific knowledge,” we must recognize the power that inheres in the myth of such a method and its complex relationship to how science is actually done."
"Until scientific inquiry came of age, human beings could not comprehend their relationship to the physical world, so they invented their own explanations. These explanations tended to be simplistic and in many cases, harmful. For example, if one knows a tidal wave is approaching and chooses to stay and pray for deliverance rather than leaving, this could be detrimental to his/her survival. People used to believe that plagues and diseases were retributions of an angry God, but the scientific method found that many diseases were carried by rats and lice, and caused by germs. It is not that scientists are close-minded regarding these issues—it’s just that their acceptance of ideas requires more sophisticated standards and methods of inquiry."
"The scientific method helps to diminish biases, prejudices, and preconceived notions. The method requires that statements be verified and that researchers find out through experimentation just what works and what doesn’t. Scientists ask the question “what do we have here?” and then they proceed to do experiments to determine the nature of the physical world. This process requires that experiments be verified by others who must get the same results. One of the major developments in science was the realization that we can not acquire answers to problems just intuitively. It requires painstaking laborious effort and time to find solutions and answers. Often many failures come before any new findings."
"I'm passionately committed to truth. I love the scientific method. I hate to see it distorted either by scientists in the media or by media speaking for scientists. The pure scientific method, the idea that science seeks to disprove itself constantly, it so elevated human thinking beyond any other form—religion, whatever—that we've chosen to engage in as a species."
"Now for the good news. The scientific method is nothing but a piece of rhetoric. Granted, that may not appear to be good news at first, but it actually is. The scientific method as rhetoric is far more complex, interesting, and revealing than it is as a direct reflection of the ways scientists work. Rhetoric is not just words; rather, “just” words are powerful tools to help shape perception, manage the flow of resources and authority, and make certain kinds of actions or beliefs possible or impossible. That’s particularly true of what Raymond Williams called “keywords.” A list of modern-day keywords include “family,” “race,” “freedom,” and “science.” Such words are familiar, repeated again and again until it seems that everyone must know what they mean. At the same time, scratch their surface, and their meanings become full of messiness, variation, and contradiction. Sound familiar? Scientific method is a keyword (or phrase) that has helped generations of people make sense of what science was, even if there was no clear agreement about its precise meaning— especially if there was no clear agreement about its precise meaning. The term could roll off the tongue and be met by heads nodding in knowing assent, and yet there could be a different conception within each mind. As long as no one asked too many questions, the flexibility of the term could be a force of cohesion and a tool for inspiring action among groups. A word with too exact a definition is brittle; its use will be limited to specific circumstances. A word too loosely defined will create confusion and appear to say nothing. A word balanced just so between precision and vagueness can change the world."
"This making or imagining of models (not necessarily or usually a material model, but a conceptual model) is a recognised way of arriving at an understanding of recondite and ultra-sensual occurring say in the ether or elsewhere."
"Mere deductive logic, whether you clothe it in mathematical symbols and phraseology or whether you enlarge its scope into a more general symbolic technique, can never take the place of clear relevant initial concepts of the meaning of your symbols, and among symbols I include words. If you are dealing with nature, your meanings must directly relate to the immediate facts of observation. We have to analyse first the most general characteristics of things observed, and then the more casual contingent occurrences. There can be no true physical science which looks first to mathematics for the provision of a conceptual model. Such a procedure is to repeat the errors of the logicians of the middle-ages."
"The 'physical' does not mean any particular kind of reality, but a particular kind of denoting reality, namely a system of concepts in the natural sciences which is necessary for the cognition of reality. 'The physical' should not be interpreted wrongly as an attribute of one part of reality, but not of the other ; it is rather a word denoting a kind of conceptual construction, as, e.g., the markers 'geographical' or 'mathematical', which denote not any distinct properties of real things, but always merely a manner of presenting them by means of ideas.."
"The rule is derived inductively from experience, therefore does not have any inner necessity, is always valid only for special cases and can anytime be refuted by opposite facts. On the contrary, the law is a logical relation between conceptual constructions; it is therefore deductible from upper [übergeordnete] laws and enables the derivation of lower laws; it has as such a logical necessity in concordance with its upper premises; it is not a mere statement of probability, but has a compelling, apodictic logical value once its premises are accepted"
"In the new pattern of thought we do not assume any longer the detached observer, occurring in the idealizations of this classical type of theory, but an observer who by his indeterminable effects creates a new situation, theoretically described as a new state of the observed system. In this way every observation is a singling out of a particular factual result, here and now, from the theoretical possibilities, therefore making obvious the discontinuous aspect of physical phenomena. Nevertheless, there remains still in the new kind of theory an objective reality, inasmuch as these theories deny any possibility for the observer to influence the result of a measurement, once the experimental arrangement is chosen. Therefore particular qualities of an individual observer do not enter into the conceptual framework of the theory."
"Scientists whose work has no clear, practical implications would want to make their decisions considering such things as: the relative worth of (1) more observations, (2) greater scope of his conceptual model, (3) simplicity, (4) precision of language, (5) accuracy of the probability assignment."
"The term architecture is used here to describe the attributes of a system as seen by the programmer, i.e., the conceptual structure and functional behavior, as distinct from the organization of the data flow and controls, the logical design, and the physical implementation. i. Additional details concerning the architecture,"
"We realize, however, that all scientific laws merely represent abstractions and idealizations expressing certain aspects of reality. Every science means a schematized picture of reality, in the sense that a certain conceptual construct is unequivocally related to certain features of order in reality;"
"A conceptual model is neither idle nor faithful: it is, or rather it is supposed to be and so taken until further notice, an approximate representation of a real thing."
"The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures.... Yet the program construct, unlike the poet's words, is real in the sense that it moves and works, producing visible outputs separate from the construct itself. […] The magic of myth and legend has come true in our time. One types the correct incantation on a keyboard, and a display screen comes to life, showing things that never were nor could be."
"The term "paradigm," from the Greek paradeigma ("pattern"), was used by Kuhn to denote a conceptual framework shared by a community of scientists and providing them with model problems and solutions"
"Ludwig von Bertalanffy, a distinguished biologist, occupies an important position in the intellectual history of the twentieth century. His contributions went beyond biology, and extended to psychology, psychiatry, sociology, cybernetics, history and philosophy. Some of his admirers even believe that von Bertalanffy's general systems theory could provide a conceptual framework for all these disciplines."
"I strongly reject any conceptual scheme that places our options on a line, and holds that the only alternative to a pair of extreme positions lies somewhere between them. More fruitful perspectives often require that we step off the line to a site outside the dichotomy."
"A conceptual model is a qualitative description of the system and includes the processes taking place in the system, the parameters chosen to describe the processes, and the spatial and temporal scales of the processes."
"A conceptual model is a collection of concepts that together form a 'web of meaning'"
"The design of a conceptual model is not a simple, straightforward procedure, and it is certainly not objective!"
"A conceptual model is a model of the projected system that is independent of implementation details"
"The second problem [with using UML for the purposes of this book] is that the Unified Modeling Language concentrates on implementation modeling rather than conceptual modeling."
"A conceptual model is what in the model theory is called a set of formulas making statements about the world."
"A conceptual model is a representation of the system expertise using this formalism. An internal model is derived from the conceptual model and from a specification of the system transactions and the performance constraints."
"Truly grand and powerful theories […] do not and cannot rest upon single observations. Evolution is an inference from thousands of independent sources, the only conceptual structure that can make unified sense of all this disparate information. The failure of a particular claim usually records a local error, not the bankruptcy of a central theory. […] If I mistakenly identify your father's brother as your own dad, you don't become genealogically rootless and created de novo. You still have a father; we just haven't located him properly."
"When we entrust the domain of values to those whose intellectual concerns are essentially centred on empirical facts, and whose conceptual frameworks are inevitably constructed around sets of empirical facts, we need not be surprised if the result is moral confusion."
"The purpose of a conceptual model is to provide a vocabulary of terms and concepts that can be used to describe problems and/or solutions of design. It is not the purpose of a model to address specific problems, and even less to propose solutions for them. Drawing an analogy with linguistics, a conceptual model is analogous to a language, while design patterns are analogous to rhetorical figures, which are predefined templates of language usages, suited particularly to specific problems."
"Sometimes, however, a conceptual model is only a first step, and the second step is a mathematical representation of the conceptual model"
"What surprised me, which Google was part of, is that superficial search techniques over large bodies of stuff could get you what you wanted. I grew up in the AI tradition, where you have a complete conceptual model, and the information retrieval tradition, where you have complex vectors of key terms and Boolean queries. The idea that you can index billions of pages and look for a word and get what you want is quite a trick. To put it in more abstract terms, it's the power of using simple techniques over very large numbers versus doing carefully constructed systematic analysis."
"A conceptual model is one which reflects reality by placing words which are concepts into the model in the same way that the model aeroplane builder puts wings, a fuselage, and a cockpit together."
"A conceptual level view of an object design describes the key abstractions. While someone might think of key abstractions as being nothing more or nothing less than high-level descriptions of "candidate classes", I prefer to consider a conceptual design from a slightly different angle--I'm thinking about design at a slightly different level. An object-oriented application is a set of interacting objects. Each object is an implementation of one or more roles. A role supports a set of related (cohesive) responsibilities. A responsibility is an obligation to perform a task or know certain information. And objects don't work in isolation, they collaborate with others in a community to perform the overall responsibilities of the application. So a conceptual view, at least to start, is a distillation of the key object roles and their responsibilities (stated at a fairly high level). More than likely (unless you form classification hierarchies and use inheritance and composition techniques) many candidates you initially model will map directly to a single class in some inheritance hierarchy. But I like to open up possibilities by think first of roles and responsibilities, and then as a second step towards a specification-level view, mapping these candidates to classes and interfaces."
"A conceptual model is simply a framework or schematic to understand the interaction of workforce education and development systems with other variables in a society."
"The conceptual model is a non-software specific description of the simulation model that is to be developed, describing the objectives, inputs, outputs, content, assumptions and simplifications of the model."
"A conceptual model is a mental image of a system, its components, its interactions. It lays the foundation for more elaborate models, such as physical or numerical models. A conceptual model provides a framework in which to think about the workings of a system or about problem solving in general. An ensuing operational model can be no better than its underlying conceptualization."
"Like a physical model, a conceptual model is an artificial system. It is however, made up of conceptual, and not physical components."
"The first function of a conceptual model is relating the research to the existing body of literature. With the help of a conceptual model a researcher can indicate in what way he is looking at the phenomenon of his research."
"A conceptual model is a qualitative description of 'some aspect of the behaviour of a natural system'. This description is usually verbal, but may also be accompanied by figures and graphs."
"a conceptual model is a diagram connecting variables and constructs based on theory and logic that displays the hypotheses to be tested."
"Simply put, a conceptual model is a simplified representation of reality, devised for a certain purpose and seen from a certain point of view"
"Conceptual models are core to good design."
"Conceptual models are best thought of as design-tools — a way for designers to straighten out and simplify the design and match it to the users' task-domain, thereby making it clearer to users how they should think about the application."
"As human inventions and social interactions grow more complex, general conceptual frameworks that integrate knowledge among different disciplines studying those emerging systems grow more important."
"First, the welfare state is not a subject apart, but fits naturally into the framework of economic analysis. Secondly,the theoretical arguments support the existence of the welfare state not only for well known equity reasons but also - and powerfully - in efficiency terms."
"There is an efficiency case for an institutional welfare state."
"National politics have from the start aimed primarily at efficiency — that is, at the successful use of the force resident in the state to accomplish the purposes desired by the Sovereign authority."
"Much is said about scientific management of work. It is a narrow view which restricts the science which secures efficiency of operation to movements of the muscles. The chief opportunity for science is the discovery of the relations of a man to his work — including his relations to others who take part — which will enlist his intelligent interest in what he is doing. Efficiency in production often demands division of labor. But it is reduced to mechanical routine unless workers see the technical, intellectual, and social relationships involved in what they do, and engage in their work because of the motivation furnished by such perceptions. The tendency to reduce such things as efficiency of activity and scientific management to purely technical externals is evidence of the one-sided stimulation of thought given to those in control of industry — those who supply its aims. Because of their lack of all-round and well-balanced social interest, there is not sufficient stimulus for attention to the human factors and relationships in industry. Intelligence is narrowed to the factors concerned with technical production and marketing of goods. No doubt, a very acute and intense intelligence in these narrow lines can be developed, but the failure to take into account the significant social factors means none the less an absence of mind, and a corresponding distortion of emotional life."
"Modern institutions are transparently purposive and that we are in the midst of an evolutionary progression toward more efficient forms."
"It is fundamentally the confusion between effectiveness and efficiency that stands between doing the right things and doing things right. There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all."
"Effectiveness is doing the things that get you closer to your goals. Efficiency is performing a given task (whether important or not) in the most economical manner possible. Being efficient without regard to effectiveness is the default mode of the universe."
"The aim of our efficiency has not been to produce goods, but to harvest dollars... The production of goods was always secondary to the securing of dollars."
"The increase of this efficiency is essentially the problem of the manager, and the amount to which it can be increased by proper study is, in most cases, so great as to be almost incredible."
"The efficiency of a group working together is directly related to the homogeneity of the work they are performing."
"In the science of administration, whether public or private, the basic "good" is efficiency. The fundamental objective of the science of administration is the accomplishment of the work in hand with the least expenditure of man-power and materials. Efficiency is thus axiom number one in the value scale of administration."
"Those who are in poverty may be able to get a bare sustenance but they are not able to obtain those necessaries which will permit them to maintain a state of physical efficiency."
"The practice of first developing a clear and precise definition of a process without regard for efficiency, and then using it as a guide and a test in exploring equivalent processes possessing other characteristics, such as greater efficiency, is very common in mathematics. It is a very fruitful practice which should not be blighted by premature emphasis on efficiency in computer execution."
"Efficiency, competence: Black students know the deadly, neutral definition of these words. There seldom has been a more efficient system for profiteering, through human debasement, than the plantations, of a while ago. Today, the whole world sits, as quietly scared as it can sit, afraid that, tomorrow, America may direct its efficiency and competence toward another forest for defoliation, or clean-cut laser-beam extermination."
"In randori we learn to employ the principle of maximum efficiency even when we could easily overpower an opponent. Indeed, it is much more impressive to beat an opponent with proper technique than with brute force. This lesson is equally applicable in daily life: the student realized persuasion backed up by sound logic is ultimately more effective than coercion."
"According to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, the global average caloric intake is 2,800 kcal per day, translating to an average continuous power of about 135 W. The mineral requirements to accomplish this constitute just over 3% of body mass, or 2 kg for the global average body mass of 62 kg. Thus, a human achieves roughly 70 W per kilogram of minerals. Note that even though the human body is only 20–25% efficient at converting metabolic energy into external mechanical work, the rest is not waste to us: it provides crucial thermal energy to keep body temperature up, and thus counts as a critical contribution. Let’s look at solar panels. Typical 60-cell panels produce 300 W in full sun, and have a mass around 20 kg. Straight away we compute 15 W/kg—a factor of five lower than human performance. But to be fair, we must account for the fact that the sun is not always directly in front of the panel, producing a typical capacity factor of 20%, or an average power delivery of 60 W. Now the deployed panel delivers 3 W/kg: less than 5% as “efficient” as a human, in mineral terms. Massive wind turbines at 20% capacity factor (typical global average) score even worse, at 0.4–0.6 W/kg. Without the mass-dominant concrete pad, a wind turbine would pump out 1.6–2.4 W/kg, for the short time it remained standing. Just as a wind turbine needs a mounting base, a realistic utility-scale solar deployment has a material mass far in excess of the bare panels: support structures, interconnect wiring, inverters, storage (if truly replacing fossil fuels). I would not be surprised if a whole-system figure dropped to 1 or 2 W/kg, while humans stay smugly perched at 70. The score for wind would erode as well once other necessary components are considered—especially storage. Moreover, the minerals needed by humans are in wide circulation within the community of life at the surface: no mining (and associated tailings, energy, processing, pollution) necessary. Thus, biology has far exceeded technology in capturing the inexhaustible flow from the sun using a minimum of minerals—and those being extracted from and re-deposited to the soil in a continuous, self-sustaining cycle, importantly. Biology and evolution really figured things out! Modernity looks like a bumbling idiot by comparison—like R2D2 in a stair-climbing competition against an athlete."
"If adequate motivations could be assured, a far higher degree of efficiency could be maintained in socialized industries than in industries operated for private gain."
"My watchword, if I were in office at this moment, would be summed up in one single word—the word "efficiency." (Cheers.) If we have not learned from this war that we have greatly lagged behind in efficiency we have learned nothing, and our treasure and our lives are thrown away unless we learn the lesson which the war has given us. (Hear, hear.) ... There is another branch of national efficiency in which I think an energetic Government might take a great part, in the way of stimulation and inquiry—I mean our commerce and our industry. (Hear, hear.) ... I believe that in that branch of our national efficiency there is much to be done by an energetic Government. But last, and, perhaps, greatest of all, there comes a question that underlies the efficiency of our nation—not of our services, not of any particular branch of our nation, but of the nation as a whole—I mean education (loud cheers), in which we are lagging sadly, and with which we shall have peacefully to fight other nations with weapons like the bow and arrow if we do not progress."
"The ultimate measurement is effectiveness, not efficiency."
"These two attitudes, the attitude of deifying mere efficiency, mere success, without regard to the moral qualities lying behind it, and the attitude of disregarding efficiency, disregarding practical results, are the Scylla and Charybdis between which every earnest reformer, every politician who desires to make the name of his profession a term of honor instead of shame, must steer. He must avoid both under penalty of wreckage, and it avails him nothing to have avoided one, if he founders on the other. People are apt to speak as if in political life, public life, it ought to be a mere case of striving upward — striving toward a high peak. The simile is inexact. Every man who is striving to do good public work is traveling along a ridge crest, with the gulf of failure on each side — the gulf of inefficiency on the one side, the gulf of unrighteousness on the other."
"Inefficiency is a curse; and no good intention atones for weakness of will and flabbiness of moral, mental, and physical fiber."
"The criterion of efficiency dictates that choice of alternatives which produces the largest result for the given application of resources."
"If stability and efficiency required that there existed markets that extended infinitely far into the future — and these markets clearly did not exist — what assurance do we have of the stability and efficiency of the capitalist system?"
"From the point of view of social health and economic efficiency, society should obtain its material equipment at the cheapest price possible, and after providing for depreciation and expansion should distribute the whole product to its working members and their dependents. What happens at present, however, is that its workers are hired at the cheapest price which the market (as modified by organization) allows, and that the surplus, somewhat diminished by taxation, is distributed to the owners of property."
"There is no more fatal obstacle to efficiency than the revelation that idleness has the same privileges as industry, and that for every additional blow with the pick or hammer an additional profit will be distributed among shareholders who wield neither."
"The merits of nationalization do not stand or fall with the efficiency or inefficiency of existing state departments as administrators of industry."
"Scientific management is not any efficiency device, not a device of any kind for securing efficiency; nor is it may bunch or group of efficiency devices. It is not a new system of figuring costs; it is not a new scheme of paying men; it is not a piece work system; it is not a bonus system; it is not a premium system; it is no scheme for paying men; it is not holding a stop watch on a man and writing things down about him; it is not time study; it is not motion study, not an analysis of the movements of men; it is not the printing and loading & unloading of a ton or two of blanks on a set of men and saying "Here's your system; go and use it". It is not divided foremanship or functional foremanship; it is not any of the devices which the average man calls to mind when scientific management is spoken of."
"Man is an agent... a center of unfolding impulsive activity—"teleological" activity... seeking... some concrete, objective, impersonal end. ...he is possessed of a taste for effective work, and a distaste for futile effort. He has a sense of the merit of serviceability or efficiency and of the demerit of futility, waste, or incapacity. This aptitude or propensity may be called the instinct of workmanship."
"Don't misunderstand what we administrators mean when we use the shorthand of efficiency and economy. When we say efficiency we think of homes saved from disease, of boys and girls in school prepared for life, of ships and mines protected against disaster... We do not think in terms of gadgets and paper clips alone. And when we talk of economy, we fight waste of all human resources, still much too scanty to meet human needs."
"More computing sins are committed in the name of efficiency (without necessarily achieving it) than for any other single reason - including blind stupidity."
"The inductive-reasoning system I have described above consists of a multitude of “elements” in the form of belief-models or hypotheses that adapt to the aggregate environment they jointly create. Thus it qualifies as an adaptive complex system. After some initial learning time, the hypotheses or mental models in use are mutually co-adapted. Thus we can think of a consistent set of mental models as a set of hypotheses that work well with each other under some criterion—that have a high degree of mutual adaptedness. Sometimes there is a unique such set, it corresponds to a standard rational expectations equilibrium, and beliefs gravitate into it. More often there is a high, possibly very high, multiplicity of such sets. In this case we might expect inductive reasoning systems in the economy—whether in stock-market speculating, in negotiating, in poker games, in oligopoly pricing, in positioning products in the market—to cycle through or temporarily lock into psychological patterns that may be non-recurrent, path-dependent, and increasingly complicated. The possibilities are rich."
"A more viable model, one much more faithful to the kind of system that society is more and more recognized to be, is in process of developing out of, or is in keeping with, the modern systems perspective (which we use loosely here to refer to general systems research, cybernetics, information and communication theory, and related fields). Society, or the sociocultural system, is not, then, principally an equilibrium system or a homeostatic system, but what we shall simply refer to as a complex adaptive system."
"The notion of system we are interested in may be described generally as a complex of elements or components directly or indirectly related in a network of interrelationships of various kinds, such that it constitutes a dynamic whole with emergent properties."
"A basic assumption within these theories is that organizations are complex adaptive systems (Anderson, 1999; Axelrod and Cohen, 1999), composed of semiautonomous agents that seek to maximize fitness by adjusting interpretative and action-oriented schema that determine how they view and interact with other agents and the environment."
"A complex adaptive system acquires information about its environment and its own interaction with that environment, identifying regularities in that information, condensing those regularities into a kind of "schema", or model, and acting in the real world on the basis of that schema."
"A Complex Adaptive System (CAS) is a dynamic network of many agents (which may represent cells, species, individuals, firms, nations) acting in parallel, constantly acting and reacting to what the other agents are doing. The control of a CAS tends to be highly dispersed and decentralized. If there is to be any coherent behavior in the system, it has to arise from competition and cooperation among the agents themselves. The overall behavior of the system is the result of a huge number of decisions made every moment by many individual agents."
"Complexly structured, non-additive behavior emerges out of interactive networks.... Interactive agents unite in an ordered state of sorts, and the behavior of the resulting whole is more than the sum of individual behaviors. Ordered states... [arise] … when a unit adapts its individual behaviors to accommodate the behaviors of units with which it interacts. Poincare observed this phenomenon mathematically among colliding particles, which impart some of their resonance to each other leading to a degree of synchronized resonance. Interacting people and organizations tend similarly to adjust their behaviors and worldviews to accommodate others with whom they interact. Networks with complex chains of interaction allow large systems to correlate, or self-order."
"A complex adaptive system is composed of interacting 'agents' following rules, exchanging influence with their local and global environments and altering the very environment they are responding to by virtue of their simple actions."
"In... "The Portuguese Discoveries and the Rise of Modern Science", Prof. Hooykaas supported the thesis "That the Portuguese seafarers and scientists of the 15th and 16th centuries made an important contribution to the rise of modern science by unintentionally undermining the belief in scientific authorities and by strengthening the confidence in the empirical, natural-historic method". ...Prof. Hooykaas analyzed the meaning of "natural science" in Antquity and the Middle Ages... characterized by too great a confidence in human reason and a sacred respect for what the authorities in the ancient world had written. ...In 1956, Prof. Hooykaas had already affirmed that "the discovery of the New World caused many difficulties to naturalists and historians..." …botanical species of medical interest warned that Dioscorides and Galen had not known everything; ...Portuguese seamen had clarified many doubts and shown the existence of the antipodes etc.."
"The modern origins of empirical scientific knowledge lie in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This time period, known as the Scientific Revolution, saw advances such as Newton's theory of gravitation, Boyle's gas laws, Hooke's recognition that all living things are made of cells, and the beginning of the Royal Society... The spirit that infused this time period brought forth a whole host of new knowledge, and the disproving of facts that had existed for centuries, if not millennia. ...some of the most important components of this endeavor were to try to eliminate errors and create a means of spreading correct facts. Many of the papers presented in the early years of the Royal Society were devoted to trying to understand errors, to root out misunderstandings, or to test the veracity of tales told to them that often seemed too good to be true. ...Most important, they didn't keep this new knowledge secret. They spread it far and wide, publishing it and disseminating it through the loose network of natural philosophers of Europe."
"Concerning ourselves we speak not; but as touching the matter which we have in hand, this we ask;—that men deem it not to be the setting up of an Opinion, but the performing of a Work; and that they receive this as a certainty; that we are not laying the foundations of any sect or doctrine, but of the profit and dignity of mankind:—Furthermore, that being well disposed to what shall advantage themselves, and putting off factions and prejudices, they take common counsel with us, to the end that being by these our aids and appliances freed and defended from wanderings and impediments, they may lend their hands also to the labours which remain to be performed:—And yet, further, that they be of good hope; neither feign and imagine to themselves this our Reform as something of infinite dimension and beyond the grasp of mortal man, when, in truth, it is of infinite errour, the end and true limit; and is by no means unmindful of the condition of mortality and humanity, not confiding that such a thing can be carried to its perfect close in the space of one single age, but assigning it as a task to a succession of generations."
"[L]ong ago have those doctrines been exploded of the Force of the First Mover and the Solidity of the Heaven,—the stars being supposed to be fixed in their orbs like nails in a roof. And with no better reason is it affirmed, that there are different poles of the zodiac and of the world; that there is a Second Mover of counteraction to the force of the first; that all the heavenly bodies move in perfect circles; that there are eccentrics and epicycles whereby the constancy of motions in perfect circles is preserved; that the moon works no change or violence in the regions above it: and the like. And it is the absurdity of these opinions that has driven men to the of the earth; which I am convinced is most false. But there is scarce any one who has made inquiries into the physical causes, as well of the substance of the heavens both stellar and interstellar..."
"Though Lavoisier generally gets credit for the authorship of this principle [ conservation of mass ], others had conceived it before him. The seventeenth century chymists, notably Helmont, Starkey, and Boyle, had a dawning awareness of the importance of weighing and measuring materials before and after an experimental process, though their methods and measurement devices were not so precise. In 1623, Francis Bacon declared, "[…]when they perceive that a body which was before manifest to the senses has escaped and disappeared, they should not admit or liquidate the account before it has been shown to them where the body has gone to and into what it has been received." And as early as 450 B.C., Anaxagoras argued, "Wrongly do the Greeks suppose that aught begins or ceases to be; for nothing comes into being or is destroyed; but all is an aggregation or secretion of preexisting things; so that all becoming might more correctly be called becoming mixed, and all corruption, becoming separate.""
"In Newton's time only two kinds of force were available for quantitative investigation. One was the force of gravity; the other the forces of push and pull encountered in everyday life... Newton endeavored to construct a general theory of all forces, both those known in his time and those that might be discovered and investigated later. He intended his theory of gravitation to be one example that he himself could work out fully... Newton formulated his celebrated three laws: (1) In the absence of force, a body will continue at rest or in its present state of uniform rectilinear motion. (2) In the presence of force, a body will be accelerated in the direction of that force, the product of its mass by its acceleration being equal to the force (f = ma). (3) To every force there corresponds an equal counterforce, acting in a direction opposite to that of the force... According to the third law, then, each planet exerts an attractive counterforce to the sun, accelerating it toward the planet... a relatively small acceleration, because the mass of the sun so vastly exceeds... every planet..."
"During medieval times, men accepted Ptolemy's view that the earth was the natural center of the universe. ...[A]dapting earth as a universal ' (standard to which all motions are referred) was justified... Once the Ptolemaic point of view was abandoned, the choice... was reopened. Copernicus substituted the sun... as the "natural" frame of reference, and his choice was indeed excellent for describing the motions within the solar system. Today, however, it is understood that the sun is but one of millions of fixed stars in the galaxy... one of innumerable galaxies... Newton was well aware of the profundities involved in the choice of a proper frame of reference. All of his fundamental laws of mechanics involved statements concerning accelerations, changes to velocities... rather than the velocities themselves. The accelerations were tied to distances between the bodies... The choice of the frame of reference had no effect on the determination of distances... but the accelerations which resulted from the mutual attractions and repulsions of bodies were to be reckoned in relation to a universal norm... intimately bound up with the choice of a frame of reference. ...[T]here was no such thing as absolute rest, or absolute motion, for that matter, but only absolute acceleration... governed by the forces resulting from the proximity of other bodies."
"The credit of first using the telescope for astronomical purposes is almost invariably attributed to Galilei, though his first observations were in all probability slightly later in date than those of Harriot and Marius, is to a great extent justified by the persistent way in which he examined object after object, whenever there seemed any reasonable prospect of results following, by the energy and acuteness with which he followed up each clue, by the independence of mind with which he interpreted his observations, and above all by the insight with which he realised their astronomical importance."
"Let me close by reminding you of what Newton actually did on the day that he conceived G = k \frac{mm'}{r^2}. ...Newton did not have any subsidies, grants, funds, Secret Service money. But he had the moon. He said, "... I cannot throw a ball round the world, but let me picture the moon as if it were a ball which has been flung around the world... How long will it take to go round the world?" ...He knew the value of gravity at the earth's surface ...but he did not know the value of the earth's gravity for the moon. He said, "Let us suppose that it is given by an inverse square law. Now, how long will it take the moon to go around?" It comes out at twenty-eight days. As Newton said, "They agreed pretty nearly.""
"The gloriously romantic universe of Dante and Milton, that set no bounds to the imagination of man as it played over space and time, had now been swept away. Space was identified with the realm of geometry, time with the continuity of number. The world that people had thought themselves living in—a world rich with colour and sound, redolent with fragrance, filled with gladness, love and beauty, speaking everywhere of purposive harmony and creative ideals—was crowded now into minute corners in the brains of scattered organic beings. The really important world outside was a world hard, cold, colourless, silent, and dead; a world of quantity, a world of mathematically computable motions in mechanical regularity. The world of qualities as immediately received by man became just a curious and quite minor effect of that infinite machine beyond."
"[T]he supremely important field for the ordinary purposes of education... perhaps more in need of the intervention of the historian... is the so-called "scientific revolution," popularly associated with the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but reaching back in an unmistakably continuous line...much earlier still. Since the revolution overturned the authority in science not only in the middle ages but of the ancient world—since it ended not only in the eclipse of Aristotelian physics—it outshines everything since the rise of Christianity and reduces the Renaissance and Reformation to the rank of mere episodes, mere internal displacements, within the system of medieval Christendom. Since it changed the character of men's habitual mental operations even in the conduct of the non-material sciences, while transforming the whole diagram of the physical universe and the very texture of human life itself. It looms so large as the real origin both of the modern world and of the modern mentality that our customary periodisation of European history has become an anachronism and an encumbrance."
"William Gilbert published a famous book on the magnet in 1600 and laid himself open to the gibes of Sir Francis Bacon for being one of those people so taken by their pet subject of research that they could only see the whole universe transposed into terms of it. Having made a spherical magnet called a ', and having found that it revolved when placed in a magnetic field, he decided that the whole earth was a magnet, that gravity was a form of magnetic attraction, and that the principles of the magnet accounted for the workings of the Copernican system as a whole. Kepler and Galileo were both influenced by this view, and with Kepler, it became an integral part of his system, a basis for the doctrine of almost universal gravitation."
"In mechanics, Descartes can hardly be said to have advanced beyond Galileo. The latter had overthrown the ideas of Aristotle on this subject and Descartes simply "threw himself upon the enemy" that had already been "put to the rout." His statement of the first and second laws of motion was an improvement in form, but his third law is false in substance. The motions of bodies in their direct impact was imperfectly understood by Galileo erroneously given by Descartes and first correctly stated by C. Wren, J. Wallis, and C. Huygens."
"In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the medieval world view, based on Aristotelian philosophy and Christian theology, changed radically. The notion of an organic, living, and spiritual universe was replaced by that of a world as a machine, and the world machine became the dominant metaphor of the modern era. This radical change was brought about by the new discoveries in physics, astronomy, and mathematics known as the Scientific Revolution and associated with the names of Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes, Bacon, and Newton."
"From the thick darkness of the middle ages man's struggling spirit emerged as in new birth; breaking out of the iron control of that period; growing strong and confident in the tug and din of succeeding conflict and revolution, it bounded forwards and upwards with restless vigour to the investigation of physical and moral truth; ascending height after height; sweeping afar over the earth, penetrating afar up into the heavens; increasing in endeavour, enlarging in endowment; every where boldly, earnestly out-stretching, til, in the AUTHOR of the PRINCIPIA, one arose, who, grasping the master-key of the universe and treading its celestial paths, opened up to the human intellect the stupendous realities of the material world, and, in the unrolling of its harmonies, gave to the human heart a new song to the goodness, wisdom, and majesty of the all-creating, all-sustaining, all-perfect God."
"In the century from Copernicus to Newton, the understanding of the universe had been transformed. The Earth had been firmly dislodged from its position of celestial preeminence at the center of the Ptolemaic universe. The nature of the orbits of the planets had been revealed by the masterful observations of Tycho and their ingenious interpretation by Kepler. The failure to detect parallax in stars was accepted as an indication that they must be at vast distances beyond the solar system, such that any parallax would be too small to be measurable with current instruments. Galileo introduced the telescope and produced observations that provided validations of the new ideas. And the genius of Newton brought forth the reflecting telescope, new laws of motion, and an understanding of the fundamentals of optics. It also delivered the theory of universal gravitation, which explained the motions of the planets and identified the primary force in shaping the universe. Real science now had its firm foundation."
"The clash between reason and Portuguese experience. Hooykaas' starting point is the intellectual challenge which, from the early 15th century onward, was posed by the discoveries of the Portuguese mariners... There follows an array of fascinating accounts of, and quotations from, works by contemporary authors who were compelled to face as facts numerous phenomena the ancients had been quite sure could not possibly be observed because they were bound not to exist. Examples are Aristotle's denial that the tropics could be inhabited; Ptolemy's mathematically derived conviction that all dry land is confined to part of the Northern Hemisphere, and so on. ...In Hooykaas' view we are witnessing here a birth of 'natural history' in the domain of the hard and given fact... The narrow world of sense-data to which the ancient natural philosophers had confined their all-too-rational speculations was now being blown to pieces. And this was not being done by fellow natural philosophers, but rather at the urging of scarcely literate sailors!"
"Galileo had the experience of beholding the heavens as they actually are for perhaps the first time, and wherever he looked he found evidence to support the Copernican system against the Ptolemaic, or at least weaken the authority of the ancients. This shattering experience—of observing the depths of the universe, of being the first mortal to know what the heavens are actually like—made so deep an impression... that it is only by considering the events of 1609... that one can understand the subsequent direction of his life."
"His conflict with the Catholic Church arose because deep in his heart Galileo was a believer. There was for him no path of compromise, no way to have separate secular and theological cosmologies. If the Copernican system was true as he believed, what else could Galileo do but fight with every weapon he had in his arsenal... to make his Church accept a new system of the universe. ...In the contrast between Galileo's heroic stand when he tried to reform the cosmological basis of orthodox theology and his humbled, kneeling surrender when he disavowed his Copernicanism, we may sense the tremendous forces attendant on the birth of modern science."
"The seventeenth century witnessed the birth of modern science as we know it today. The science was something new, based on a direct confrontation of nature by experiment and observation. But there was another feature of the new science—a dependence on numbers, on real numbers of actual experience. ...The ancients knew a few numerical laws... But prior to the Scientific Revolution, the goal of science (or the study of nature) was not to seek laws of nature expressed in terms of numbers or number relations. ...the new science ...not only found laws based on numbers but they were also willing to express these laws in terms of higher powers of numbers—squares and cubes."
"The pioneering practitioners of the new science knew that they were producing a new kind of knowledge and so they declared this newness in the titles of their books and articles. Thus we have Galileo's Two New Sciences, Boyle's New Experiments, Kepler's New Astronomy, and Tartaglia's New Science. When Ben Jonson presented a masque entitled "News from the New World," his new world was not the newly found continent of North America, but the new world of science, the world revealed by the telescope of Galileo."
"Although the authority of the ancient authors as the arbiters of all scientific knowledge had obviously been severely weakened, it did not immediately crumble. Too many professional, medical, ecclesiastical, and legal careers were founded on that authority for it to simply disappear without a struggle. The scientific elite resisted the infusion of new natural knowledge with all its might, but in the long run, its rearguard efforts were futile. ...The common sense of the working people prevailed and brought about the changes in worldview that have come to be known as the Scientific Revolution."
"Koyré's exaltation of the "Platonic and Pythagorean" elements of the Scientific Revolution... was based on a demonstrably false understanding of how Galileo reached his conclusions. Koyré asserted that Galileo merely used experiments as a check on the theories he devised by mathematical reasoning. But later research has definitively established that Galileo's experiments preceded his attempts to give a mathematical account of their results."
"Growing skill in the working of metals is... exemplified by the development of the instrument-maker's craft. To many... we make reference elsewhere—for example, clocks, navigational instruments and balances. ...Brass, ivory, and closed-grained woods, such as box and pear, were the principal materials of the instrument-makers, with brass becoming increasingly favoured because of its rigidity and permanence. For the shaping of metal the lathe was a valuable tool, and the clock-makers in particular developed it greatly for precision work. The engraving of scales was, of course, a most important part of the work: until the advent of mechanical devices, this was done with simple engraving tools and punches, the design being first set out by geometrical methods. The earliest products of the instrument-makers were made mainly for astronomical purposes or to apply astronomical methods in navigation: they included astrolabes, cross-staffs, quadrants, sundials, and orreries, as well as basic geometrical instruments such as compasses and rules. From the seventeenth century, however, a variety of new instruments, or much improved versions of old ones, began to appear. The needs of surveyors led to the elaboration of the hodometer... enabling distances to be measured... Improvements in artillary called for more accurate sighting of cannon, and by the beginning of the seventeenth century the gunner's level had been highly developed. The invention of the telescope and microscope introduced new problems both in the making of lenses and of the instruments in which they were mounted: the new instruments were a regular part of the instrument-maker's trade from about 1660. From 1700 the revolution in science was making still further demands on the craft, and air-pumps, thermometers, barometers, electrical machines, and other instruments were called for in constantly increasing quantities."
"After sketching his program for the scientific revolution that he foresaw, Bacon ends his account with a prayer: "Humbly we pray that this mind may be steadfast in us, and that through these our hands, and the hands of others to whom thou shalt give the same spirit, thou wilt vouchsafe to endow the human family with new mercies". That is still a good prayer for all of us as we begin the twenty-first century."
"The great question for our time is, how to make sure that the continuing scientific revolution brings benefits to everybody rather than widening the gap between rich and poor. To lift up poor countries, and poor people in rich countries, from poverty, to give them a chance of a decent life, technology is not enough. Technology must be guided and driven by ethics if it is to do more than provide new toys for the rich."
"Science as subversion has a long history. ...Davis and Sakharov belong to an old tradition in science that goes all the way back to the rebels Benjamin Franklin and Joseph Priestley in the eighteenth century, to Galileo and Giordano Bruno in the seventeenth and sixteenth. If science ceases to be a rebellion against authority, then it does not deserve the talents of our brightest children. ...We should try to introduce our children to science today as a rebellion against poverty and ugliness and militarism and economic injustice."
"There is an enormous variety of things that we never dreamed of, like... black holes, s, quasars, all these unbelievably active goings-on in the universe... [I]n Aristotle's time the universe... was supposed to be quiescent, it was supposed to be perfect and peaceful, and nothing ever happened in the ; and that remained true... throughout all of the revolutions... It remained the general view of astronomers... through Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and everybody else... until just the last 30 years, and now we know it's not like that at all. In fact the universe is full of violent events, and fantastic strong gravitational fields, and collapsed objects, and huge outpourings of energy."
"I want now to glance for a moment at the development of the theoretical method, and while doing so especially to observe the relation of pure theory to the totality of the data of experience. Here is the eternal antithesis of the two inseparable constituents of human knowledge, Experience and Reason, within the sphere of physics. We honour ancient Greece as the cradle of western science. She for the first time created the intellectual miracle of a logical system, the assertions of which followed one from another with such rigor that not one of the demonstrated propositions admitted of the slightest doubt—Euclid's geometry. This marvellous accomplishment of reason gave to the human spirit the confidence it needed for its future achievements. ...But yet the time was not ripe for a science that could comprehend reality, was not ripe until a second elementary truth had been realized, which only became the common property of philosophers after Kepler and Galileo. Pure logical thinking can give us no knowledge whatsoever of the world of experience; all knowledge about reality begins with experience and terminates in it."
"Although many historians of the new millennium now take issue with the notion of a Scientific Revolution, it is generally agreed that Newton's work culminated the long development of European science, creating a synthesis that opened the way for the scientific culture of the modern age."
"I mentally conceive of some moveable [sphere] projected on a horizontal plane, all impediments being put aside. Now it is evident... that equable motion on this plane would be perpetual if the plane were of infinite extent, but if we assume it to be ended, and [situated] on high, the movable, driven to the end of this plane and going on further, adds on to its previous equable and indelible motion, that downward tendency which it has from its heaviness. Thus, there emerges a certain motion, compounded..."
"It seems to me proper to adorn the Author's thought here with its conformity to a conception of Plato's regarding the determination of the various speeds of equable motion in the celestial motions of revolution. ...he said that God, after having created the movable celestial bodies, in order to assign to them those speeds with which they must be moved perpetually in equable circular motion, made them depart from rest and move through determinate spaces in that natural straight motion in which we sensibly see our moveables to be moved from the state of rest, successively accelerating. And he added that these having been made to gain that degree [of speed] which it pleased God that they should maintain forever, He turned their straight motion into circulation, the only kind [of motion] that is suitable to be conserved equably, turning always without retreat from or approach toward any pre-established goal desired by them. The conception is truly worthy of Plato, and it is to be more esteemed to the extent that its foundations, of which Plato remained silent, but which were discovered by our Author in removing their poetical mask or semblance, show it the guise of a true story."
"On the authority of Aristotle... motion in the planetary world was somehow directed by the more perfect motion in higher spheres, and so on, up to the outermost sphere of fixed stars, indistinguishable from the prime mover. This implied a refined animistic and pantheistic world view, incomparably more rational than the ancient world views of Babylonians and Egyptians, among others, but a world view, nonetheless, hardly compatible with the idea of "inertial motion" which is implied in Buridan's concept of "impetus"… a momentous breaking point... which was to bear fruit... in the hands, first of Copernicus and then of Newton."
"J. Kepler was the first (that I know of) that discover'd the true cause of the Tide, and he explains it largely in his Introduction to the Physics of the Heavens, given in his Commentaries to the Motion of the Planet Mars, where after he has shewn the Gravity or Gravitation of all Bodies towards another, he thus writes: "The Orb of the attracting Power, which is in the Moon is extended as far as the Earth, and draws the Waters under the Torrid Zone, acting upon places where it is vertical, insensibly on included Seas, but sensibly on the Ocean, whose Beds are large, and the Waters have the liberty of reciprocation, that is, of rising and falling"; and in the 70th Page of his Lunar Astronomy,—"But the cause of the Tides of the Sea appear to be the Bodies of the Sun and Moon drawing the Waters of the Sea.""
"The Scientific Revolution has not been a revolution of knowledge. It has been above all a revolution of ignorance. The great discovery that launched the Scientific Revolution was the discovery that humans do not know the answers to their most important questions."
"Until the Scentific Revolution most human cultures did not believe in progress. They thought that the golden age was the past, and that the world was stagnant, if not deteriorating."
"the Scientific Revolution might prove itself far greater than a mere historical revolution. It may turn out to be the most important bological revolution since the appearance of life on earth."
"To reassert the reign of beauty, Copernicus goes back to what he had once called "the first principles of uniform motion." He rejects non-uniformities and inconsistancies of motion - his "mind shudders" at the very consideration of them - and even at the cost of setting the earth in motion, he arrives at a system that has all the earmarks of divine handicraft; the s are gone, the phenomena are saved; the whole system has symmetry, parsimony, necessity. ... The device of uniform motion in a circle was not forced by the data; and as Kepler's ellipses showed later, it was not even the most functional device from the mathematical point of view. Yet the metaphor of uniform circular motion as the divine key... - even as in antiquity - had infected the thinking from which the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century came. ...the function of a metaphor ..."can be a restructuring of the world," in the words of Sir Ernst Gombrich."
"The Portuguese had undertaken their voyages towards the southern hemisphere in spite of the science of their day... they followed an irresistible urge, which went against their scientific and religious convictions."
"Our thesis now is that the Portuguese seafarers and scientists of the 15th and 16th centuries made an important contribution to the rise of modern science by unintentionally undermining the belief in scientific authorities and by strengthening the confidence in an empirical, natural, historical method."
"Perhaps there is no literature in Europe that mirrors so clearly as the Portuguese, the painful conflict in the minds of people who, on the one hand, by their humanistic education, not only knew better but also more uncritically admired, ancient learning than their medieval predecessors, and, who, on the other hand, in the same epoch, were confronted with abundant proofs of the insufficiency and fallibility of that same Antiquity."
"In the early decades of the seventeenth century, the men of the Renaissance could show that they had already put out to good interest the treasure bequeathed to them by the Greeks. They had produced the astronomical system of Copernicus, with Kepler's great additions; the astronomical discoveries and the physical investigations of Galileo; the mechanics of Stevinus and the 'De Magnete' of Gilbert; the anatomy of the great French and Italian schools and the physiology of Harvey. In Italy, which had succeeded Greece in the hegemony of the scientific world, the Accademia dei Lyncei and sundry other such associations for the investigation of nature, the models of all subsequent academies and scientific societies, had been founded; while the literary skill and biting wit of Galileo had made the great scientific questions of the day not only intelligible, but attractive to the general public."
"Sixty years after Bacon's death Newton had crowned the long labors of the astronomers and the physicists, by coordinating the phenomena of molar motion throughout the visible universe into one vast system, but the 'Principia' helped no man to either wealth or comfort. Descartes, Newton, and Leibnitz had opened up new worlds to the mathematician, but the acquisitions of their genius enriched only man's ideal estate. Descartes had laid the foundations of rational cosmogony and of physiological psychology; Boyle had produced models of experimentation in various branches of physics and chemistry; Pascal and Torricelli had weighed the air; Malpighi and Grew, Ray and Willoughby had done work of no less importance in the biological sciences; but weaving and spinning were carried on with the old appliances; nobody could travel faster by sea or by land than at any previous time in the world's history, and King George could send a message from London to York no faster than King John might have done. Metals were worked from their ores by immemorial rule of thumb, and the centre of the iron trade of these islands was still among the oak forests of Sussex. The utmost skill of our mechanicians did not get beyond the production of a coarse watch."
"Science... has ended by utterly repudiating the personal point of view. She catalogues her elements and records her laws indifferent as to what purpose may be shown forth by them, and constructs her theories quite careless of their bearing on human anxieties and fates. Though the scientist may individually nourish a religion, and be a theist in his irresponsible hours, the days are over when it could be said that for Science herself the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork. Our solar system, with its harmonies, is seen now as but one passing case of a certain sort of moving equilibrium in the heavens, realized by a local accident in an appalling wilderness of worlds where no life can exist. In a span of time which as a cosmic interval will count but as an hour, it will have ceased to be. The Darwinian notion of chance production, and subsequent destruction, speedy or deferred, applies to the largest as well as to the smallest facts. It is impossible, in the present temper of the scientific imagination, to find in the driftings of the cosmic atoms, whether they work on the universal or on the particular scale, anything but a kind of aimless weather, doing and undoing, achieving no proper history, and leaving no result. Nature has no one distinguishable ultimate tendency with which it is possible to feel a sympathy. In the vast rhythm of her processes... she appears to cancel herself. The books of natural theology which satisfied the intellects of our grandfathers seem to us quite grotesque, representing, as they did, a God who conformed the largest things of nature to the paltriest of our private wants. The God whom science recognizes must be a God of universal laws exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail business. He cannot accommodate his processes to the convenience of individuals. The bubbles on the foam which coats a stormy sea are floating episodes, made and unmade by the forces of the wind and water. Our private selves are like those bubbles—epiphenomena, as Clifford, I believe, ingeniously called them; their destinies weigh nothing and determine nothing in the world's irremediable currents of events."
"When Galilei let balls of a particular weight, which he had determined himself, roll down an inclined plain, or Torricelli made the air carry a weight, which he had previously determined to be equal to that of a definite volume of water; or when, in later times, Stahl changed metal into lime, and lime again into metals, by withdrawing and restoring something, a new light flashed on all students of nature. They comprehended that reason has insight into that only, which she herself produces on her own plan, and that she must move forward with the principles of her judgments, according to fixed law, and compel nature to answer her questions, but not let herself be led by nature, as it were in leading strings, because otherwise accidental observations made on no previously fixed plan, will never converge towards a necessary law, which is the only thing that reason seeks and requires. Reason, holding in one hand its principles, according to which concordant phenomena alone can be admitted as laws of nature, and in the other hand the experiment, which it has devised according to those principles, must approach nature, in order to be taught by it: but not in the character of a pupil, who agrees to everything the master likes, but as an appointed judge, who compels the witnesses to answer the questions which he himself proposes. Therefore even the science of physics entirely owes the beneficial revolution in its character to the happy thought, that we ought to seek in nature (and not import into it by means of fiction) whatever reason must learn from nature, and could not know by itself, and that we must do this in accordance with what reason itself has originally placed into nature. Thus only has the study of nature entered on the secure method of a science, after having for many centuries done nothing but grope in the dark."
"Galileo had provided the methodology for the analysis of motions on and near the earth and had applied it successfully. Copernicus and Kepler had previously obtained the laws of motion of the planets and their satellites. ...But Galileo had succeeded in deriving numerous laws from a few physical principles and... the axioms and theorems of mathematics. ...The Keplerian laws ...were not logically related to each other. Each was an independent inference from observations. ...They seemed to be suspended in the same vacuum in which the planets moved. Galileo's laws had the additional advantage of supplying physical insight. The first law of motion and the law that the force of graviation gives... a downward acceleration of 32 ft/sec2... explain the vertrical rise and fall of bodies, motion on slopes, and projectile motion. Kepler's laws... had no physical basis. ...Kepler tried to introduce the idea of a magnetic force which the sun exerted... But he failed to related the behavior of the planets to the precise laws of planetary motion. ... The new astronomical theory was completely isolated from the theory of motion on earth. ...it bothered mathematicians and scientists who believed that all the phenomena of the universe were governed by one master plan instituted by the master planner—God."
"The goal of deriving all the phenomena of nature from a few basic physical laws and the axioms of mathematics had been set by Galileo... In studying curvilinear motions on the earth Galileo had found the parabola to be the basic curve. In the heavens... Kepler... had found the ellipse to be the basic curve. Why this difference? ...since parabola and ellipse are both conic sections there was the provocative suggestion that perhaps some physical law unified these related paths of motion. ... It has often happened in the history of mathematics and science that major problems remained outstanding... great minds... succeeded only in revealing the true difficulties... and in generating an atmosphere of dispair... Then a genius appeared... with ideas that seemed remarkably simple once propounded, clarified the entire situation, dispelled the confusion, restored order, and produced a new synthesis that embraced far more even than the phenomena under consideration. The genius who... picked up the torch of science dropped by Galileo, was Isaac Newton."
"I shall try to sum up the main obstacles which arrested the progress of science for such an immeasurable time. The first was the splitting of the world into two spheres, and the mental split which resulted from it. The second was the geocentric dogma, the blind eye turned on the promising line of thought which had started with the Pythagoreans and stopped abruptly with Aristarchus of Samos. The third was the dogma of uniform motion in perfect circles. The fourth was the divorcement of science from mathematics. The fifth was the inability to realize that a body at rest tended to stay at rest, a body in motion tended to stay in motion. The main achievement of the first part of the scientific revolution was the removal of these five cardinal obstacles. This was done chiefly by three men: Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo. After that, the road was open to the Newtonian synthesis; from there on the journey led with rapidly gaining speed to the atomic age."
"The uomo universale of the Renaissance, who was artist and craftsman, philosopher and inventor, humanist and scientist, astronomer and monk, all in one, split up into his component parts. Art lost its mythical, science its mystical inspiration; man became again deaf to the harmony of the spheres. The Philosophy of Nature became ethically neutral, and "blind" became the favourite adjective for the working of natural law. The space-spirit hierarchy was replaced by the space-time continuum. ...man's destiny was no longer determined from "above" by a super-human wisdom and will, but from "below" by the sub-human agencies of glands, genes, atoms, or waves of probability. ...they could determine his fate, but could provide him with no moral guidance, no values and meaning. A puppet of the Gods is a tragic figure, a puppet suspended on his chromosomes is merely grotesque."
"What the founders of modern science … had to do, was not criticize and to combat certain faulty theories, and to correct or to replace them by better ones. They had to do something quite different. They had to destroy one world and replace it by another. They had to reshape the framework of our intellect itself, to restate and to reform its concepts, to evolve a new approach to Being, a new concept of knowledge, and a new concept of science — and even to replace a pretty natural approach, that of common sense, by another which is not natural at all."
"The infinite Universe of the New Cosmology, infinite in Duration as well as Extension, in which eternal matter in accordance with eternal and necessary laws moves endlessly and aimlessly in eternal space, inherited all the ontological attributes of Divinity. Yet only those — all the others the departed God took with him... The Divine Artifex had therefore less and less to do in the world. He did not even have to conserve it, as the world, more and more, became able to dispense with this service..."
"There is something for which Newton — or better to say not Newton alone, but modern science in general — can still be made responsible: it is splitting of our world in two. I have been saying that modern science broke down the barriers that separated the heavens and the earth, and that it united and unified the universe. And that is true. But, as I have said, too, it did this by substituting for our world of quality and sense perception, the world in which we live, and love, and die, another world — the world of quantity, or reified geometry, a world in which, though there is place for everything, there is no place for man. Thus the world of science — the real world — became estranged and utterly divorced from the world of life, which science has been unable to explain — not even to explain away by calling it "subjective"."
"Here, then: a revolution [in science and chemistry] has taken place in an important part of human knowledge since your departure from Europe... I will consider this revolution to be well advanced and even completely accomplished if you range yourself with us. ...After having brought you up to date on what is happening in chemistry, it would be well to speak to you about our political revolution. We regard it as done and without any possibility of return to the old order."
"He [ Kepler ] supposes, in that treatise [epitome of astronomy], that the motion of the sun on his axis is preserved by some inherent vital principle; that a certain virtue, or immaterial image of the sun, is diffused with his rays into the ambient spaces, and, revolving with the body of the sun on his axis, takes hold of the planets and carries them along with it in the same direction; as a load-stone turned round in the neighborhood of a magnetic needle makes it turn round at the same time. The planet, according to him, by its inertia endeavors to continue in its place, and the action of the sun's image and this inertia are in a perpetual struggle. He adds, that this action of the sun, like to his light, decreases as the distance increases; and therefore moves the same planet with greater celerity when nearer the sun, than at a greater distance. To account for the planet's approaching towards the sun as it descends from the aphelium to the perihelium, and receding from the sun while it ascends to the aphelium again, he supposes that the sun attracts one part of each planet, and repels the opposite part; and that the part which is attracted is turned towards the sun in the descent, and that the other part is towards the sun in the ascent. By suppositions of this kind he endeavored to account for all the other varieties of the celestial motions."
"In the opinion of one of the most eminent modem naturalists, it was Boyle who opened up those chemical inquiries, which went on accumulating until, a century later, they supplied the means by which Lavoisier and his contemporaries fixed the real basis of chemistry, and enabled it for the first time to take its proper stand among those sciences that deal with the external world."
"We offer this work as mathematical principles of philosophy; for all the difficulty of philosophy seems to consist in this—from the phænomena of motions to investigate the forces of nature, and then from these forces to demonstrate the other phænomena; and to this end the general propositions in the first and second book are directed. In the third book we give an example of this in the explication of the System of the World; for by the propositions mathematically demonstrated in the first book, we there derive from the celestial phænomena the forces of gravity with which bodies tend to the sun and the several planets. Then from these forces, by other propositions which are also mathematical, we deduce the motions of the planets, the comets, the moon, and the sea."
"The researches of Galileo, followed up by Huygens and others, led to those modern conceptions of Force and Law, which have revolutionized the intellectual world. The great attention given to mechanics in the seventeenth century soon so emphasized these conceptions as to give rise to the Mechanical Philosophy, a doctrine that all the phenomena of the physical universe are to be explained upon mechanical principles. Newton's great discovery imparted a new impetus to this tendency. The old notion that heat consists in an agitation of corpuscles was now applied as an explanation to the chief properties of gases. The first suggestion in this direction was that the pressure of gases is explained by the battering of the particles against the walls of the containing vessel, which explained Boyle's law of the compressibility of air. Later, the expansion of gases, Avogadro's chemical law, the diffusion and viscosity of gases, and the action of Crooke's radiometer were shown to be consequences of the same kinetical theory; but other phenomena, such as the ratio of the specific heat at constant volume to that at constant pressure, require additional hypotheses, which we have little reason to suppose are simple, so that we find ourselves quite afloat. In like manner with regard to light..."
"Most authors were led to identify the birth of scientific method with what, not by accident, is called the Scientific Renaissance, and that until the nineteenth century the civilization that gave us science was not even considered worthy of that name: it was just a "period of decadence" of Greek civilization."
"The age-long history of thinking on gravitation, too, was erased from the collective consciousness, and that force somehow became the serendipitous child of Newton's genius. The new attitude is well illustrated by the anecdote of the apple, a legend spread by Voltaire, one of the most active and vehement erasers of the past. … The need to build the myth of an ex nihilo creation of modern science gave rise to much impassioned rhetoric."
"Not only can any given theory be proven wrong... sooner or later it probably will be. And when it is, the occasion will mark the success of science, not its failure. This was the pivotal insight of the Scientific Revolution: that the advancement of knowledge depends on current theories collapsing in the face of new insights and discoveries. In this model of progress, errors do not lead us away from truth. Instead, they edge us incrementally toward it."
"This is another important dispute in the history of how we think about being wrong: whether error represents an obstacle in the path toward truth, or the path itself. The former idea is a conventional one. The latter... emerged during the Scientific Revolution and continued to evolve throughout the Enlightenment. But it didn't really reach its zenith until the early nineteenth century, when... Pierre Simon Laplace refined the distribution of errors, illustrated by the now-familiar bell curve. ...Laplace used the bell curve to determine the precise orbit of the planets. ...By using the normal distribution to graph... individually imperfect data points, Laplace was able to generate a far more precise picture of the galaxy. ...aggregate enough flawed data, and you get a glimpse of the truth."
"Newton proposed that the particles of the air (we would call them molecules), were motionless in space and were held apart by repulsive forces between them... He assumed that the repulsive force was inversely proportional to the distance between the particles...He showed that, on the basis of this assumption, a collection of static particles in a box would behave exactly as Boyle had found. His model led directly to Boyle's law. Probably the greatest scientist ever, Newton managed to get the right answer from a model that was wrong in every possible way."
"The Hon. Robert Boyle... in the third volume of the folio edition of his work, is a paper having the following title, "That the Goods of Mankind may be much Increased by the Naturalist's Insight into Trades." This paper contains... the first attempt at a philosophical recognition of the value and importance of the industrial arts of mankind. In it we recognise the early effort of a man of science seeking to call the attention of the learned and great of his time to what he aptly denominates the Natural History of Trades. ...He contends that the benefit accruing from such an inquiry would be mutual, both to the learned in natural knowledge, and to the skilled in industrial art."
"The founders of modern science - for instance, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton - were mostly pious men who did not doubt God’s purposes. Nevertheless they took the revolutionary step of consciously and deliberately expelling the idea of purpose as controlling nature from their new science of nature. They did this on the ground that inquiry into purposes is useless for what science aims at: namely, the prediction and control of events. To predict an eclipse, what you have to know is not its purpose but its causes. Hence science from the seventeenth century onwards became exclusively an inquiry into causes. The conception of purpose in the world was ignored and frowned on. This, though silent and almost unnoticed, was the greatest revolution in human history, far outweighing in importance any of the political revolutions whose thunder has reverberated through the world."
"By analyzing the measurements of , Johannes Kepler established that planetary motions weren't circles but ellipses... Through his telescopes, Galileo saw that the Sun had its perfection tarnished by ugly black spots. And the Moon wasn't a perfect sphere but looked like a place, complete with mountains and giant craters. So why didn't it fall down? Isaac Newton finally answered... by exploring... [a radical] idea... that heavenly objects obey the same laws as objects here on Earth. ...Newton ...realized that ...the fate of a horizontally fired cannon ball depends on its speed: it crashes to the ground only if its speed is below some magic value. ...[W]ith ever higher speeds, they'll travel farther ...before landing ...until ...they keep their height over the ground ...constant and never land, merely orbiting ...just like the Moon! Since he knew the strength of gravity near the Earth's surface... he was able to calculate the magic speed... 7.9 kilometers per second. Assuming the Moon... was obeying the same laws... he could similarly predict what speed it needed... Moreover, since the Moon took one month to travel around a circle whose circumference Aristarchos had figured out, Newton already knew its speed... Now he made a remarkable discovery: if he assumed that the force of gravity weakened like the inverse square... then this magical speed that would give the Moon a circular orbit exactly matched its measured speed! He had discovered the law of gravity... applying not merely here on Earth, but in the heavens as well. ...People boldly extrapolated not only to the macrocosmos... but also to the microcosmos, finding that many properties... could be explained by applying to... atoms... The scientific revolution had begun."
"Newton did not show the cause of the apple falling, but he shewed a similitude between the apple and the stars. By doing so he turned old facts into new knowledge; and was well content if he could bring diverse phenomenon under "two or three Principles of Motion" even "though the Causes of these Principles were not yet discovered.""
"Gilbert, in his work, De Magnete printed in 1600 has only some vague notions that the magnetic virtue of the earth in some way determines the direction of the earth's axis, the rate of its diurnal rotation, and that of the revolution of the moon about it. Gilbert died in 1603, and in his posthumous work (De Mundo nostro Sublunari Philosophia nova, 1631) we have already a more distinct statement of the attraction of one body by another. "The force which emanates from the moon reaches to the earth, and, in like manner, the magnetic virtue of the earth pervades the region of the moon: both correspond and conspire by the joint action of both, according to a proportion and conformity of motions, but the earth has more effect in consequence of its superior mass; the earth attracts and repels, the moon, and the moon within certain limits, the earth; not so as to make the bodies come together, as magnetic bodies do, but so that they may go on in a continuous course." Though this phraseology is capable of representing a good deal of the truth, it does not appear to have been connected... with any very definite notions of mechanical action in detail."
"The inquiry into Nature having thus been pursued nearly two thousand years theologically, we find by the middle of the sixteenth century some promising beginnings of a different method—the method of inquiry into Nature scientifically—the method which seeks not plausibilities but facts."
"The way in which the persecution of Galileo has been remembered is a tribute to the quiet commencement of the most intimate change in outlook which the human race had yet encountered. Since a babe was born in a manger, it may be doubted whether so great a thing has happened with so little stir."
"The main importance of Francis Bacon’s influence does not lie in any peculiar theory of inductive reasoning which he happened to express, but in the revolt against second-hand information of which he was a leader."
"During the Middle Ages the universe was regarded as finite, with the earth at its centre. The idea was abandoned during the Scientific Renaissance, and the universe came to be pictured as an indefinitely large number of stars scattered throughout infinite Euclidean space. This conception appeared to be a necessary consequence of the theory of gravitation; for, as Newton pointed out, a finite material universe in infinite space would tend to concentrate in one massive lump."
"The Propositions that are insisted on in this Discourse. PROP. I. That the seeming Novelty and Singularity of this Opinion, can be no sufficient Reason to prove it Erroneus. PROP. II. That the places of Scripture, which seem to intimate the Diurnal Motion of the Sun, or Heavens, are fairly capable of another interpretation. PROP. III. That the Holy Ghost, in many places of Scripture, does plainly conform his Expressions to the Error of our Conceits, and does not speak of sundry things as they are in themselves, but as they appear unto us. PROP. IV. That divers learned Men have fallen into great Absurdities, whilst they have looked for the Grounds of Philosophy from the Words of Scripture. PROP. V. That the words of Scripture, in their proper and strict construction, do not any where affirm the Immobility of the Earth. PROP. VI. That there is not any Argument from the words of Scripture, Principles of Nature, or Observations in Astronomy, which can sufficiently evidence the Earth to be in the Centre of the Universe. PROP. VII. 'Tis probable that the Sun is the Centre of the World. PROP. VIII. That there is not any sufficient reason to prove the Earth incapable of those Motions which Copernicus ascribes unto it. PROP. IX. That it is more probable that the Earth does move, than the Heavens. PROP. X. That this Hypothesis is exactly agreeable to common Appearances."
"'Tis in Philosophy, and that is made up of nothing else; but receives addition from every days experiment. True indeed, for Divinity we have an infallible rule that do's plainly inform us of all necessary Truths; and therefore the Primitive Times are of greater Authority, because they were nearer to those holy Men who were the Pen-Men of Scripture. But now for Philosophy, there is no such reason: What ever the School Men may talk; yet Aristotles works are not necessarily true, and he himself hath by sufficient Arguments proved himself to be liable unto errour. Now in this case, if we should speak properly, Antiquity do's consist in the old age of the World, not in the youth of it. In such Learning as may be increased by fresh experiments and new discoveries: 'Tis we are the Fathers, and of more Authority than former Ages; because we have the advantage of more time than they had, and Truth (we say) is the Daughter of Time."
"If you start putting very large numbers of human brain cells into primates, suddenly you might transform primates into something that has some of the capacities that we regard as distinctively human – speech or other ways of being able to manipulate or relate to a human. These possibilities, at the moment, are largely being explored in fiction but we need to start thinking about them now."
"Francis Bacon and those who followed in the intellectual current of modernity were wrong to believe that man would be redeemed by science. Such an expectation asks too much of science; this kind of hope is deceptive. Science can contribute greatly to making the world and mankind more human. Yet it can also destroy mankind and the world unless it is steered by forces that lie outside it... It is not science that redeems man: man is redeemed by love... If this absolute love exists, with its absolute certainty, then—only then—is man "redeemed"..."
"Where people worry is when you get to the brain, the germ cells and the sentinel features that help people recognize what is a person, as opposed to a rat or a rabbit. Things like skin texture, facial shape, speech, replacing brain cells with human cells, allowing the development of human germ cells in animals. And particularly where there is any possibility of fertilisation within an animal."
"Changing animals by putting human genes or cells into their structure is one way of making them more resemble the bit of the human condition you're interested in studying."
"Transhumanism is defined as: The intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the possibility and desirability of fundamentally improving the human condition through applied reason, especially by developing and making widely available technologies to eliminate aging and to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities; and the study of the ramifications, promises, and potential dangers of technologies that will enable us to overcome fundamental human limitations, and the related study of the ethical matters involved in developing and using such technologies."
"It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God - but to create him."
"What it really means is pro-human-life. Abortion clinic bombers are not known for their veganism, nor do Roman Catholics show any particular reluctance to have their suffering pets 'put to sleep'. In the minds of many confused people, a single-celled human zygote, which has no nerves and cannot suffer, is infinitely sacred, simply because it is 'human'. No other cells enjoy this exalted status. But such 'essentialism' is deeply un-evolutionary. If there were a heaven in which all the animals who ever lived could frolic, we would find an interbreeding continuum between every species and every other. For example I could interbreed with a female who could interbreed with a male who could ... fill in a few gaps, probably not very many in this case ... who could interbreed with a chimpanzee. We could construct longer, but still unbroken chains of interbreeding individuals to connect a human with a warthog, a kangaroo, a catfish."
"The more we learn about what we are, the more options we will discern about what to try to become. Americans have long honored the “self-made man,” but now that we are actually learning enough to be able to remake ourselves into something new, many flinch. Many would apparently rather bumble around with their eyes closed, trusting in tradition, than look around to see what’s about to happen. Yes, it is unnerving; yes, it can be scary. After all, there are entirely new mistakes we are now empowered to make for the first time. But it’s the beginning of a great new adventure for our knowing species. And it’s much more exciting, as well as safer, if we open our eyes."
"I not only think that we will tamper with Mother Nature, I think Mother wants us to."
"Buddhism is a faith tradition and set of spiritual practices whose core idea is that human beings can become more than human by application of mental technology and self-discipline. As such it is probably the most compatible of the older faiths with transhumanism. But it is also quite challenging for many transhumanists in its insistence that there is no discrete, continuous ego that could be protected and perpetuated. Many of the immortalists, for instance, find that a threatening idea, but I think we will increasingly see the truth of the emptiness of the self as we apply neurotechnologies and life extension."
"I believe in transhumanism: once there are enough people who can truly say that, the human species will be on the threshold of a new kind of existence, as different from ours as ours is from that of Peking man. It will at last be consciously fulfilling its real destiny."
"The human species can... transcend itself—not just sporadically, an individual here in one way... there in another... but in its entirety, as humanity. We need a name for this new belief. Perhaps transhumanism will serve: man remaining man, but transcending himself, by realizing new possibilities of and for his human nature."
"The bold code of the transhumanist will rise. That's an inevitable, undeniable fact. It's embedded in the undemocratic nature of technology and our own teleological evolutionary advancement. It is the future. We are the future like it or not. And it needs to molded, guided, and handled correctly by the strength and wisdom of transhumanist scientists with their nations and resources standing behind them, facilitating them. It needs to be supported in a way that we can make a successful transition into it, and not sacrifice ourselves—either by its overwhelming power or by a fear of harnessing that power. You need to put your resources into the technology. Into our education system. Into our universities, industries, and ideas. Into the strongest of our society. Into the brightest of our society. Into the best of our society So that we can attain the future.”"
"If a reasoning human being loves and values life, they will want to live as long as possible—the desire to be immortal. Nevertheless, it’s impossible to know if they’re going to be immortal once they die. To do nothing doesn’t help the odds of attaining immortality—since it seems evident that everyone will die someday and possibly cease to exist. To try to do something scientifically constructive towards ensuring immortality beforehand is the most logical conclusion."
"The idea that a child will belong genetically to one race when that same child has been significantly genetically modified is no longer valid. Transhumanism will overcome this hurdle and many others that have sadly embroiled many countries and communities into longstanding enmity."
"In leading laboratories, academic and industrial, new creators are confidently amassing their powers and quietly honing their skills, while on the street their evangelists are zealously prophesying a posthuman future. For anyone who cares about preserving our humanity, the time has come to pay attention."
"Evolution moves towards greater complexity, greater elegance, greater knowledge, greater intelligence, greater beauty, greater creativity, and greater levels of subtle attributes such as love. In every monotheistic tradition God is likewise described as all of these qualities, only without limitation: infinite knowledge, infinite intelligence, infinite beauty, infinite creativity, infinite love, and so on. Of course, even the accelerating growth of evolution never achieves an infinite level, but as it explodes exponentially it certainly moves rapidly in that direction. So evolution moves inexorably towards this conception of God, although never quite reaching this ideal. We can regard, therefore, the freeing of our thinking from the severe limitations of its biological form to be an essentially spiritual undertaking."
"Whereas... critics see problems with transhumanism being insufficiently attuned to divine grace and God’s plan, secular critics find fault with it for being too influenced by Christian eschatology. David Noble... advanced the thesis that Western science and technology were inspired by Christian millennialism and... remain... religious endeavors... by men motivated by a quest for transcendence. Noble asserts that Newton, Boyle, Priestly, Faraday, Maxwell, Babbage and many other notable scientists and technologists were believers and, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the fields of nuclear physics, space exploration, artificial intelligence, artificial life, and genetics were launched by men inspired by Christian eschatology. Allegedly, religious and non-religious scientists and engineers in these fields today continue to be obsessed with the quest for perfection: "Often displaying a pathological dissatisfaction with, and deprecation of, the human condition, they are taking flight from the world, pointing us away from the earth, the flesh, the familiar"."
"Individuals must be persuaded to believe in an apparent paradox, that something is gained through selflessness and something is lost through self-fulfillment. ...The four cardinal virtues from Greek philosophy are prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice. Islam recognizes those, as well as, righteousness, respect, sincerity, and honesty. Christianity adds faith, hope, charity, and love. Buddhism's Divine States are loving kindness, compassion, altruistic joy, and equanimity. Practicing these virtues requires self-restraint and generosity towards others. Vices, for example, pride, avarice, and gluttony are typically described as manifestations of selfishness. ...[E]xcellence of character or proper living is said to be achieved through practicing virtue (which is self-effacing) and avoiding vice (selfishness). Is personal transcendence consistent with this formula? “No,” assert the critics of transhumanity. It is egotistical, too grasping, and may result in new forms of injustice. Living a good life accepting of human mortality... has intrinsic value and it helps promote the greater good."
"Will robots inherit the earth? Yes, but they will be our children. We owe our minds to the deaths and lives of all the creatures that were ever engaged in the struggle called Evolution. Our job is to see that all this work shall not end up in meaningless waste."
"Once we know what we need to do, our nanotechnologies should enable us to construct replacement bodies and brains that won't be constrained to work at the crawling pace of "real time." The events in our computer chips already happen millions of times faster than those in brain cells. Hence, we could design our "mind-children" to think a million times faster than we do. To such a being, half a minute might seem as long as one of our years, and each hour as long as an entire human lifetime."
"Good and evil, and rich and poor, and high and low, and all names of values: weapons shall they be, and sounding signs, that life must again and again surpass itself!"
"Genes and culture have co-evolved. But crudely, natural selection "designed" male human primates to hunt nonhumans and build coalitions of other male human primates in order to wage territorial wars of aggression. Nature didn’t design us to become a scientific community and collaborate to overcome aging. It’s difficult to imagine that any human enemy could inflict such gruesome damage on the victims as growing old. The ravages of aging strike down combatants and civilians alike. So the trillions of dollars that humans currently spend on ways to harm and kill each other (“defence”) would be more fruitfully spent on defeating our common enemy. We should work together to build a "Triple S" civilisation of superlongevity, superhappiness and superintelligence."
"[...] true hedonic engineering, as distinct from mindless hedonism or reckless personal experimentation, can be profoundly good for our character. Character-building technologies can benefit utilitarians and non-utilitarians alike. Potentially, we can use a convergence of biotech, nanorobotics and information technology to gain control over our emotions and become better (post-)human beings, to cultivate the virtues, strength of character, decency, to become kinder, friendlier, more compassionate: to become the type of (post)human beings that we might aspire to be, but aren't, and biologically couldn't be, with the neural machinery of unenriched minds. Given our Darwinian biology, too many forms of admirable behaviour simply aren't rewarding enough for us to practise them consistently: our second-order desires to live better lives as better people are often feeble echoes of our baser passions."
"You are in physical existence to learn and understand that your energy, translated into feelings, thoughts and emotions, causes all experience. There are no exceptions."
"A small, but significant, minority in the body modification community sees body modification as the first steps in transhumanism. The connection is easy to see: in casting off the genetically-mandated exterior form of a standard human, we are breaking our minds of the belief that a human must look a certain way. Once the body of a human is modifiable for aesthetic reasons not tied to spirituality or tradition, it is possible to begin to modify that body in hopes of improving it. Beyond the abstract connection, there are very concrete connections. The aspect of transhumanism generally seen as most immediately viable is the the merging man and machine — indeed, it is so widely seen as viable, that dozens of major Hollywood films have been made about it, and the word "cyborg" is a household word. The most immediately visible way of merging man and machine is to simply implant useful machines into the human body."
"Here I had tried a straightforward extrapolation of technology, and found myself precipitated over an abyss. It’s a problem we face every time we consider the creation of intelligences greater than our own. When this happens, human history will have reached a kind of singularity — a place where extrapolation breaks down and new models must be applied — and the world will pass beyond our understanding."
"I was born human. But this was an accident of fate - a condition merely of time and place. I believe it's something we have the power to change."
"There is nothing in transhumanism but the same common sense that underlies standard humanism, rigorously applied to cases outside our modern-day experience. A million-year lifespan? If it’s possible, why not? The prospect may seem very foreign and strange, relative to our current everyday experience. It may create a sensation of future shock. And yet – is life a bad thing? Could the moral question really be just that simple? Yes."
"And someday when the descendants of humanity have spread from star to star, they won't tell the children about the history of Ancient Earth until they're old enough to bear it; and when they learn they'll weep to hear that such a thing as Death had ever once existed!"
"What is a human being, then?" "A seed" "A... seed?" "An acorn that is unafraid to destroy itself in growing into a tree."
"To be what you want to be: isn't this the essence of being human?"
"The generation which will come into active thought expression at the end of this century... will inaugurate the framework, structure and fabric of the New Age [of Aquarius], which will start with certain premises, which today are the dream of the more exalted dreamers, and which will develop the civilisation of the Aquarian Age. This coming age will be as predominantly the age of group interplay, group idealism, and group consciousness, as the Piscean Age has been one of personality unfoldment and emphasis, personality focus, and personality consciousness. Selfishness, as we now understand it, will gradually disappear, for the will of the individual will voluntarily be blended into the group will."
"The ancient symbol for the sign Aquarius (into which our Sun is now entering) is that of the Water-carrier, the man with a pitcher of water. This passing of the Sun into the sign Aquarius is an astronomical fact... not an astrological prognostication. The great spiritual achievement and evolutionary event of that age will be the communion and human relationships established among all peoples, enabling men everywhere to sit down together... and share the bread and wine (symbols of nourishment). Preparations for that shared feast (symbolically speaking) are on their way, and those preparations are being made by the masses of men themselves, as they fight and struggle and legislate for the economic sustenance of their nations, and as the theme of food occupies the attention of legislators everywhere. This sharing, beginning on the physical plane, will prove equally true of all human relations and this will be the great gift of the Aquarian Age to humanity."
"Energies emanating from... Aquarius... will (through the effect of its potent force) stimulate... men into a new coherency, into a brotherhood of humanity which will ignore all racial and national differences and will carry the life of men forward into synthesis and unity. This means a tide of unifying life of such power that one cannot now vision it, but which—in a thousand years—will have welded all mankind into a perfect brotherhood."
"Many religions speak of the End of Days. It refers not to the end of the world, but rather the end of our current age – Pisces, which began at the time of Christ’s birth, spanned two thousand years, and waned with the passing of the millennium. Now that we’ve passed into the Age of Aquarius, the End of Days has arrived."
"You can never plan the future by the past."
"Take hold of the future or the future will take hold of you -- be futurewise."
"Business strategy is the battleplan for a better future."
"Reproductive futurism presupposes the absolute and inherent good of heteronormative reproduction by limiting any discourse that would counter this claim, rendering dissent unthinkable."
"It is one of our most exciting discoveries that local discovery leads to a complex of further discoveries. Corollary to this we find that we no sooner get a problem solved than we are overwhelmed with a multiplicity of additional problems in a most beautiful payoff of heretofore unknown, previously unrecognized, and as-yet unsolved problems."
"Neither the great political and financial power structures of the world, nor the specialization-blinded professionals, nor the population in general realize... that it is now highly feasible to take care of everybody on Earth at a higher standard of living than any have ever known."
"It no longer has to be you or me. Selfishness is unnecessary and henceforth unrationalizable as mandated by survival."
"War is obsolete. It could never have been done before. Only ten years ago... technology reached the point where it could be done. Since then the invisible technological-capability revolution has made it ever easier so to do."
"It is a matter of converting the high technology from weaponry to livingry. The essence of livingry is human-life advantaging and environment controlling. With the highest aeronautical and engineering facilities of the world redirected from weaponry to livingry production, all humanity would have the option of becoming enduringly successful."
"All previous revolutions have been political—in them the have-not majority has attempted revengefully to pull down the economically advantaged minority. If realized, this historically greatest design revolution will joyously elevate all humanity to unprecedented heights."
"All of humanity is in peril of extinction if each one of us does not dare, now and henceforth, always to tell only the truth, and all the truth, and to do so promptly — right now."
"Whether it is to be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race right up to the final moment. . . . Humanity is in ‘final exam’ as to whether or not it qualifies for continuance in Universe"
"The future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented."
"Science, and physics in particular, has developed out of the Newtonian paradigm of mechanics. In this world view, every phenomenon we observe can be reduced to a collection of atoms or particles, whose movement is governed by the deterministic laws of nature. Everything that exists now has already existed in some different arrangement in the past, and will continue to exist so in the future. In such a philosophy, there seems to be no place for novelty or creativity"
"You'll see that, since our fate is ruled by chance, Each man, unknowing, great, Should frame life so that at some future hour Fact and his dreamings meet."
"The future is a world limited by ourselves; in it we discover only what concerns us and, sometimes, by chance, what interests those whom we love the most."
"When we try to imagine the distant future, we may of course imagine hi-tech gee-whizzery. Yet emotionally, we also think in primitive terms of dominance and submission, of hierarchy and power structures, superiority and inferiority. Even when we imagine future computers and robots, we are liable to have simple-minded fantasies about being used, dominated, and overthrown. Bug-eyed extra-terrestrials from the Planet Zog, too, and their legion of hydra-headed sci-fi cousins, are implicitly assumed to have the motivational structure of our vertebrate ancestors. Superficially they may be alien - all those tentacles - but really they're just like us. Surely they'll want to dominate us, control us, invade Earth etc?"
"My own philosophical position, if I may put it that way, is very briefly as follows:"
":(1) I think about the future, therefore I am and can be a human being;"
":(2) The future is partly knowable for man: thinking back = thinking forward;"
":(3) Anyone who ponders the future will learn that this is still open to a considerable extent that can be further determined from case to case..."
":(4) Determining one’s own destiny implies two things: ready acceptance of a stewardship for the future and of the duty to make a choice;"
":(5) Everyone must therefore be able to have access, as soon and as completely as possible, to all available data for, and possible consequences of, this choice to be made..."
":(6) For this purpose everyone, choosing in complete freedom and on his own responsibility, must be able and permitted to utilize all the philosophical and scientific thought models useful for this vital choice;"
":(7) Thought models, or models of the future, are useful insofar as they can reasonably contribute towards the optimum realization of man’s future-directed wishes and actions in a given situation or period;"
":(8) Optimum realization aims at a harmonious synthesis of effectiveness and justice in the furthest possible surveyable part of future time;"
":(9) The effectiveness to be aimed at calls for the application and refinement of all conceivable prognostic techniques for adding to knowledge of the future, including those which can be effectively developed over an ever-wider time scale..."
":(10) All objectives meet in the endlessly continued approach to and progress towards the ideal “summum bonum”, though this, the most valuable humanistic good of a full human society, may perhaps never be capable of realization in total perfection."
"I believe Mahatma Gandhi was a futurist in the best sense of the word. He foresaw trends and had the confidence to record his predictions and prescriptions in bold and stark terms. He did so, not in a stray article or opinion piece, but over a life time of speeches, writings – and living – beginning with Hind Swaraj, the remarkable he started writing in 1909 and completed in 1910."
"Futurists and common sense concur that a substantial change, worldwide, in life-style and moral guidelines will soon become an absolute necessity."
"We can chart our future clearly and wisely only when we know the path which has led to the present."
"In spite of the dominance of mechanistic thought in the contemporary world, a perplexing residue of the magical tradition still survives in the form of several issues, solutions to which do not appear possible within the context of a purely mechanical view of the world.... It is important to recognize that the materialist, scientific paradigm that dominates the late twentieth century world and provides the basis for its dominant institutions, has its basis in the life and work of Pythagoras, one of the most significant representatives of the perennial philosophy and a founder of the magical tradition. This spirit, which gave rise to our world view, is a spirit that must be recaptured if our civilization is to flourish. The choice is a clear one to many, and was summed up in a book title by the late Pythagorean and futurist Buckminster Fuller, Utopia or Oblivion."
"Futurists believe that accelerating and convulsive changes will characterize our world for decades to come. These will affect profoundly every political institution, and every religious institution in its mission to relate faith to societal changes. Those who enter the twenty first century can expect a continuation and acceleration of this trend toward permanent resolution."
"Change is the process by which the future invades our lives."
"It may seem like a paradox: while futurism, the singer of modernity, was able to perceive and intuit the power of cinema on theoretical and poetical levels, it did not manage to use the new means of expression as a weapon – nor did it appropriate cinema as the art form of all times."
"All that most economists know about Herbert Simon is that he wrote about bounded rationality and organizational behavior."
"The type of rationality we assume in economics — perfect, logical, deductive rationality — is extremely useful in generating solutions to theoretical problems. But it demands much of human behavior — much more in fact than it can usually deliver. If we were to imagine the vast collection of decision problems economic agents might conceivably deal with as a sea or an ocean, with the easier problems on top and more complicated ones at increasing depth, then deductive rationality would describe human behavior accurately only within a few feet of the surface. For example, the game Tic-Tac-Toe is simple, and we can readily find a perfectly rational, minimax solution to it. But we do not find rational “solutions” at the depth of Checkers; and certainly not at the still modest depths of Chess and Go."
"There are two basic ways market organization is brought about... Some combination of the two is usual the case:"
"# Strategic structuring, informal or formal, whereby social agents, including the state, establish a rule regime regulating market access and transactions..."
"# Emergent structuring, whereby participants discover or adopt certain similar strategies within bounded rationality and situations with certain opportunity structures and incentive structures. Social network and ecological properties result in relatively well-defined aggregate performance characteristics..."
"The term “bounded rationality” was coined in the 1950s by Herbert A. Simon."
"Models of bounded rationality describe how a judgement or decision is reached (that is, the heuristic processes or proximal mechanisms) rather than merely the outcome of the decision, and they describe the class of environments in which these heuristics will succeed or fail."
"One is forced to assume that ordinary people have the computational capabilities and statistical software of econometricians."
"Although contributions of many writers have helped the rise of behavioral economics including psychologists Kahneman and Tversky, I regard the works of George Katona and Herbert Simon instrumental in its rise. While the works of Katona and his colleagues at Michigan University led to the use of survey method in economics and its utilization in measuring the impact of consumer expectations on macroeconomic activity, the work of Simon at Carnegie Tech. (a tremendously stimulating intellectual environment for economic theorizing then) resulted in the important theoretical foundations of behavioral economics, such as the concept of bounded rationality."
"Two types of conventions [ in organizational settings] may be distinguished here: (a) conventional rules of behavior demonstrated in the classroom mental experience (first part of the story) and (b) conventional representation of the world revealed in the following discussions with ‘‘experienced” friends (second part)."
"Simon’s conventionalism leads to a decision paradigm, according to which understanding problems of coordination is impossible without taking into consideration individual cognitive limits and social representations of reality."
"Bounded rationality means that people make quite reasonable decisions based on the information they have. But they don't have perfect information, especially about more distant parts of the system. [...] We don't even interpret perfectly the imperfect information that we do have, say behavioral scientists. [...] Which is to say, we don't even make decisions that optimize our own individual good, much less the good of the system as a whole."
"In a fundamental sense, Alchian's theory of economic organizations is different from those of Coase or Simon. He disavows an explicit model of individual choice... and... offers a system-level explanation of organizational emergence, structure, and survival that is largely independent of decision making at the micro level... Yet it is precisely this independence of a distinct model of choice that ultimately renders it compatible with the individualistic theories of both Coase and Simon...."
"Around 1958, I became aware of H.A. Simon's seminal papers on bounded rationality and was immediately convinced by his arguments. I tried to construct a theory of boundedly rational multi-goal decision making. Together with Heinz Sauermann, I worked out an "aspiration adaptation theory of the firm" which was published as a journal article in 1962... More and more I came to the conclusion that purely speculative approaches like that of our paper of 1962 are of limited value. The structure of boundedly rational economic behavior cannot be invented in the armchair, it must be explored experimentally."
"The principle of bounded rationality [is] the capacity of the human mind for formulating and solving complex problems is very small compared with the size of the problems whose solution is required for objectively rational behavior in the real world — or even for a reasonable approximation to such objective rationality."
"Broadly stated, the task is to replace the global rationality of economic man with a kind of rational behavior that is compatible with the access to information and the computational capacities that are actually possessed by organisms, including man, in the kinds of environments in which such organisms exist."
"… I shall assume that the concept of ‘economic man’(...) is in need of fairly drastic revision, and shall put forth some suggestions as to the direction the revision might take."
"The problem can be approached initially either by inquiring into the properties of the choosing organism, or by inquiring into the environment of choice."
"Both from these scanty data and from an examination of the postulates of the economic models it appears probable that, however adaptive the behavior of organisms in learning and choice situations, this adaptiveness falls far short of the ideal of ‘maximizing’ postulated in economic theory. Evidently, organisms adapt well enough to‘satisfice’; theydo not, in general, ‘optimize’."
"A comparative examination of the models of adaptive behavior employed in psychology (e.g., learning theories), and of the models of rational behavior employed in economics, shows that in almost all respects the latter postulate a much greater complexity in the choice mechanisms, and a much larger capacity in the organism for obtaining information and performing computations, than do the former. Moreover, in the limited range of situations where the predictions of the two theories have been compared (...), the learning theories appear to account for the observed behavior rather better than do the theories of rational behavior."
"The first consequence of the principle of bounded rationality is that the intended rationality of an actor requires him to construct a simplified model of the real situation in order to deal with it. He behaves rationally with respect to this model, and such behavior is not even approximately optimal with respect to the real world. To predict his behavior we must understand the way in which this simplified model is constructed, and its construction will certainly be related to his psychological properties as a perceiving, thinking, and learning animal."
"In Administrative Behavior, bounded rationality is largely characterized as a residual category — rationality is bounded when it falls short of omniscience. And the failures of omniscience are largely failures of knowing all the alternatives, uncertainty about relevant exogenous events, and inability to calculate consequences. There was needed a more positive and formal characterization of the mechanisms of choice under conditions of bounded rationality... Two concepts are central to the characterization: search and satisficing."
"If (...) we accept the proposition that both the knowledge and the computational power of the decision maker are severely limited, then we must distinguish between the real world and the actor’s perception of it and reasoning about it."
"In the literature of problem solving, the topic I am now taking up is called "problem representation." In the past 30 years, a great deal has been learned about how people solve problems by searching selectively through a problem space defined by a particular problem representation. Much less has been learned about how people acquire a representation for dealing with a new problem—one they haven't previously encountered."
"Information impactedness is a derivative condition that arises mainly because of uncertainty and opportunism, though bounded rationality is involved as well. It exists when true underlying circumstances relevant to the transaction, or related set of transactions, are known to one or more parties but cannot be costlessly discerned by or displayed for others."
"For want of a nail the shoe was lost; For want of a shoe the horse was lost; For want of a horse the battle was lost; For the failure of battle the kingdom was lost— All for the want of a horse-shoe nail."
"Mathematicians believed that prediction was just a function of keeping track of things. If you knew enough, you could predict anything… Chaos theory throws it right out the window because in fact there are great categories of phenomena that are inherently unpredictable."
"It used to be thought that the events that changed the world were things like big bombs, maniac politicians, huge earthquakes, or vast population movements, but it has now been realized that this is a very old-fashioned view held by people totally out of touch with modern thought. The things that really change the world, according to Chaos theory, are the tiny things. A butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazonian jungle, and subsequently a storm ravages half of Europe. Somewhere in Adam's sleeping head, a butterfly had emerged."
"Chaotic theory is mathematically based on non-linear propositions, "meaning that they expressed relationships that were not strictly proportional. Linear relationships can be captured with a straight line on a graph""
"Relativity eliminated the Newtonian illusion of absolute space and time; quantum theory eliminated the Newtonian dream of controllable measurement process; chaos eliminates the Laplacian fantasy of deterministic predictability."
"It is time to employ fractal geometry and its associated subjects of chaos and nonlinear dynamics to study systems engineering methodology (SEM). Systematic codification of the former is barely 15 years old, while codification of the latter began 45 years ago... Fractal geometry and chaos theory can convey a new level of understanding to systems engineering and make it more effective"
"What, after all, is a better example of chaos theory than the harassment of a street vendor in Tunisia leading to a civil war in Syria?"
"The fluttering of a butterfly’s wing in Rio de Janeiro, amplified by atmospheric currents, could cause a tornado in Texas two weeks later."
"Let us try to represent the figure formed by these two curves and their intersections in infinite number, each corresponding to a doubly asymptotic solution, these intersections form a kind of mesh, of fabric, of infinitely tight network; each of the two curves must never intersect itself, but it must fold back on itself in a very complex way in order to cross an infinite number of times all the meshes of the network. On will be struck by the complexity of this figure, which I do not even try to draw. Nothing is more likely to give us an idea of the complexity of the three-body problem and in general of all the problems of dynamics where there is no uniform integral and where the Bohlin series are divergent."
"Order is not universal. In fact, many chaologists and physicists posit that universal laws are more flexible than first realized, and less rigid—operating in spurts, jumps, and leaps, instead of like clockwork. Chaos prevails over rules and systems because it has the freedom of infinite complexity over the known, unknown, and the unknowable."
"Without chaos there would be no creation, no structure and no existence. After all, order is merely the repetition of patterns; chaos is the process that establishes those patterns. Without this creative self-organizing force, the universe would be devoid of biological life, the birth of stars and galaxies—everything we have come to know."
"Chaos is lawless behavior governed entirely by law.”"
"Falling between order and chaos, the moment of complexity is the point at which self-organizing systems emerge to create new patterns of coherence and structures of behaviour."
"Saying “the mathematics of uncertainty” is like saying “the chastity of sex”—what is mathematized is no longer uncertain, and vice versa."
"The amazing thing is that chaotic systems don't always stay chaotic, Ben said, leaning on the gate. Sometimes they spontaneously reorganize themselves into an orderly structure. They suddenly become less chaotic?" I said, wishing that would happen at HiTek. No, that's the thing. They become more and more chaotic until they reach some sort of chaotic critical mass. When that happens, they spontaneously reorganize themselves at a higher equilibrium level. It's called self-organized criticality."
"If a tree falls in a forest, and no-one is around to hear it, does it make a noise?"
"Whether if soul did not exist time would exist or not, is a question that may fairly be asked; for if there cannot be someone to count there cannot be anything that can be counted, so that evidently there cannot be number; for number is either what has been, or what can be, counted."
"A pinch of observation is worth a mountain of hypothesis."
"The great extension of our experience in recent years has brought light to the insufficiency of our simple mechanical conceptions and, as a consequence, has shaken the foundation on which the customary interpretation of observation was based."
"Perceptual reality is different for different species. In certain species it is a mode of observation, so what we call scientific fact is actually not ultimate truth, it is perceptual experience, and it's a mode of observation."
"Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality. I have been for many years a teacher of languages. It is an occupation which at length becomes fatal to whatever share of imagination, observation, and insight an ordinary person may be heir to. To a teacher of languages there comes a time when the world is but a place of many words and man appears a mere talking animal not much more wonderful than a parrot."
"Science is the observation of things possible, whether present or past; prescience is the knowledge of things which may come to pass, though but slowly."
"The way our group or class does things tends to determine the proper objects of attention, and thus prescribe the directions and limits of observation and memory."
"The philosopher forms his principles from an infinity of particular observations. Most people adopt principles without thinking of the observations that have produced them, they believe the maxims exist, so to speak, by themselves. But the philosopher takes maxims from their source; he examines their origin; he knows their proper value, and he makes use of them only in so far as they suit him. Truth is not for the philosopher a mistress who corrupts his imagination and whom he believes to be found everywhere; he contents himself with being able to unravel it where he can perceive it. He does not confound it with probability; he takes for true what is true, for false what is false, for doubtful what is doubtful, and probable what is only probable. He does more, and here you have a great perfection of the philosopher: when he has no reason by which to judge, he knows how to live in suspension of judgment... The philosophical spirit is, then, a spirit of observation and exactness, which relates everything to true principles..."
"A battle lost or won is easily described, understood, and appreciated, but the moral growth of a great nation requires reflection, as well as observation, to appreciate it."
"It is also a good rule not to put overmuch confidence in the observational results that are put forward until they are confirmed by theory."
"For the truth of the conclusions of physical science, observation is the supreme Court of Appeal. It does not follow that every item which we confidently accept as physical knowledge has actually been certified by the Court; our confidence is that it would be certified by the Court if it were submitted. But it does follow that every item of physical knowledge is of a form which might be submitted to the Court. It must be such that we can specify (although it may be impracticable to carry out) an observational procedure which would decide whether it is true or not. Clearly a statement cannot be tested by observation unless it is an assertion about the results of observation. Every item of physical knowledge must therefore be an assertion of what has been or would be the result of carrying out a specified observational procedure."
"To me, photography is an art of observation. It's about finding something interesting in an ordinary place... I've found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them."
"Strategy requires thought, tactics require observation."
"The philosophy behind much advertising is based on the old observation that every man is really two men - the man he is and the man he wants to be."
"First we have an observation, then we have numbers that we measure, then we have a law which summarizes all the numbers. But the real glory of science is that we can find a way of thinking such that the law is evident."
"It is a trite but true observation, that examples work more forcibly on the mind than precepts."
"At any one time there is a natural tendency among physicists to believe that we already know the essential ingredients of a comprehensive theory. But each time a new frontier of observation is broached we inevitably discover new phenomena which force us to modify substantially our previous conceptions. I believe this process to be unending, that the delights and challenges of unexpected discovery will continue always."
"It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste."
"Rhetoric and dialectics can't change what I have learned from observation and experience."
"When people endure a traumatic event, they are either defeated or made stronger. On Sept. 11, I told New Yorkers, 'I want you to emerge stronger from this.' My words were partially a hope and partially an observation that people in New York City handle big things better than little things. I could not be more proud of the way my city responded."
"Science is simply common sense at its best, that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic."
"Reason, observation, and experience; the holy trinity of science."
"Early in life I learned, just through observation, that right always wins out over wrong. If a person has good intentions in his heart and wants to do the right thing, then there are certain ways that any obstacle can be overcome."
"It's my observation that gardeners and gardening for a very long time have had to take a back seat. Architects are very famous; they've got huge projects. What goes on in and around them has been relegated to a very minor role."
"Even scientific knowledge, if there is anything to it, is not a random observation of random objects; for the critical objectivity of significant knowledge is attained as a practice only philosophically in inner action."
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"
"Not observation of a duty but liberty itself is the pledge that assures fidelity."
"We must trust to nothing but facts: these are presented to us by nature and cannot deceive. We ought, in every instance, to submit our reasoning to the test of experiment, and never to search for truth but by the natural road of experiment and observation."
"And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you."
"Scientists believe that nature is orderly and measurable— that natural laws, such as the law of gravity, do not change with time, and that a natural event, or phenomenon,can be understood more fully through observation. Scientists use all of their senses in making observations."
"It has become extremely questionable whether, in the flux of life, it is a genuinely worthwhile intellectual problem to seek to discover fixed and immutable ideas or absolutes. It is a more worthy intellectual task perhaps to learn to think dynamically and relationally rather than statically... When the empirical investigator glories in his refusal to go beyond the specialized observation dictated by the traditions of his discipline, be they ever so inclusive, he is making a virtue out of a defense mechanism which insures him against questioning his presuppositions."
"It seems to me, when I see nature, that I see it ready made, completely written — but then, try to do it! All this proves that one must think of nothing but them [impressions]; it is by dint of observation and reflection that one makes discoveries."
"Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Pregnant woman. Gunned her down. Bang. And y'know what? You watched me. You coulda changed the gun into steam or the bullets into mercury or the bottle into god damn snowflakes! You coulda teleported either of us to goddamn Australia...but you didn't lift a finger! You don't really give a damn about human beings. I've watched you. You never cared about what's her name, Janey Slater, even before you ditched her. Soon you won't be interested in Sally Jupiter's little girl, either. You're driftin' outta touch, Doc. You're turnin' into a flake. God help us all."
"Everything is literally entangled, it can all be communicated with and affected 'at a distance' because there is no distance, only a simulation of apparent separation which our limited consciousness feeds us second by second at 11 bits. The 'telepathy' which brings people together is no more or less supernatural or unlikely than the 'telepathy' which brings two of your fingers together when you think about it. Patience, participation and constant close observation of what's going on, on the inside and on the outside will soon make you a fine sorcerer, if that's what you want to be."
"Even if it had not been possible to reproduce the disease in animals and consequently to verify the hypothesis, this simple observation would have been sufficient to demonstrate the way in which the disease was propagated."
"My observation is that after one hundred and twenty years of modernisation since the opening of the country, present-day Japan is split between two opposite poles of ambiguity."
"Dans les champs de l'observation le hasard ne favorise que les esprits préparés."
"The only possible way of accounting for the laws of nature and for uniformity in general is to suppose them results of evolution. This supposes them not to be absolute, not to be obeyed precisely. It makes an element of indeterminacy, spontaneity, or absolute chance in nature. Just as, when we attempt to verify any physical law, we find our observations cannot be precisely satisfied by it, and rightly attribute the discrepancy to errors of observation, so we must suppose far more minute discrepancies to exist owing to the imperfect cogency of the law itself, to a certain swerving of the facts from any definite formula."
"One man's observation is another man's closed book or flight of fancy."
"Facts have to be discovered by observation, not by reasoning"
"Art that means anything in the life of a community must bear some relation to current interpretations of the mystery of the universe. Our rigid separation of the humanities and the sciences has temporarily left our art stranded or stammering and incoherent. Both art and science ought to be blended in our early education of our children's emotions and powers of observation, and that harmony carried forward in later education."
"Most, if not all, of the great ideas of modern mathematics have had their origin in observation."
"Much of my work in this period was concerned with exploring the logic of economic models, but also with attempting to reconcile the models with every day observation."
"The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected."
"None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty."
"My observation is that whenever one person is found adequate to the discharge of a duty... it is worse executed by two persons, and scarcely done at all if three or more are employed therein."
"The gap between our feelings and our social observation is dangerously wide."
"Surely it is time to examine into the meaning of words and the nature of things, and to arrive at simple facts, not received upon the dictum of learned authorities, but upon attentive personal observation of what is passing around us."
"Whether we consider Nazi Germany or Abu Ghraib prison, there were many people who observed what was happening and said nothing. At Abu Ghraib, one photo shows two soldiers smiling before a pyramid of naked prisoners while a dozen other soldiers stand around watching passively. If you observe such abuses and don’t say, “This is wrong! Stop it!” you give tacit approval to continue. You are part of the silent majority that makes evil deeds more acceptable."
"I think women are really good at making friends and not good at networking. Men are good at networking and not necessarily making friends. That's a gross generalization, but I think it holds in many ways."
"All generalizations are false, including this one."
"An aphorism is a generalization of sorts, and our present-day writers seem more at home with the particular."
"As the generalization goes about the art industry, people can be really challenging and thought-provoking in their thinking and questioning the status quo, and it's really important that the status quo can be questioned and that there are people doing that."
"All generalizations are dangerous, even this one."
"In generalizing lies the difficulty of scientific map-making, for it no longer allows the cartographer to rely merely on objective facts but requires him to interpret them subjectively. To be sure the selection of the subject matter is controlled by considerations regarding its suitability and value, but the manner in which this material is to be rendered graphically depends on personal and subjective feeling. But the latter must not predominate: the dictates of science will prevent any erratic flight of the imagination and impart to the map a fundamentally objective character in spite of all subjective impulses. It is in this respect that maps are distinguished from fine products of art. Generalized maps and, in fact, all abstract maps should, therefore, be products of art clarified by science."
"Crime seems to change character when it crosses a bridge or a tunnel. In the city, crime is taken as emblematic of class and race. In the suburbs, though, it's intimate and psychological / resistant to generalization, a mystery of the individual soul."
"Only the great generalizations survive. The sharp words of the Declaration of Independence, lampooned then and since as "glittering generalities," have turned out blazing ubiquities that will burn forever and ever."
"A poet once said, "The whole universe is in a glass of wine." We will probably never know in what sense he meant that, for poets do not write to be understood. But it is true that if we look at a glass of wine closely enough we see the entire universe. There are the things of physics: the twisting liquid which evaporates depending on the wind and weather, the reflections in the glass, and our imagination adds the atoms. The glass is a distillation of the Earth's rocks, and in its composition we see the secrets of the universe's age, and the evolution of stars. What strange arrays of chemicals are in the wine? How did they come to be? There are the ferments, the enzymes, the substrates, and the products. There in wine is found the great generalization: all life is fermentation."
"Even the recognition of an individual whom we see every day is only possible as the result of an abstract idea of him formed by generalization from his appearances in the past."
"The word generalization in literature usually means covering too much territory too thinly to be persuasive, let alone convincing. In science, however, a generalization means a principle that has been found to hold true in every special case. … The principle of leverage is a scientific generalization."
"The highest of generalizations is the synergetic integration of truth and love."
"People who like quotations love meaningless generalizations."
"A single observation that is inconsistent with some generalization points to the falsehood of the generalization, and thereby 'points to itself'."
"All sweeping assertions are erroneous."
"Men are more apt to be mistaken in their generalizations than in their particular observations."
"The English have all the material requisites for the revolution. What they lack is the spirit of generalization and revolutionary ardour."
"Law is the continuous manifestation of God's presence — not reason for believing him absent. Great confusion arises from our using the same word law in two totally distinct senses … as the cause and the effect. It is said that to "explain away" everything by law is to enable us to do without God. But law is no explanation of anything; law is simply a generalization, a category of facts. Law is neither a cause, nor a reason, nor a power, nor a coercive force. It is nothing but a general formula, a statistical table. Law brings us continually back to God instead of carrying us away from him."
"An extra-terrestrial philosopher, who had watched a single youth up to the age of twenty-one and had never come across any other human being, might conclude that it is the nature of human beings to grow continually taller and wiser in an indefinite progress towards perfection; and this generalization would be just as well founded as the generalization which evolutionists base upon the previous history of this planet."
"For my part I distrust all generalizations about women, favorable and unfavorable, masculine and feminine, ancient and modern; all alike, I should say, result from paucity of experience."
"Crude classifications and false generalizations are the curse of organized life."
"We generalize from one situation to another not because we cannot tell the difference between the two situations but because we judge that they are likely to belong to a set of situations having the same consequence."
"My work in the future must be devoted entirely to pure mathematics in its abstract meaning. I shall apply all my strength to bring more light into the tremendous obscurity which one unquestionably finds in analysis. It lacks so completely all plan and system that it is peculiar that so many can have studied it. The worst of it is, it has never been treated stringently. There are very few theorems in advanced analysis which have been demonstrated in a logically tenable manner. Everywhere one finds this miserable way of concluding from the special to the general, and it is extremely peculiar that such a procedure has led to so few of the so-called paradoxes. It is really interesting to seek the cause."
"Philosophers hasten too much from the analytic to the synthetic method; that is, they draw general conclusions from too small a number of particular observations and experiments."
"The terms synthesis and analysis are used in mathematics in a more special sense than in logic. In ancient mathematics they had a different meaning from what they now have. The oldest definition of mathematical analysis as opposed to synthesis is that given in Euclid, XIII. 5, which in all probability was framed by Eudoxus: "Analysis is the obtaining of the thing sought by assuming it and so reasoning up to an admitted truth; synthesis is the obtaining of the thing sought by reasoning up to the inference and proof of it.""
"The idea that God may be approached and understood through intellectual analysis is uniquely Christian. ...It is probably not an accident that modern science grew explosively in Christian Europe and left the rest of the world behind."
"The oldest definition of Analysis as opposed to Synthesis is that appended to Euclid XIII. 5. It was possibly framed by Eudoxus. It states that "Analysis is the obtaining of the thing sought by assuming it and so reasoning up to an admitted truth: synthesis is the obtaining of the thing sought by reasoning up to the inference and proof of it." In other words, the synthetic proof proceeds by shewing that certain admitted truths involve the proposed new truth: the analytic proof proceeds by shewing that the proposed new truth involves certain admitted truths."
"Analysis and synthesis, though commonly treated as two different methods, are, if properly understood, only the two necessary parts of the same method. Each is the relative and correlative of the other."
"The Mss. [of Euclid’s Elements] contain a curious addition to XIII. I-5 in the shape of analyses and syntheses for each proposition prefaced by the heading: "What is analysis and what is synthesis. "Analysis is the assumption of that which is sought as if it were admitted by means of its consequences at something admitted to be true. "Synthesis is an assumption of that which is admitted by means of its consequences at something admitted to be true." There must apparently be some corruption in the text; it does not, in the case of synthesis, give what is wanted. B and V have, instead of "something admitted to be true," the words "the end or attainment of what is sought." ... the addition is altogether alien from the plan and manner of the Elements. The interpolation took place before Theon's time, and the probability is that it was originally in the margin, whence it crept into the text of P after XIII. 5. Heiberg... cited the remark of Pappus at the beginning of his "comparisons of the five [regular solid] figures which have an equal surface," to the effect that he will not use "the so-called analytical investigation by means of which some of the ancients effected their demonstrations." More recently Heiberg conjectures that the author is Heron, on the ground that the sort of analysis and synthesis recalls Heron's remarks on analysis and synthesis in his commentary on the beginning of Book II. and his quasi-algebraical alternative proofs of propositions in that Book."
"Vieta presented his analytic art as "the new algebra" and took its name from the ancient mathematical method of "analysis", which he understood to have been first discovered by Plato and so named by . Ancient analysis is the 'general' half of a method of discovering the unknown in geometry; the other half, "synthesis", being particular in character. The method was defined by Theon like this: analysis is the "taking of the thing sought as granted and proceeding by means of what follows to a truth that is uncontested"'. Synthesis, in turn, is "taking the thing that is granted and proceeding by means of what follows to the conculsion and comprehension of the thing sought" (Vietae 1992: 320). The transition from analysis to synthesis was called "conversion", depending on whether the discovery of the truth of a geometrical theorem or the solution ("construction") to a geometrical problem was being demonstrated, the analysis was called respectively "theoretical" or "problematical"."
"Fortunately analysis is not the only way to resolve inner conflicts. Life itself still remains a very effective therapist... The therapy effected by life itself is not, however, within one's control. Neither hardships nor friendships nor religious experience can be arranged to meet the needs of the particular individual. Life as a therapist is ruthless; circumstances that are helpful to one neurotic may entirely crush another."
"Analysis and natural philosophy owe their most important discoveries to this fruitful means, which is called induction. Newton was indebted to it for his theorem of the binomial and the principle of universal gravity."
"Functions are the bread and butter of modern scientists, statisticians, and economists. Once many repeated... experiments and observations produce the same functional interrelationships, those may acquire the... status of laws of nature—mathematical descriptions... Descartes' ideas... opened the door for a systematic mathematization of everything—the very essence of the notion that God is a mathematician. ...[B]y establishing the equivalence of two perspectives of mathematics (algebraic and geometric) previously considered disjoint, Descartes expanded the horizons of mathematics and paved the way to the modern era of analysis, which allows [us] to comfortably cross from one mathematical discipline to another."
"A great part of the progress of formal thought... has been due to the invention of what we may call stenophrenic, or short-mind, symbols. These... disengage the mind from the consideration of ponderous and circuitous mechanical operations and economise its energies for the performance of new and unaccomplished tasks of thought. And the advancement of those sciences has been most notable which have made the most extensive use of these... Here mathematics and chemistry stand pre-eminent. The ancient Greeks... even admitting that their powers were more visualistic than analytic, were yet so impeded by their lack of short-mind symbols as to have made scarcely any progress whatever in analysis. Their arithmetic was a species of geometry. They did not possess the sign for zero, and also did not make use of position as an indicator of value. ...The historical calculations of Archimedes, his approximation to the value of π, etc., owing to this lack of appropriate... symbols, entailed enormous and incredible labors, which, if they had been avoided, would... have led to [even] great[er] discoveries."
"[A]t the close of the Middle Ages, when the so-called Arabic figures became established throughout Europe with the symbol and the principle of local value, immediate progress was made in the art of reckoning. The problems... led up to the general solutions of equations of the third and fourth degree by the Italian mathematicians of the sixteenth century. Yet even these discoveries were made in somewhat the same manner as problems in mental arithmetic are now solved in common schools; for the present signs of plus, minus, and equality, the radical and exponential signs, and especially the systematic use of letters for denoting general quantities in algebra, had not yet become universal. The last step was definitively due to... Vieta... and the mighty advancement of analysis resulting therefrom can hardly be measured or imagined."
"By this way of Analysis we may proceed from Compounds to Ingredients, and from Motions to the Forces producing them; and in general, from Effects to their Causes, and from particular Causes to more general ones, till the Argument end in the most general. This is the Method of Analysis: and the Synthesis consists in assuming the Causes discover'd, and establish'd as Principles, and by them explaining the Phænomena proceeding from them, and proving the Explanations."
"The investigation of difficult things by the method of analysis ought ever to precede the method of composition."
"Now analysis is of two kinds, the one directed to searching for the truth and called theoretical, the other directed to finding what we are told to find and called problematical. (1) In the theoretical kind we assume what is sought as if it were existent and true, after which we pass through its successive consequences, as if they too were true and established by virtue of our hypothesis, to something admitted: then (a), if that something admitted is true, that which is sought will also be true and the proof will correspond in the reverse order to the analysis, but (b), if we come upon something admittedly false, that which is sought will also be false. (2) In the problematical kind we assume that which is propounded as if it were known, after which we pass through its successive consequences, taking them as true, up to something admitted: if then (a) what is admitted is possible and obtainable, that is, what mathematicians call given, what was originally proposed will also be possible, and the proof will again correspond in reverse order to the analysis, but if (b) we come upon something admittedly impossible, the problem will also be impossible."
"The fact that all Mathematics is Symbolic Logic is one of the greatest discoveries of our age; and when this fact has been established, the remainder of the principles of mathematics consists in the analysis of Symbolic Logic itself."
"In mathematics there is a certain way of seeking the truth, a way which Plato is said first to have discovered and which was called "analysis" by Theon and was defined by him as "taking the thing sought as granted and proceeding by means of what follows to a truth which is uncontested"; so, on the other hand, "synthesis" is "taking the thing that is granted and proceeding by means of what follows to the conclusion and comprehension of the thing sought." And although the ancients set forth a twofold analysis, the zetetic and the poristic, to which Theon's definition particularly refers, it is nevertheless fitting that there be established also a third kind, which may be called rhetic or exegetic, so that there is a zetetic art by which is found the equation or proportion between the magnitude that is being sought and those that are given, a poristic art by which from the equation or proportion the truth of the theorem set up is investigated, and an exegetic art by which from the equation set up or the proportion, there is produced the magnitude itself which is being sought. And thus, the whole threefold analytic art, claiming for itself this office, may be defined as the science of right finding in mathematics. ...the zetetic art does not employ its logic on numbers—which was the tediousness of the ancient analysts—but uses its logic through a logistic which in a new way has to do with species [of number]..."
"François Viète, In Artem Aanalyticem Isagoge (1591) Ch. 1, as quoted by Jacob Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra (1934-1936) Appendix"
"The word Analysis signifies the general and particular heads of a discourse, with their mutual connections, both co-ordinate and subordinate, drawn out into one or more tables."
"Building art is a synthesis of life in materialised form. We should try to bring in under the same hat not a splintered way of thinking, but all in harmony together."
"Either one or the other [analysis or synthesis] may be direct or indirect. The direct procedure is when the point of departure is known-direct synthesis in the elements of geometry. By combining at random simple truths with each other, more complicated ones are deduced from them. This is the method of discovery, the special method of inventions, contrary to popular opinion."
"There is synthesis when, in combining therein judgments that are made known to us from simpler relations, one deduces judgments from them relative to more complicated relations. There is analysis when from a complicated truth one deduces more simple truths."
"The synthesis of pure, calming food is breathing pure air, listening to good sounds, looking at good sights, and touching pure objects."
"The world is not dialectical -- it is sworn to extremes, not to equilibrium, sworn to radical antagonism, not to reconciliation or synthesis. This is also the principle of evil."
"An example of such emergent phenomena is the origin of life from non-living chemical compounds in the oldest, lifeless oceans of the earth. Here, aided by the radiation energy received from the sun, countless chemical materials were synthesized and accumulated in such a way that they constituted, as it were, a primeval “soup.” In this primeval soup, by infinite variations of lifeless growth and decay of substances during some billions of years, the way of life was ultimately reached, with its metabolism characterized by selective assimilation and dissimulation as end stations of a sluiced and canalized flow of free chemical energy."
"There is neither spirit nor matter in the world; the stuff of the universe is spirit-matter. No other substance but this could produce the human molecule. I know very well that this idea of spirit-matter is regarded as a hybrid monster, a verbal exorcism of a duality which remains unresolved in its terms. But I remain convinced that the objections made to it arise from the mere fact that few people can make up their minds to abandon an old point of view and take the risk of a new idea. … Biologists or philosophers cannot conceive a biosphere or noosphere because they are unwilling to abandon a certain narrow conception of individuality. Nevertheless, the step must be taken. For in fact, pure spirituality is as unconceivable as pure materiality. Just as, in a sense, there is no geometrical point, but as many structurally different points as there are methods of deriving them from different figures, so every spirit derives its reality and nature from a particular type of universal synthesis."
"Love is the affinity which links and draws together the elements of the world... Love, in fact, is the agent of universal synthesis."
"Life is not found in atoms or molecules or genes as such, but in organization; not in symbiosis but in synthesis."
"Mathematics as an expression of the human mind reflects the active will, the contemplative reason, and the desire for aesthetic perfection. Its basic elements are logic and intuition, analysis and construction, generality and individuality. Though different traditions may emphasize different aspects, it is only the interplay of these antithetic forces and the struggle for their synthesis that constitute the life, usefulness, and supreme value of mathematical science."
"The most dramatic moments in the development of physics are those in which great syntheses take place, where phenomena which previously had appeared to be different are suddenly discovered to be but different aspects of the same thing. The history of physics is the history of such syntheses, and the basis of the success of physical science is mainly that we are able to synthesize."
"Every truth has relation to some other. And we should try to write the facts of our knowledge so as to see them in their several bearings. This we do when we frame them into a system. To do so legitimately, we must begin by analysis and end with synthesis."
"Designer is defined as an emerging synthesis of artist, inventor, mechanic, objective economist and evolutionary strategist."
"I have no fault to find with those who teach geometry. That science is the only one which has not produced sects; it is founded on analysis and on synthesis and on the calculus; it does not occupy itself with the probable truth; moreover it has the same method in every country."
"Our movement took a grip on cowardly Marxism and from it extracted the meaning of socialism. It also took from the cowardly middle-class parties their nationalism. Throwing both into the cauldron of our way of life there emerged, as clear as a crystal, the synthesis -- German National Socialism. Nazism as cocktail of Marxism and bourgeois nationalism: a toxic brew indeed."
"Analysis and synthesis, though commonly treated as two different methods, are, if properly understood, only the two necessary parts of the same method. Each is the relative and correlative of the other. Analysis, without a subsequent synthesis, is incomplete ; it is a mean cut of from its end. Synthesis, without a previous analysis, is baseless ; for synthesis receives from analysis the elements which it recomposes."
"A man ... has two antagonists: the first presses him from behind, from the origin. The second blocks the road ahead. He gives battle to both. To be sure, the first supports him in his fight with the second, for he wants to push him forward, and in the same way the second supports him in his fight with the first, since he drives him back. But it is only theoretically so. For it is not only the two antagonists who are there, but he himself as well, and who really knows his intentions? His dream, though, is that some time in an unguarded moment and this would require a night darker than any night has ever been yet he will jump out of the fighting line and be promoted, on account of his experience in fighting, to the position of umpire over his antagonists in their fight with each other."
"To play chess on a truly high level requires a constant stream of exact, informed decisions, made in real time and under pressure from your opponent. What’s more, it requires a synthesis of some very different virtues, all of which are necessary to good decisions: calculation, creativity and a desire for results. If you ask a Grandmaster, an artist and a computer scientist what makes a good chess player, you’ll get a glimpse of these different strengths in action."
"Man is a synthesis of psyche and body, but he is also a synthesis of the temporal and the eternal. In the former, the two factors are psyche and body, and spirit is the third, yet in such a way that one can speak of a synthesis only when the spirit is posited. The latter synthesis has only two factors, the temporal and the eternal. Where is the third factor? And if there is no third factor, there really is no synthesis, for a synthesis that is a contradiction cannot be completed as a synthesis without a third factor, because the fact that the synthesis is a contradiction asserts that it is not. What, then, is the temporal?"
"Science is spectral analysis. Art is light synthesis."
"There are many reasons for carrying out the laboratory synthesis of an organic compound. In the pharmaceutical industry, new molecules are designed and synthesized in the hope that some might be useful new drugs. In the chemical industry, syntheses are done to devise more economical routes to known compounds. In academic laboratories, the synthesis of extremely complex molecules is sometimes done just for the intellectual challenge involved in mastering so difficult a subject. The successful synthesis route is a highly creative work that is sometimes described by such subjective terms as elegant or beautiful."
"The artist does not illustrate science; … [but] he frequently responds to the same interests that a scientist does, and expresses by a visual synthesis what the scientist converts into analytical formulae or experimental demonstrations."
"The world is a very strange place, and there are times when the metaphorical or narrative description characteristic of culture and the material representation so integral to science appear to touch, when everything comes together—when life and art reflect each other equally."
"Enhance and intensify one's vision of that synthesis of truth and beauty which is the highest and deepest reality."
"Chemical synthesis is one of the key technologies that form the basis of modern drug discovery and development. For the rapid preparation of new test compounds and the development of candidates with often highly complex chemical structures, it is essential to use state-of-theart chemical synthesis technologies."
"Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits."
"We are approaching a new age of synthesis. Knowledge cannot be merely a degree or a skill... it demands a broader vision, capabilities in critical thinking and logical deduction without which we cannot have constructive progress."
"Analysis and synthesis ordinarily clarify matters for us about as much as taking a Swiss watch apart and dumping its wheels, springs, hands, threads, pivots, screws and gears into a layman's hands for reassembling, clarifies a watch to a layman."
"Synthetic method is that which begins with the parts, and leads onward to the knowledge of the whole : it begins with the most simple principles and general truths, and proceeds by degrees to that which is drawn from them, or compounded of them ; and therefore it is called the method of composition."
"Get the habit of analysis- analysis will in time enable synthesis to become your habit of mind."
"The overall yield in a multistep step synthesis is the product of the yields for each separate step. In a linear synthetic scheme, the hypothetical TM is assembled in a stepwise manner. … Since the overall yield of the TM decreases as the number of individual steps increases, a convergent synthesis should be considered in which two or more fragments of the TM are prepared separately and then joined at the latest-possible stage of the synthesis. It should be noted, however, that the simple overall yield calculation is some- what misleading since it is computed on one starting material, whereas several are used and the number of reactions is the same! Nevertheless, the increased efficiency of a convergent synthesis compared to the linear approach is derived from the fact that the preparation of a certain amount of a product can be carried out on a smaller scale."
"The subjective element in geological studies accounts for two characteristic types that can be distinguished among geologists. One considering geology as a creative art, the other regarding geology as an exact science."
"Politics is not an exact science."
"Founder of exact modern science though he was, Kepler combined with his exact methods and indeed found his motivation for them in certain long discredited superstitions, including what it is not unfair to describe as sunworship."
"Anthropology is never an exact science; the observer never experiences the same culture as the participant."
"Never mind what two tons refers to. What is it? How has it entered in so definite a way into our experience? Two tons is the reading of the pointer when the elephant was placed on a weighing machine. Let us pass on. … And so we see that the poetry fades out of the problem, and by the time the serious application of exact science begins we are left only with pointer readings."
"The whole subject-matter of exact science consists of pointer readings and similar indications."
"Economics is not an exact science."
"Whatever Hitler may ultimately prove to be, we know what Hitlerism has come to mean, It means naked, ruthless force reduced to an exact science and worked with scientific precision. In its effect it becomes almost irresistible. Hitlerism will never be defeated by counter-Hitlerism. It can only breed superior Hitlerism raised to nth degree. What is going on before our eyes is the demonstration of the futility of violence as also of Hitlerism. What will Hitler do with his victory? Can he digest so much power? Personally he will go as empty-handed as his not very remote predecessor Alexander. For the Germans he will have left not the pleasure of owning a mighty empire but the burden of sustaining its crushing weight. For they will not be able to hold all the conquered nations in perpetual subjection. And I doubt if the Germans of future generations will entertain unadulterated pride in the deeds for which Hitlerism will be deemed responsible. They will honour Herr Hitler as genius, as a brave man, a matchless organizer and much more. But I should hope that the Germans of the future will have learnt the art of discrimination even about their heroes. Anyway I think it will be allowed that all the blood that has been spilled by Hitler has added not a millionth part of an inch to the world’s moral stature."
"The invention of logarithms and the calculation of the earlier tables form a very striking episode in the history of exact science, and, with the exception of the Principia of Newton, there is no mathematical work published in the country which has produced such important consequences, or to which so much interest attaches as to Napier’s Descriptio."
"Logic is not only an exact science, but is the most simple and elementary of all sciences; it ought therefore undoubtedly to find some place in every course of education."
"In reality, there is no such thing as an exact science."
"The Pythagorean dream of musical harmony governing the motion of the stars never lost its mysterious impact, its power to call forth responses from the depth of the unconscious mind. ...But, one might ask, was the "Harmony of the Spheres" a poetic conceit or a scientific concept. A working hypothesis or a dream dreamt through a mystic's ear? ...Even Aristotle laughed "harmony, heavenly harmony" out of the courts of earnest, exact science. Yet... Johannes Kepler became enamoured with the Pythagorean dream, and on this foundation of fantasy, by methods of reasoning equally unsound, built the solid edifice of modern astronomy. It is one of the most astonishing episodes in the history of thought, and an antidote to the pious belief that the Progress of Science is governed by logic."
"An exact science is one that admits loss."
"And is there no possibility that there was a period, and several periods, when man existed, and yet was not an organic being — therefore could not have left any vestige of himself for exact science? Spirit leaves no skeletons or fossils behind, and yet few are the men on earth who doubt that man can live both objectively and subjectively. At all events, the theology of the Brahmans, hoary with antiquity, and which divides the formative periods of the earth into four ages, and places between each of these a lapse of 1,728,000 years, far more agrees with official science and modern discovery than the absurd chronological notions promulgated by the Councils of Nice and Trent."
"I do hate sums, There is no greater mistake than to call arithmetic an exact science. There are Permutations and Aberrations discernible to minds entirely noble like mine; subtle variations which ordinary accountants fail to discover; hidden laws of Numbers which it requires a mind like mine to perceive. For instance, if you add a sum from the bottom up, and then again from the top down, the result is always different."
"Conditions are admittedly such that we can always manage to make do in each concrete individual case without the two different aspects leading to different expectations as to the result of certain experiments. We cannot, however, manage to make do with such old, familiar, and seemingly indispensable terms as "real" or "only possible"; we are never in a position to say what really is or what really happens, but we can only say what will be observed in any concrete individual case. Will we have to be permanently satisfied with this...? On principle, yes. On principle, there is nothing new in the postulate that in the end exact science should aim at nothing more than the description of what can really be observed. The question is only whether from now on we shall have to refrain from tying description to a clear hypothesis about the real nature of the world. There are many who wish to pronounce such abdication even today. But I believe that this means making things a little too easy for oneself."
"The world has arisen in some way or another. How it originated is the great question, and Darwin's theory, like all other attempts to explain the origin of life, is thus far merely conjectural. I believe he has not even made the best conjecture possible in the present state of our knowledge."
"It is mere rubbish thinking, at present, of origin of life; one might as well think of origin of matter. —"
"The fine-tuning of the universe, about which cosmologists make such a to-do, is both complex and specified and readily yields design. So too, Michael Behe's irreducibly complex biochemical systems readily yield design. The complexity-specification criterion demonstrates that design pervades cosmology and biology. Moreover, it is a transcendent design, not reducible to the physical world. Indeed, no intelligent agent who is strictly physical could have presided over the origin of the universe or the origin of life."
"It is as though a puzzle could be put together simply by shaking its pieces."
"Life could spread from planet to planet or from stellar system to stellar system, carried on meteors."
"Believing the first cell originated by chance is like believing a tornado ripping through a junkyard full of airplane parts could produce a Boeing 747."
"You know, my brothers, the nature of our business. The child you see before you, thanks to a talisman stolen from the powers of Earth, is able to take possession of the Blue Bird and thus to snatch from us the secret which we have kept since the origin of life... Now we know enough of Man to entertain no doubt as to the fate which he reserves for us once he is in possession of this secret. That is why it seems to me that any hesitation would be both foolish and criminal... It is a serious moment; the child must be done away with before it is too late..."
"Q: Strange, isn't it, Jean-Luc? Everything you know... your entire civilization... it all begins right here in this little pond of goo. It's appropriate somehow, isn't it? Too bad you didn't bring a microscope -- this is quite fascinating. Here they go... the amino acids are moving closer... closer...closer...Ohhhh! Nothing happened! You see what you've done?"
"Prof. Michael Foster has somewhere said that ‘hypothesis is the salt of science.’ Without hypothesis there is no possibility of fruitful investigation. But it is equally true that where the desire to prove a particular hypothesis is dominant, hypothesis becomes the poison of science. The Aryan race theory of Western scholars is as good an illustration of how hypothesis can be the poison of science as one can think of."
"The functional validity of a working hypothesis is not a priori certain, because often it is initially based on intuition. However, logical deductions from such a hypothesis provide expectations (so called prognoses) as to the circumstances under which certain phenomena will appear in nature. Such a postulate or working hypothesis can then be substantiated by additional observations or by experiments especially arranged to test details. The value of the hypothesis is strengthened if the observed facts fit the expectation within the limits of permissible error."
"One thinker no less brilliant than the heresiarch himself, but in the orthodox tradition, advanced a most daring hypothesis. This felicitous supposition declared that there is only one Individual, and that this indivisible Individual is every one of the separate beings in the universe, and that these beings are the instruments and masks of divinity itself."
"There are two possible outcomes: if the result confirms the hypothesis, then you've made a measurement. If the result is contrary to the hypothesis, then you've made a discovery."
"It is human nature to avoid being consumed by hypotheticals until they are staring us squarely in the face."
"I do not yet want to form a hypothesis to test, because as soon as you make a hypothesis, you become prejudiced. Your mind slides into a groove, and once it is in that groove, has difficulty noticing anything outside of it. During this time, my sense must be sharp; that is the main thing — to be sharp, yet open."
"Now all hypotheses, by definition, involve make-believe. Many of them...involve sort-crossing, and are therefore metaphors. The conclusion ... is to try to adopt the actual technique of Plato...Then, whether we suppose that man is a state, or that the world is a machine, or that man is a wolf, the risk of confusing the facts of one sort with those of the other will be lessened."
"The truth is, that these writings of mine were meant to protect the arguments of Parmenides against those who make fun of him and seek to show the many ridiculous and contradictory results which they suppose to follow from the affirmation of the one. My answer is addressed to the partisans of the many, whose attack I return with interest by retorting upon them that their hypothesis of the being of many, if carried out, appears to be still more ridiculous than the hypothesis of the being of one. Zeal for my master led me to write the book in the days of my youth, but some one stole the copy; and therefore I had no choice whether it should be published or not; the motive, however, of writing, was not the ambition of an elder man, but the pugnacity of a young one."
"Spinoza's use of the term finite tends to make space the only form of substance, and all existing things but affections of space, and this, I think, is really one of the ultimate foundations of his system."
"The trika is the essence of the śaiva tradition, and the Mālinī is the essence of the trika. (Abhinavagupta)"
"In the Trika the god Śiva mostly appears in the hypostasis of Bhairava."
"What matters for the progress of the myth is the fact common to all versions that the godhead, to meet the aggressor, had to produce a special "creation" representing his own self... in response to the ensuing fate of this divine hypostasis the further multiplication of divine figures out of the supreme source comes about. This is the general gnostic principle of emanation..."
"The Divine Logos is God reflected in His own eternal Thought; in the Logos God is His own Object. This infinite Thought, the reflection and counterpart of God, subsisting in God as a Being or Hypostasis, and having a tendency to self-communication,—such is the Logos. The Logos is the Thought of God, not intermittent and precarious like human thought, but subsisting with the intensity of a personal form. The very expression seems to court the argument of Athenagoras, that since God could never have been ἀλογος, the Logos must have been not created but eternal."
"This Idea of Spinoza's we must allow to be in the main true and well-grounded; absolute substance is the truth, but it is not the whole truth; in order to be this, it must also be thought of as in itself active and living, and by that very means it must determine itself as mind. But substance with Spinoza is only the universal and consequently the abstract determination of mind ; it may undoubtedly be said that this thought is the foundation of all true views — not, however, as their absolutely fixed and permanent basis, but as the abstract unity which mind is in itself. It is therefore worthy of note that thought must begin by placing itself at the standpoint of Spinozism; to be a follower of Spinoza is the essential commencement of all Philosophy. For as we saw above … when man begins to philosophize, the soul must commence by bathing in this ether of the One Substance, in which all that man has held as true has disappeared ; this negation of all that is particular, to which every philosopher must have come, is the liberation of the mind and its absolute foundation."
"The hypostasis of the particular methods of procedure employed by natural science … results in the view that all theoretical differences which rest on historically conditioned antagonisms of interest are to be settles by a “crucial experiment” rather than by struggle and counter-struggle. The harmonious relation of individuals to one another becomes a fact, therefore, that has even more general character than a law of nature."
"Spinoza redefines the problem of Modern philosophy, which is the conquest of the world and the liberation of humanity, and destroys both its multiple antinomies and the continually resurgent separation (dualistic, transcendental, etc.) in the theory of knowledge and history, in the same way that criticism has always destroyed Zenonian sophism: moving forward, putting reality in motion. Spinoza's philosophy is born from the radicalization of the ontological paradox of being: in the recognition that the hypostasis, the only possible hypostasis, is that of the world and of the development of its necessity from physics to practice. It is a conception of the world that immediately produces, as if from its own basis, a completely modern conception of science and worldly knowledge, both technical and liberatory. It is a radically materialistic conception of being and of the world."
"Our Substance is our Father, God Almighty, and our Substance is our Mother, God, All-wisdom; and our Substance is in our Lord the Holy Ghost, God All-goodness."
"The world will accept you changing your style for them, but pretty soon they’re going to demand that you change your substance. They’re going to demand that you – well, they liked the fact that you’ve taken their method, but they’re going to demand you change your message."
"We shall see when we come to Newton's laws of motion that in the words "so far as in it lies," properly understood, is to be found the true primary definition of matter, and the true measure of its quantity. Descartes, however, never attained to a full understanding of his own words (quantum in se est), and so fell back on his original confusion of matter with space — space being, according to him, the only form of substance, and all existing things but affections of space. This error runs through every part of Descartes' great work, and it forms one of the ultimate foundations of the system of Spinoza. I shall not attempt to trace it down to more modern times, but I would advise those who study any system of metaphysics to examine carefully that part of it which deals with physical ideas. We shall find it more conducive to scientific progress to recognise, with Newton, the ideas of time and space as distinct, at least in thought, from that of the material system whose relations these ideas serve to co-ordinate."
"This identification of extension with substance runs through the whole of Descartes's works, and it forms one of the ultimate foundations of the system of Spinoza."
"Let no one think, however, that when we give him the name "wisdom of God" we mean anything without hypostatic existence that is, to take an illustration, that we understand him to be not as it were some wise living being, but a certain thing which makes men wise by revealing and imparting itself to those who are able to receive its influence and intelligence. If men it is once tighdy accepted that the only begotten Son of God is God's wisdom hypostatically existing, I do not think that our mind ought to stray beyond this to me suspicion that this hypostasis or substance could possibly possess bodily characteristics, since everything that is corporeal is distinguished by shape or color or size. And who in his sober senses ever looked for shape or color or measurable size in wisdom, considered solely as wisdom?"
"Things essentially incorporeal, because they are more excellent than all body and place, are every where, not with interval, but impartibly. Things essentially incorporeal are not locally present with bodies but are present with them when they please; by verging towards them so far as they are naturally adapted so to verge. They are not, however, present with them locally, but through habitude, proximity, and alliance. Things essentially incorporeal, are not present with bodies, by hypostasis and essence; for they are not mingled with bodies. But they impart a certain power which is proximate to bodies, through verging towards them. For tendency constitutes a certain secondary power proximate to bodies."
"Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos; the materials must, in the first place, be afforded: it can give form to dark, shapeless substances, but cannot bring into being the substance itself. In all matters of discovery and invention, even of those that appertain to the imagination, we are continually reminded of the story of Columbus and his egg. Invention consists in the capacity of seizing on the capabilities of a subject, and in the power of moulding and fashioning ideas suggested to it."
"By God, I mean a being absolutely infinite — that is, a substance consisting in infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality. Explanation — I say absolutely infinite, not infinite after its kind: for, of a thing infinite only after its kind, infinite attributes may be denied; but that which is absolutely infinite, contains in its essence whatever expresses reality, and involves no negation."
"Whatsoever can be perceived by the infinite intellect as constituting the essence of substance, belongs altogether only to one substance: consequently, substance thinking and substance extended are one and the same substance, comprehended now through one attribute, now through another. So, also, a mode of extension and the idea of that mode are one and the same thing, though expressed in two ways. This truth seems to have been dimly recognized by those Jews who maintained that God, God's intellect, and the things understood by God are identical. ...Thus, whether we conceive of nature under the attribute of thought, or under any other attribute, we shall find the same order, or one and the same chain of causes — that is, the same things follow in either case. ...Wherefore of things as they are of themselves, God is really the cause, inasmuch as he consists of infinite attributes."
"The being of substance does not appertain to the essence of man — in other words, substance does not constitute the actual being of man."
"Substance is in its nature infinite, immutable, indivisible..."
"God, or substance, consisting of infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality, necessarily exists."
"It is also clear that there can be no accident in God. If all perfections are one in Him, and if existence, power, action, and all such attributes pertain to perfection, they are necessarily all identical with His essence. Therefore none of these perfections is an accident in God."
"We are all made of the same stuff, remember, we of the Jungle, you of the City. The same substance composes us — the tree overhead, the stone beneath us, the bird, the beast, the star — we are all one, all moving to the same end. Remember that when you no longer remember me, my child."
"I have coined the phrase “Thinking is linking.” I thought of Kerenyi — “Mythology occupies a higher position in the bios, the Existence, of a people in which it is still alive than poetry, storytelling or any other art.” And of Malinowski — “Myth is not merely a story told, but a reality lived.” And, along with those, the word “Pollen,” the most pervasive substance in the world, kept knocking at my ear. Or rather, not knocking, but humming. What hums? What buzzes? What travels the world? Suddenly I found what I sought. “What the bee knows,” I told myself. “That is what I’m after.” But even as I patted my back, I found myself cursing, and not for the first time, the artful trickiness of words, their capriciousness, their lack of conscience. Betray them and they will betray you. Be true to them and, without compunction, they will also betray you, foxily turning all the tables, thumbing syntactical noses. For — note bene! — if you speak or write about What The Bee Knows, what the listener, or the reader, will get — indeed, cannot help but get — is Myth, Symbol, and Tradition! You see the paradox? The words, by their very perfidy — which is also their honorable intention — have brought us to where we need to be. For, to stand in the presence of paradox, to be spiked on the horns of dilemma, between what is small and what is great, microcosm and macrocosm, or, if you like, the two ends of the stick, is the only posture we can assume in front of this ancient knowledge — one could even say everlasting knowledge."
"You do not chop off a section of your imaginative substance and make a book specifically for children, for — if you are honest — you have no idea where childhood ends and maturity begins. It is all endless and all one."
"A first-rate laboratory is one in which mediocre scientists can produce outstanding work."
"A laboratory of natural history is a sanctuary where nothing profane should be tolerated. I feel less agony at improprieties in churches than in a scientific laboratory."
"A tidy laboratory means a lazy chemist."
"Men who offer laudatory speeches to the rich ... are insidious because, although mere abundance is by itself quite enough to puff up the souls of its possessors, and to corrupt them, and to turn them aside from the way by which salvation can be reached, these men bring fresh delusion to the minds of the rich by exciting them with the pleasures that come from their immoderate praises, and by rendering them contemptuous of absolutely everything in the world except the wealth which is the cause of their being admired. In the words of the proverb, they carry fire to fire, when they shower pride upon pride, and heap on wealth, heavy by its own nature, the heavier burden of arrogance."
"Something rather frightening takes place, namely a self-fulfilling fame that's come up only in the past decade or so, that does not need to base itself in adaptive skill, or any skill for that matter. All it needs is the fuel of more celebrity, and thus more prestige, and thus more celebrity, and so on ad infinitum."
"Spirit and sentiment are formed by conversation. Spirit and sentiment are ruined by conversation. … It is, then, all-important to know how to choose our society in order to form rather than ruin them; and one cannot make this choice unless one has already formed them and not ruined them. Thus a circle is formed, and those are fortunate who escape it."
"When the rate of return on capital exceeds the rate of growth of output and income, as it did in the nineteenth century and seems quite likely to do again in the twenty-first, capitalism automatically generates arbitrary and unsustainable inequalities that radically undermine the meritocratic values on which democratic societies are based."
"They would need to be already wise, in order to love wisdom."
"Indeed, what he now proposed was nothing less than a dismantling of every known legislature into two novel bodies with different competences and disparate electorates, to correspond to the two ontological kinds of order — the more powerful chamber, guardian of the rule of law as such, striking anyone under the age of forty-five off the voting-roll. This, as even sympathizers could not fail to notice, was a violent attack of the very constructivism his theory had set out to purge. Hayek was unmoved, Such was the price of preserving nomos, or the law of liberty, from the logic of popular sovereignty."
"The simplest way of expressing the major thesis of the theory of spontaneous order is to say that it is concerned with those regularities in society, or orders of events, which are neither (1) the product of deliberate human contrivance (such as a statutory code of law or a dirigiste economic plan) nor (2) akin to purely natural phenomena (such as the weather, which exists quite independently of human intervention). While the words conventional and natural refer, respectively, to these two regularities, the ‘third realm,’ that of social regularities, consists of those institutions and practices which are the result of human action but not the result of some specific human intention."
"In his discussions of spontaneous orders, sometimes Hayek was simply trying to make the point that they exist; that is, he was trying to counter the claim that any beneficent social order needed to be constructed. This view was widespread when he first was writing; the mania for planning was then ubiquitous, so it was a point worth making. In later writings, Hayek sometimes did say, let’s trust to evolved orders rather than constructed ones, but then allowed that sometimes we needed to make piece-meal changes, and he gave no criteria for deciding."
"Hayek started from an evolutionary perspective in the natural sciences. He ended his career with an evolutionary account of the development of human civilization, wherein the societies with the most materially productive rules, laws, morals, customs, and traditions will reproduce most in the end. Societal selection operates both within and among societies, and is driven not by the selection of genetically influenced attributes but by the selection of the societal practices most conducive to economic productivity, prosperity, and peace. Hayek saw life as a competition to extend itself most, whether in the biological or the social realm."
"It would be no exaggeration to say that social theory begins with—and has an object only because of—the discovery that there exist orderly structures which are the product of the action of many men but are not the result of human design."
"Since such an order has not been created by an outside agency, the order as such also can have no purpose, although its existence may be very serviceable to the individuals which move within such order. But in a different sense it may well be said that the order rests on purposive action of its elements, when ‘purpose’ would, of course, mean nothing more than that their actions tend to secure the preservation or restoration of that order."
"If the factual assumption of socialism were correct, it would be a moral duty to aim at the just distribution. But you have to recognize you cannot do it. In fact, you can produce enough to sustain the present population of the world, only because of a spontaneous process or mechanism which enables you to make use of infinitely more information than any central authority possesses."
"To understand our civilisation, one must appreciate that the extended order resulted not from human design or intention but spontaneously: it arose from unintentionally conforming to certain traditional and largely moral practices, many of which men tend to dislike, whose significance they usually fail to understand, whose validity they cannot prove, and which have nonetheless fairly rapidly spread by means of an evolutionary selection — the comparative increase of population and wealth — of those groups that happened to follow them. The unwitting, reluctant, even painful adoption of these practices kept these groups together, increased their access to valuable information of all sorts, and enabled them to be 'fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it' (Genesis 1:28). This process is perhaps the least appreciated facet of human evolution."
"The main point of my argument is, then, that the conflict between, on one hand, advocates of the spontaneous extended human order created by a competitive market, and on the other hand those who demand a deliberate arrangement of human interaction by central authority based on collective command over available resources is due to a factual error by the latter about how knowledge of these resources is and can be generated and utilised."
"Such an order, although far from perfect and often inefficient, can extend farther than any order men could create by deliberately putting countless elements into selected `appropriate' places. Most defects and inefficiencies of such spontaneous orders result from attempting to interfere with or to prevent their mechanisms from operating, or to improve the details of their results. Such attempts to intervene in spontaneous order rarely result in anything closely corresponding to men's wishes, since these orders are determined by more particular facts than any such intervening agency can know."
"From Locke to Smith to Hayek, the lesson seems clear: Leave people alone, and a coherent civil order will spontaneously emerge and perpetuate itself. This is utter fiction. A fairy tale. A just-so story that has as much historical veracity as Locke's happy talk about a prepolitical state of nature filled with spontaneously formed families and settled plots of legitimately gotten farmland. […] The order we see at work in the United States and in other advanced democracies is anything but spontaneous. […] The libertarian prophets of "spontaneous order" get things exactly backward, sometimes with catastrophic real-world consequences. Which is why it's a particularly bad idea."
"Regarding social order, Fukuyama writes, "The systematic study of how order, and thus social capital, can emerge in spontaneous and decentralized fashion is one of the most important intellectual developments of the late twentieth century." He correctly attributes the modern origins of this argument to F.A. Hayek, whose pioneering contributions to cognitive science, the study of cultural evolution, and the dynamics of social change put him in the forefront of the most creative scholars of the 20th century. But Hayek's views about the "spontaneity" of social order remain controversial. In their extreme form, they imply that all deliberate efforts to manipulate social order — social engineering — are doomed to failure because the complex nature of our cultural heritage makes a complete understanding of the human condition impossible. Hayek was certainly correct that we have, at best, a very imperfect understanding of the human landscape, but "spontaneous" it is not. What distinguishes human evolution from the Darwinian model is the intentionality of the players. The mechanism of variation in evolutionary theory (mutation) is not informed by beliefs about eventual consequences. In contrast, human evolution is guided by the perceptions of the players; their choices (decisions) are made in the light of the theories the actors have, which provide expectations about outcomes."
"The processes peculiar to economic life in a free society make evident the fundamental superiority of the spontaneous order over the commanded order."
"But Caesar had his Brutus, Linus Pauling had Vitamin C, and Friedrich Hayek had “spontaneous order.” His experiences in Europe go far, no doubt, to explain his anti-rationalism, and maybe he wrote as he did in an effort to appeal to the moderate left. But whatever his reasons for advancing the arguments he did, they just don’t work as a normative critique of economic or legal planning. It’s true that order can emerge, unplanned, from dynamic processes — but this is practically useless in advising any political leader or any voter or any consumer about any course of action. Worse, it is all too likely to become a rationalization for passively shrugging at injustice."
"The theory of the spontaneous order is Hayek's finest achievement. It does away with the liberal fiction of the "social contract", by means of which a disorderly "state of nature" is made orderly by the cession of coercive power to a sovereign. It can enrich our understanding of actual historical orders, like the Middle Ages. But it raises worrying problems for libertarians, because Hayek's spontaneous orders turn out, on closer inspection, to be far from self-sustaining, and indeed require to be buttressed by large doses of what he himself calls "constructive rationalism". This is particularly evident in his proposals for constitutional reform in his late book, Law, Legislation and Liberty (1974). The crux of the matter is that not all evolutionary "survivals" are equally useful to the free society. Hayek seems torn between allowing dysfunctional forms of life to die a "natural" death, and intervening to cut them short."
"Have you ever read a Michael Crichton novel, or seen one of his movies, in which the hubristic scientist actually paused and declared: "Hey, science shouldn't be done in shadows. If I keep this new thing secret I'll probably do something gruesomely stupid. But if I discuss this innovation with hundreds of peers, some of them will catch my mistakes and things won't get out of hand. Nobody will die."
"Dear Sir, We (Mr. Rosen and I) had sent you our manuscript for publication and had not authorized you to show it to specialists before it is printed. I see no reason to address the in any case erroneous comments of your anonymous expert. On the basis of this incident I prefer to publish the paper elsewhere. Respectfully,"
"The nature of the peer-review process is creating a knowledge production cartel that gives the Western academy neocolonialist control over the means of production of knowledge. Any critique from outside the elite cartel is sidelined (especially if it is seen as a serious enough threat) by invoking the ‘peer-review’ as a silver bullet. One of the most cherished myths of the Western-controlled liberal arts intellectual apparatus is that its peer-review is a fair system. The criticisms we make of their scholarship are considered illegitimate because their writings have been peer-reviewed. … all our rejoinders get classified as ‘attacks’ on them, and not as fair criticism, because these do not emanate from within the peer- review cabal. … those who are not licensed by their academic union should not be allowed to argue against their positions, and certainly not as equal partners. This attitude is, … part of a larger problem in academic discourse, especially in anthropology, sociology and the study of religion, where it is assumed that (i) the non-academician can only be positioned as a native informant, and (ii) the native informant should not talk back. This allows mediocre scholars to close ranks and emphasize the schism between ‘we the scholars’ and ‘you the ignorant consumers’.Clearly, the peer-review process has acquired tremendous symbolic value. This blind spot in the academy prevents it from much-needed self-reflection."
"... we all know the problems of the peer review system, and nothing better has been found."
"An authority isn't a person or institution who is always right – ain't no such animal. An authority is a person or institution who has a process for lowering the likelihood that they are wrong to acceptably low levels. [...] And this is what I think is really worth celebrating as Wikipedia begins its second decade. It took one of the best ideas of the last 500 years – peer review – and expanded its field of operation so dramatically that it changed the way authority is configured."
"These ambiguities, redundances, and deficiences recall those attributed by Dr. Franz Kuhn to a certain Chinese encyclopedia entitled Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge. On those remote pages it is written that animals are divided into (a) those that belong to the Emperor, (b) embalmed ones, (c) those that are trained, (d) suckling pigs, (e) mermaids, (f) fabulous ones, (g) stray dogs, (h) those that are included in this classification, (i) those that tremble as if they were mad, (j) innumerable ones, (k) those drawn with a very fine camel's hair brush, (l) others, (m) those that have just broken a flower vase, (n) those that resemble flies from a distance."
"It is a fundamental of taxonomy that nature rarely deals with discrete categories. Only the human mind invents categories and tries to force facts into separated pigeon-holes. The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects. The sooner we learn this concerning human sexual behavior, the sooner we shall reach a sound understanding of the realities of sex."
"Of the nature of Death and the Dead we may enumerate twelve kinds. First there are those who become new gods, for whom new universes are born. Second those who praise. Third those who fight as soldiers in the unending war with evil. Fourth those who amuse themselves among flowers and sweet springs with sports. Fifth those who dwell in gardens of bliss, or are tortured. Sixth those who continue as in life. Seventh those who turn the wheel of the universe. Eighth those who find in their graves their mothers' wombs and in one life circle forever. Ninth ghosts. Tenth those born again as men in their grandsons' time. Eleventh those who return as beasts or trees. And last those who sleep."
"Such a system is “self-organizing” in the sense that it changes from “parts separated” to “parts joined.”"
"Every isolated determinate dynamic system, obeying unchanging laws, will ultimately develop some sort of organisms that are adapted to their environments."
"This is a general characteristic of self-organizing systems: they are robust or resilient. This means that they are relatively insensitive to perturbations or errors, and have a strong capacity to restore themselves, unlike most human designed systems."
"In that sense, a self-organizing system is intrinsically adaptive: it maintains its basic organization in spite of continuing changes in its environment. As noted, perturbations may even make the system more robust, by helping it to discover a more stable organization."
"Nature is pretty good at networks, self-organizing systems. By contrast, social systems are top-down and hierarchical, from which we draw the basic assumption that organization and order can only come from centralism."
"We have seen that the formation and maintenance of self-organizing systems are compatible with the laws of physical chemistry.”"
"A self–organizing system acts autonomously, as if the interconnecting components had a single mind. And as these components spontaneously march to the beat of their own drummer, they organize, adapt, and evolve toward a greater complexity than one would ever expect by just looking at the parts by themselves."
"The history of these experiments is not a proud one. The Nazis specialised in them, with a view to eradicating homosexuality."
"Mere numbers cannot bring out... the intimate essence of the experiment. This conviction comes naturally when one watches a subject at work ... What things can happen! What reflections, what remarks, what feelings, or, on the other hand, what blind automatism, what absence of ideas!... The experimenter judges what may be going on in (the subject’s) mind, and certainly feels difficulty in expressing all the oscillations of a thought in a simple, brutal number, which can have only a deceptive precision. How, in fact, could it sum up what would need several pages of description!"
"I wish that people would be persuaded that psychological experiments, especially those on the complex functions, are not improved (by large studies); the statistical method gives only mediocre results; some recent examples demonstrate that. The American authors, who love to do things big, often publish experiments that have been conducted on hundreds and thousands of people; they instinctively obey the prejudice that the persuasiveness of a work is proportional to the number of observations. This is only an illusion."
"we are engaged in a grim experiment never before attempted. We are subjecting whole populations to exposure to chemicals which animal experiments have proved to be extremely poisonous and in many cases cumulative in their effect. These exposures now begin at or before birth and-unless we change our methods-will continue through the lifetime of those now living. No one knows what the result will be, because we have no previous experience to guide us."
"There is one feature I notice that is generally missing in cargo cult science. … It's a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty — a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid — not only what you think is right about it; other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you've eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked — to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated. Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can — if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong — to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it. There is also a more subtle problem. When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition. In summary, the idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgement in one particular direction or another."
"We've learned from experience that the truth will come out. Other experimenters will repeat your experiment and find out whether you were wrong or right. Nature's phenomena will agree or they'll disagree with your theory. And, although you may gain some temporary fame and excitement, you will not gain a good reputation as a scientist if you haven't tried to be very careful in this kind of work. And it's this type of integrity, this kind of care not to fool yourself, that is missing to a large extent in much of the research in cargo cult science."
"All experiments in psychology are not of this [cargo cult] type, however. For example there have been many experiments running rats through all kinds of mazes, and so on — with little clear result. But in 1937 a man named Young did a very interesting one. He had a long corridor with doors all along one side where the rats came in, and doors along the other side where the food was. He wanted to see if he could train rats to go to the third door down from wherever he started them off. No. The rats went immediately to the door where the food had been the time before.The question was, how did the rats know, because the corridor was so beautifully built and so uniform, that this was the same door as before? Obviously there was something about the door that was different from the other doors. So he painted the doors very carefully, arranging the textures on the faces of the doors exactly the same. Still the rats could tell. Then he thought maybe they were smelling the food, so he used chemicals to change the smell after each run. Still the rats could tell. Then he realized the rats might be able to tell by seeing the lights and the arrangement in the laboratory like any commonsense person. So he covered the corridor, and still the rats could tell.He finally found that they could tell by the way the floor sounded when they ran over it. And he could only fix that by putting his corridor in sand. So he covered one after another of all possible clues and finally was able to fool the rats so that they had to learn to go to the third door. If he relaxed any of his conditions, the rats could tell.Now, from a scientific standpoint, that is an A-number-one experiment. That is the experiment that makes rat-running experiments sensible, because it uncovers the clues that the rat is really using — not what you think it's using. And that is the experiment that tells exactly what conditions you have to use in order to be careful and control everything in an experiment with rat-running.I looked into the subsequent history of this research. The next experiment, and the one after that, never referred to Mr. Young. They never used any of his criteria of putting the corridor on sand, or of being very careful. They just went right on running rats in the same old way, and paid no attention to the great discoveries of Mr. Young, and his papers are not referred to, because he didn't discover anything about rats. In fact, he discovered all the things you have to do to discover something about rats. But not paying attention to experiments like that is a characteristic of cargo cult science."
"I do feel strongly that this is nonsense! … So perhaps I could entertain future historians by saying I think all this superstring stuff is crazy and is in the wrong direction. … I don’t like it that they’re not calculating anything. … why are the masses of the various particles such as quarks what they are? All these numbers … have no explanations in these string theories – absolutely none! … I don’t like that they don’t check their ideas. I don’t like that for anything that disagrees with an experiment, they cook up an explanation—a fix-up to say, “Well, it might be true.” For example, the theory requires ten dimensions. Well, maybe there’s a way of wrapping up six of the dimensions. Yes, that’s all possible mathematically, but why not seven? When they write their equation, the equation should decide how many of these things get wrapped up, not the desire to agree with experiment. In other words, there’s no reason whatsoever in superstring theory that it isn’t eight out of the ten dimensions that get wrapped up and that the result is only two dimensions, which would be completely in disagreement with experience. So the fact that it might disagree with experience is very tenuous, it doesn’t produce anything."
"Each piece, or part, of the whole of nature is always merely an approximation to the complete truth, or the complete truth so far as we know it. In fact, everything we know is only some kind of approximation, because we know that we do not know all the laws as yet. Therefore, things must be learned only to be unlearned again or, more likely, to be corrected. … The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific “truth”."
"In general, we look for a new law by the following process: First we guess it. Then we – now don't laugh, that's really true. Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what, if this is right, if this law that we guessed is right, to see what it would imply. And then we compare the computation results to nature, or we say compare to experiment or experience, compare it directly with observations to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment, it's wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It doesn't make any difference how beautiful your guess is, it doesn't make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is. If it disagrees with experiment, it's wrong. That's all there is to it."
"Why are the theories of physics so similar in their structure? There are a number of possibilities. The first is the limited imagination of physicists: when we see a new phenomenon, we try to fit it into the framework we already have—until we have made enough experiments, we don’t know that it doesn’t work. So when some fool physicist gives a lecture at UCLA in 1983 and says, “This is the way it works, and look how wonderfully similar the theories are,” it’s not because Nature is really similar; it’s because the physicists have only been able to think of the same damn thing, over and over again."
"An experiment without a control is an act of faith."
"I became captivated by the edifices chemists had raised through experiment and imagination—but still I had a lurking question. Would it not be better if one could really “see” whether molecules as complicated as the sterols, or strychnine were just as experiment suggested."
"great difficulties are felt at first and these cannot be overcome except by starting from experiments .. and then be conceiving certain hypotheses ... But even so, very much hard work remains to be done and one needs not only great perspicacity but often a degree of good fortune.If we wanted to be straight, we would be (Tue 14 Dec 2004 02.55 GMT)"
"The modern concept of the vacuum of space, confirmed every day by experiment, is a relativistic ether. But we do not call it this because it is taboo."
"A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions — as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.."
"Play is experimenting with the accident."
"... in an experiment, there are sort of two kinds of exercises. In one, you might collect more data and bring down your s. In another, you have a concern, what we call a , and you check it, whether it exists at all or not."
"My view is that the contribution of human cells is going to be minimal, maybe 3 percent, maybe 5 percent. But what if they contributed to 100 percent of the brain? What if the embryo that develops is mostly human? It’s something that we don’t expect, but no one has done this experiment, so we can’t rule it out."
"To engage in experiments on heat was always one of my most agreeable employments."
"The scientific question is the logical hypothesis which from a known law further proceeds by analogy and induction, the answer gives the experiment, which is prescribed in the question itself."
"The circumstances which surround different classes and individuals, and shape their characters, are daily becoming more assimilated. Formerly, different ranks, different neighborhoods, different trades and professions lived in what might be called different worlds; at present, to a great degree in the same. Comparatively speaking, they now read the same things, listen to the same things, see the same things, go to the same places, have their hopes and fears directed to the same objects, have the same rights and liberties, and the same means of asserting them."
"And the assimilation is still proceeding. All the political changes of the age promote it, since they all tend to raise the low and to lower the high. Every extension of education promotes it, because education brings people under common influences, and gives them access to the general stock of facts and sentiments. Improvements in the means of communication promote it, by bringing the inhabitants of distant places into personal contact, and keeping up a rapid flow of changes of residence between one place and another. The increase of commerce and manufactures promotes it, by diffusing more widely the advantages of easy circumstances, and opening all objects of ambition, even the highest, to general competition, whereby the desire of rising becomes no longer the character of a particular class, but of all classes."
"In choosing people for specific jobs previous experience should not be a guide. I never put a man in the job which he thought he knew. Often the 'experts' make the worst possible Ministers in their own fields. In this country we prefer rule by amateurs."
"An expert is a person who has found out by his own painful experience all the mistakes that one can make in a very narrow field."
"In the media age, everybody was famous for 15 minutes. In the Wikipedia age, everybody can be an expert in five minutes. Special bonus: You can edit your own entry to make yourself seem even smarter."
"Experts bring light to dark places."
"No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you should never trust experts. If you believe doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe. They all require their strong wine diluted by a very large admixture of insipid common sense."
"I think the people in this country have had enough of experts."
"There appear to be no integrating forces, no unified meaning, no true inner understanding of phenomena in our experience of the world. Experts can explain anything in the objective world to us, yet we understand our own lives less and less. In short, we live in the postmodern world, where everything is possible and almost nothing is certain."
"An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in his subject, and how to avoid them."
"We have not overthrown the divine right of kings to fall down before the divine right of experts."
"How much of a person's competence is based on knowing which actions not to take? We usually think of a person's abilities in positive terms... But one could take the opposite view that "An expert is someone who rarely slips up—because of knowing what not to do." However, this subject was rarely discussed in the twentieth-century—except, perhaps most notably, in Sigmund Freud's analysis."
"The prevailing situation of criticism ... has given rise to a cult of professional expertise whose effect in general is pernicious. For the intellectual class, expertise has usually been a service rendered, and sold, to the central authority of society. This is the trahison des clercs of which Julien Benda spoke in the 1920s. Expertise in foreign affairs, for example, has usually meant the legitimization of the conduct of foreign policy and, what is more to the point, a sustained investment in revalidating the role of experts in foreign affairs. The same sort of thing is true of literary critics and professional humanists, except that their expertise is based upon noninterference in what Vico grandly calls the world of nations but which prosaically might just as well be called “the world.” We tell our students and our general constituency that we defend the classics, the virtues of a liberal education, and the precious pleasures of literature even as we also show ourselves to be silent (perhaps incompetent) about the historical and social world in which all these things take place. ..."
"Knowledge is one of the scarcest of all resources. Glib generalities abound, but specific hard facts about particular places and particular things at particular times that are relevant to economic decisions are something entirely different and much more scarce. In some respects, governments are better able to assemble vast amounts of knowledge, but the kind of knowledge involved is often in the form of statistical or verbal generalities known as “expertise,” which is no substitute for the kind of concrete knowledge that someone in the middle of a particular economic situation has. Just picking the right location for a particular business in a particular community can be the difference between profits and bankruptcy, even though that kind of knowledge may not be exciting from an intellectual standpoint. Experts may indeed have far more knowledge than the average amount of knowledge among individuals in the general population but the total amount of knowledge among millions of people in the general population vastly exceeds the total knowledge that any group of experts can assemble."
"Don't take too seriously all that the neighbors say. Don't be overawed by what the experts say. Don't be afraid to trust your own common sense."
"Experto credite."
"We have already mentioned what may, perhaps, appear paradoxical to some of our readers, — that the division of labour can be applied with equal success to mental as to mechanical operations, and that it ensures in both the same economy of time."
"The product of mental labor — science — always stands far below its value, because the labor-time necessary to reproduce it has no relation at all to the labor-time required for its original production."
"I now proceed to open up unto you the three great powers with which God has endowed Man, whereby Man has become fully capable to labour, to the fulfilling the destiny whereunto God has appointed him. These are :—Powers of mind, or genius; powers of intellect, or knowledge ; and powers of body, health and strength ; otherwise mental, intellectual, and physical. As Time is the basis, so these three powers are the foundation stones of all useful labour. If one or other of these powers be wanting in any social system, there can be‘no‘ completion or perfection of labour. Now, Sir, mental labour can only be performed by the mind whom God has gifted ‘with genius—‘a power so evidently of divine origin, so beyond man to give or take away; a power flowing forth from the inward thought, calling up on the retina of the mental vision scenes of surpassing beauty, phrases of the most truthful perfect‘ness, harmonies of the highest cadence. Would that I could say that although it is not in Man to create this power, it was also not in him to abuse it. Yet great as this power is, mental labour is but the creation of ideas."
"ON THE EFFECTS PRODUCED ON THE BLOOD BY MENTAL LABOUR. BY THEOPHILUS THOMPSON, M.D., F.R.S."
"The person who merely watches the flight of a bird gathers the impression that the bird has nothing to think of but the flapping of its wings. As a matter of fact this is a very small part of its mental labor. To even mention all the things the bird must constantly keep in mind in order to fly securely through the air would take a considerable part of the evening."
"The term division of labor has, from long usage, become associated in the public mind with manual processes. But productive labor is, in general, both manual and mental and just as there may be division of manual labor so there may be division of mental labor or division of thought. Modern productive methods tend constantly to separate mental labor from manual labor and then to subdivide each into smaller and smaller parts. The subdivision of manual labor is greatly furthered, as has been seen, by the extended use of tools. Subdivision of mental labor on the other hand is hastened by an increase in the amount of knowledge and mental development necessary to successfully perform the work in hand. Thus the mental labor of designing machinery is performed largely apart from the actual production; and this mental labor has become very closely specialized as the scientific basis of engineering has grown. This process of subdivision is greatly hastened in both manual and mental operations by increased quantity since this, of itself, enables the manager to avail himself of the inherent advantages of division of labor already discussed."
"In recent years many scattered attempts have been made to apply physiology and psychology to economic processes. Business men by scientific observation and experiment have brought criticism to bear upon the traditional and empirical modes of organising and conducting ... more recently the detailed technology of manual and mental labour has been made material of physiological and psychological investigation."
"What we will need from now on are, increasingly, "effectiveness centers"', that is, organized efforts to make fully effective and productive the new workers, the knowledge worker, the employed middle-class professional."
"To make the right decision the knowledge-worker must know what performance and results are needed... He cannot be supervised. He must direct, manage and motivate himself."
"A related difficulty arises in the managerial training process because the educational system cannot at present entice those with the most creative abilities into such careers; Galbraith refers to this as the problem of "reproducing the technostructure." Similarly, Drucker maintains that the determination of the social status of the "knowledge worker" will present the developed societies with their most significant social question in the coming decades."
"The knowledge worker is paid extremely well. He gets to do interesting work. Yet no group is more subject to job dissatisfaction and "alienation." Why? Direct production workers — machinists, bricklayers, farmers — are a steadily declining portion of the work force in a developed economy. consists of “knowledge workers” — accountants, engineers, social workers, nurses, computer experts of all kinds, teachers and researchers. And the fastest growing group among knowledge workers themselves are managers. People who are paid for putting knowledge to work rather than brawn or manual skill are today the largest single group in the American labor force — and the most expensive one. The incomes of these people are not, as a rule, determined either by supply or demand or by their productivity. Their wages and fringe benefits go up in step with those of manual direct-production workers."
"In the United States, the "knowledge worker" values his or her independence. This is translated into the desire to have personal databases, some influence in how work is performed, as well as control of environmental features such as lighting and s."
"This society in which knowledge workers dominate is in danger of a new "class conflict" between the large minority of knowledge workers and the majority of workers who will make their livings through traditional ways, either by manual work... or by service work. The productivity of knowledge work - still abysmally low - will predictably become the economic challenge of the knowledge society. On it will depend the ability of the knowledge society to give decent incomes, and with them dignity and status, to non knowledge people."
"In The Organization of the Future, the contributors show... how organizations need to support work-life balance and provide flexibility to knowledge workers"
"The most important contribution of management in the 20th century was to increase manual worker productivity fifty-fold. The most important contribution of management in the 21st century will be to increase knowledge worker productivity—hopefully by the same percentage. So far it is abysmally low and in many areas (hospital nurses, for instance, or design engineers in the automobile industry) actually lower than it was 70 years ago. So far, almost no one has addressed it. Yet we know how to increase—and rapidly—the productivity of knowledge workers. The methods, however, are totally different from those that increased the productivity of manual workers."
"This new knowledge economy will rely heavily on knowledge workers. ...the most striking growth will be in “knowledge technologists:” computer technicians, software designers, analysts in clinical labs, manufacturing technologists, paralegals. ...They are not, as a rule, much better paid than traditional skilled workers, but they see themselves as “professionals.” Just as unskilled manual workers in manufacturing were the dominant social and political force in the 20th century, knowledge technologists are likely to become the dominant social—-and perhaps also political—-force over the next decades."
"Knowledge workers have high degrees of expertise, education, or experience, and the primary purpose of their jobs involves the creation, distribution or application of knowledge."
"Just as modern man consumes both too many calories and calories of no nutritional value, information workers eat data both in excess and from the wrong sources."
"The search for original cases and the "superior" rules that would emerge from them spread far outside legal practice. Wallace Donham, dean of the Harvard Business School from 1919 to 1942, was trained at the law school in the heady days of the case system's early and enthusiastic reception. Where law and business parted ways was in the contingent matter of the availability of ready- made cases — law faculty simply reached for their shelves, while professors of business needed to create a new literary species — the business case book."
"To Donham, the case study stood squarely in the legal and cultural tradition of Anglo-American thought. Unlike French or Spanish law. Donham emphasized, English law was grounded on the doctrine of stare decisis, in which the written case decisions of the past shape, and instantiate, the law. Just as the recording of cases allowed English common law to break the arbitrariness of local law. Donham argued in 1925, business needed to universalize its procedures by itself adopting the case system. The chaos of local law that ruled in England before the common law. Donham contended, "is exactly the same situation that we have [in the world of business] where practically every large corporation is tightly hound by traditions which are precedents in its particular narrow field and narrow held only The recording of decisions from industry to industry [enables] us to start from facts and draw inferences from those facts; [it] will introduce principle... in the field of business to such an extent that it will control executive action in the field where executive action is haphazard or unprincipled or bound by narrow, instead of broad precedent and decision" ( W. Donham, transcript of talk to the Association of Coll. School of Business Committee Reports and Other Literature, 5-7 May 1925. Harvard Business School, box 17, folder 10. 62)."
"Case studies are analyses of persons, events, decisions, periods, projects, policies, institutions, or other systems that are studied holistically by one or more method. The case that is the subject of the inquiry will be an instance of a class of phenomena that provides an analytical frame — an object — within which the study is conducted and which the case illuminates and explicates."
"Reality is socially constructed and that the sociology of knowledge must analyse the process in which this occurs."
"The last two decades have witnessed, especially in Germany and France, the rise of a new discipline, the sociology of knowledge (Wissenssoziologie), with a rapidly increasing number of students and a growing literature (even a “selected bibliography” would include several hundred titles). Since most of the investigations in this field have been concerned with the socio-cultural factors influencing the development of beliefs and opinion rather than of positive knowledge, the term. “Wissen” must be interpreted very broadly indeed, as referring to social ideas and thought generally, and not to the physical sciences, except where expressly indicated."
"A further turn is to be found in some "unmasking" accounts of natural science, which aim to show that its pretensions to deliver the truth are unfounded, because of social forces that control its activities. Unlike the case of history, these do not use truths of the same kind; they do not apply science to the criticism of science. They apply the social sciences, and typically depend on the remarkable assumption that the sociology of knowledge is in a better position to deliver truth about science than science is to deliver truth about the world."
"Kuhn used the phrase “normal science” for scientific work that occurs within the framework provided by a paradigm. A key feature of normal science is that it is well organized. Scientists doing normal science tend to agree on which problems are important, on how to approach these problems, and on how to assess possible solutions. … He argued that it is false that science exhibits a permanent openness to the testing of fundamental ideas. Not only that, but science would be worse off if it had the kind of openness that philosophers have treasured. … For Kuhn, there are two distinct kinds of scientific change: change within normal science, and revolutionary science. (These are bridged by “crisis science,” a period of unstable stasis.) These two kinds of change have very different epistemological features; when we try to apply concepts such as justification, rationality, and progress to science, according to Kuhn we find that normal and revolutionary science have to be described very differently. Within normal science, there are clear and agreed-upon standards for the justification of arguments; within revolutionary science there are not. Within normal science there is clear progress; within revolutionary science it is very hard to tell (and it is hard to even interpret the question)."
"Normal science is work aimed at extending and refining the paradigm. A good normal scientist is committed to the paradigm and does not question it. Normal scientists extend their paradigm both theoretically and experimentally. Anomalies inevitably arise, however, and eventually these reach a kind of critical mass, at which point scientists lose faith in the paradigm and the field plunges into a state of crisis. … One problem comes from Kuhn’s insistence that, except in unusual cases, a scientific field has one paradigm per field per time. … Secondly, Kuhn exaggerates the degree of commitment that a normal scientist does and should have to a paradigm. Kuhn describes the attitude of a normal scientist in very strong terms. Scientific education is a kind of “indoctrination,” which results in scientists having a deep “faith” in their paradigm. As a description of how science actually works, this seems exaggerated. Sometimes there is a faithlike commitment, but sometimes there is not. Many scientists are able to say that they always work within a paradigm, for practical reasons, while being very aware of the possibility of error and the eventual replacement of their framework. One of the ironies of Kuhn’s influence is that his book might have weakened the faith of some normal scientists, even though Kuhn thought that normal scientists should have a deep faith in their paradigms!"
"For a current illustration of what is absolutely right, and also of what is questionable, in Kuhn’s idea of normal science, notice that the high-energy physics most widely reported by science journalists is the search for the Higgs particle. This involves an incredible treasury of both money and talent, all of which is dedicated to confirming what present physics teaches—that there is an as yet undetected particle that plays an essential role in the very existence of matter. Innumerable puzzles, ranging from mathematics to engineering, must be solved en route. In one sense, nothing new in the way of theory or even phenomena is anticipated. That’s what Kuhn was right about. Normal science does not aim at novelty. But novelty can emerge from confirmation of theories already held. Indeed it is hoped that when the right conditions for eliciting the particle are finally established, an entire new generation of high-energy physics will begin. The characterization of normal science as puzzle-solving suggests that Kuhn did not think normal science was important. On the contrary, he thought scientific activity was enormously important and that most of it is normal science. Nowadays even scientists skeptical of Kuhn’s thought about revolutions have great respect for his account of normal science."
"In my view the ‘normal’ scientist, as Kuhn describes him, is a person one ought to be sorry for. (According to Kuhn’s views about the history of science, many great scientists must have been ‘normal’; yet since I do not feel sorry for them, I do not think that Kuhn’s views can be quite right.) The ‘normal’ scientist, in my view, has been taught badly. I believe, and so do many others, that all teaching on the University level (and if possible below) should be training and encouragement in critical thinking. The ‘normal’ scientist, as described by Kuhn, has been badly taught. He has been taught in a dogmatic spirit: he is a victim of indoctrination. He has learned a technique which can be applied without asking for the reason why (especially in quantum mechanics). As a consequence, he has become what may be called an applied scientist, in contradistinction to what I should call a pure scientist."
"It was not Kuhn's description of scientific revolutions that impressed me so much when I first read Structure in 1972, but rather his treatment of normal science. Kuhn showed that a period of normal science is not a time of stagnation, but an essential phase of scientific progress. This had become important to me personally in the early 1970s because of recent developments in both cosmology and elementary particle physics."
"Knowledge is a broad and abstract notion that has defined epistemological debate in western philosophy since the classical Greek era. In the past few years, however, there has been a raging interest in treating knowledge as a significant organizational resource. The heightened interest in organizational knowledge and knowledge management stems from the transition into the knowledge economy, where knowledge is viewed as the principle source of value creation and sustainable competitive advantage."
"Authoritarians offer citizens a deal: if we hand over our freedom, they will guarantee certainty and safety. This might have been possible in a closed society with little interaction between people, but it is a false promise in a knowledge economy where citizens are interconnected. If the best chaos theorists can't model the weather beyond a week, how does the National Security Agency think it can predict which of us will turn into a terrorist? If our intelligence agencies persist in monopolising knowledge we will see continued intelligence failures."
"Investing in people is the single most important thing in the knowledge economy. Traditionally, wealth was defined by land and natural resources. Today the most important resources is between our ears."
"We define the knowledge economy as production and services based on knowledge-intensive activities that contribute to an accelerated pace of technical and scientific advance, as well as rapid obsolescence. The key component of a knowledge economy is a greater reliance on intellectual capabilities than on physical inputs or natural resources."
"Kuhn acknowledges having used the term "paradigm" in two different meanings. In the first one, "paradigm" designates what the members of a certain scientific community have in common, that is to say, the whole of techniques, patents and values shared by the members of the community. In the second sense, the paradigm is a single element of a whole, say for instance Newton’s Principia, which, acting as a common model or an example... stands for the explicit rules and thus defines a coherent tradition of investigation. Thus the question is for Kuhn to investigate by means of the paradigm what makes possible the constitution of what he calls "normal science". That is to say, the science which can decide if a certain problem will be considered scientific or not. Normal science does not mean at all a science guided by a coherent system of rules, on the contrary, the rules can be derived from the paradigms, but the paradigms can guide the investigation also in the absence of rules. This is precisely the second meaning of the term "paradigm", which Kuhn considered the most new and profound, though it is in truth the oldest."
"What we need, then, is a new 'paradigm' - a new vision of reality; a fundamental change in our thoughts, perceptions, and values. The beginnings of this change, of the shift from the mechanistic to the holistic conception of reality, are already visible in all fields and are likely to dominate the present decade. The various manifestations and implications of this 'paradigm shift' are the subject of this book. The sixties and seventies have generated a whole series of social movements that all seem to go in the same direction, emphasizing different aspects of the new vision of reality. So far, most of these movements still operate separately and have not yet recognized how their intentions interrelate. The purpose of this book is to provide a coherent conceptual framework that will help them recognize the communality of their aims. Once this happens, we can expect the various movements to flow together and form a powerful force for social change. The gravity and global extent of our current crisis indicate that this change is likely to result in a transformation of unprecedented dimensions, a turning point for the planet as a whole."
"The world does not change, but we work in a new world. The world that does not change is a world of individuals. The world in and with which we work is a world of kinds. The latter changes; the former does not. After a scientific revolution, the scientist works in a world of new kinds."
"The transition from a paradigm in crisis to a new one from which a new tradition of normal science can emerge is far from a cumulative process, one achieved by an articulation or extension of the old paradigm. Rather it is a reconstruction of the field from new fundamentals, a reconstruction that changes some of the field’s most elementary theoretical generalizations as well as many of its paradigm methods and applications. During the transition period there will be a large but never complete overlap between the problems that can be solved by the old and by the new paradigm. But there will also be a decisive difference in the modes of solution. When the transition is complete, the profession will have changed its view of the field, its methods, and its goals."
"One perceptive historian, viewing a classic case of a science’s re-orientation by paradigm change, recently described it as “picking up the other end of the stick,” a process that involves “handling the same bundle of data as before, but placing them in a new system of relations with one another by giving them a different framework.” Others who have noted this aspect of scientific advance have emphasized its similarity to a change in visual gestalt: the marks on paper that were first seen as a bird are now seen as an antelope, or vice versa. That parallel can be misleading. Scientists do not see something as something else; instead, they simply see it. We have already examined some of the problems created by saying that Priestley saw oxygen as dephlogisticated air. In addition, the scientist does not preserve the gestalt subject’s freedom to switch back and forth between ways of seeing. Nevertheless, the switch of gestalt, particularly because it is today so familiar, is a useful elementary prototype for what occurs in full-scale paradigm shift."
"A fundamental change is taking place in the nature and application of technology in business, a change with profound and far-reaching implications for companies of every size and shape. A multimillion dollar research program conducted by the DMR Group, Inc., studied more than 4,500 organizations in North America, Europe, and the Far East to investigate the nature and impact of changes in technology. The synthesis and analysis of this information indicate that information technology is going through its first paradigm shift. Driven by the demands of the competitive business environment and profound changes in the nature of computers, the information age is evolving into a second era. Computing platforms in most organizations today are not able to deliver the goods for corporate rebirth. It is only through open network computing that the open networked client/server enterprise can be achieved. In nontechnical language this book shows managers and professionals how to take immediate action for the short-term benefits of the new technology while positioning their organizations for long-term growth and transformation..."
"I claim that the success of current scientific theories is no miracle. It is not even surprising to the scientific (Darwinist) mind. For any scientific theory is born into a life of fierce competition, a jungle red in tooth and claw. Only the successful theories survive—the ones which in fact latched onto the actual regularities in nature."
"The most common misunderstanding about science is that scientists seek and find truth. They don't — they make and test models."
"A scientific theory is usually felt to be better than its predecessors not only in the sense that it is a better instrument for discovering and solving puzzles but also because it is somehow a better representation of what nature is really like. One often hears that successive theories grow ever closer to, or approximate more and more closely to, the truth. Apparently generalizations like that refer not to the puzzle-solutions and the concrete predictions derived from a theory but rather to its ontology, to the match, that is, between the entities with which the theory populates nature and what is “really there.”"
"Characteristics of a scientific theory"
"Scientific inquiry has led to immense explanatory and technological successes, partly as a result of the pervasiveness of scientific theories. Relativity theory, evolutionary theory, and plate tectonics were, and continue to be, wildly successful families of theories within physics, biology, and geology. Other powerful theory clusters inhabit comparatively recent disciplines such as cognitive science, climate science, molecular biology, microeconomics, and Geographic Information Science (GIS). Effective scientific theories magnify understanding, help supply legitimate explanations, and assist in formulating predictions. Moving from their knowledge-producing representational functions to their interventional roles (Hacking 1983), theories are integral to building technologies used within consumer, industrial, and scientific milieus."
"Reports of the death of reductionism are greatly exaggerated. It is so ingrained in our thinking that if one day some magical force should make us all forget it, we would promptly have to reinvent it. The real worry is not with reductionism, which, as a paradigm and tool, is rather useful. It is necessary, but no longer sufficient. But, weighing up better ideas, it became a burden."
"There is a multilayering of global networks in the key strategic activities that structure and destructure the planet. When these multilayered networks overlap in some node, when there is a node that belongs to different networks, two major consequences follow. First, economies of synergy between these different networks take place in that node: between financial markets and media businesses; or between academic research and technology development and innovation; between politics and media."
"If you peruse the table of contents of a textbook on organizational theory or search the web for courses in organizational sociology, you cannot help but notice how many of the key contributors to the field spent time at Stanford between 1970 and 2000, as faculty members, post-docs, or graduate students... Of the five most influential macro-organizational paradigms in play today — institutional theory, network theory, organizational culture, population ecology, and resource dependence theory (in alphabetical order) – Stanford served as an important pillar, if not the entire foundation, for all but network theory. By the 1990s, it became an important site for network theory as well."
"Sociologists and anthropologists have long been concerned with how individuals are linked to one another and how these bonds of affiliation serve as both a lubricant for getting things done and a glue that provides order and meaning to social life. The attention to networks of association, which began in earnest in the 1970s, provided welcome texture and dynamism to portraits of social life. This work stood in stark contrast to the reigning approaches in the social sciences. In contrast to deterministic cultural (oversocialized) accounts, network analysis afforded room for human agency, and in contrast to individualist, atomized (undersocialized) approaches, networks emphasized structure and constraint (Granovetter, 1985). Network studies offered a middle ground, a third way, even if no one was quite sure whether networks were a metaphor, a method, or a theory (Barnes 1979). But the sociologists and anthropologists who initially studied networks did not pay sustained attention to economic activity, although some industrial sociologists (Roy, 1954; Dalton, 1959) had long stressed the role of informal networks as an antidote to formal organization practices and structures."
"The same dynamics that keep us safe in a pack, herd or society, and comfortable in our family, friends or neighbours also serves as a way for pathogenic transmissions. The warmth of a human dwelling or the immense complexity of a bee hive is also an opportunity for a pathogen to tap into a susceptible population. Network interdiction is a comprehensive name for algorithms intended to disrupt such connections."
"[I]t was upon... inequality of motions in point of velocity that Galileo built his theory of flux and reflux of the sea; supposing that the earth revolved faster than the water could follow; and that the water was therefore first gathered in a heap and then fell down, as we see in a basin of water moved quickly. But this he devised upon an assumption which cannot be allowed, viz. that the earth moves; and also without being well informed as to the sexhorary motion of the tide."
"When Gilbert of Colchester, in his “New Philosophy,” founded on his researches in magnetism, was dealing with tides, he did not suggest that the moon attracted the water, but that “subterranean spirits and humors, rising in sympathy with the moon, cause the sea also to rise and flow to the shores and up rivers”. It appears that an idea, presented in some such way as this, was more readily received than a plain statement. This so-called philosophical method was, in fact, very generally applied, and Kepler, who shared Galileo’s admiration for Gilbert’s work, adopted it in his own attempt to extend the idea of magnetic attraction to the planets."
"A law explains a set of observations; a theory explains a set of laws. The quintessential illustration of this jump in level is the way in which Newton’s theory of mechanics explained Kepler’s law of planetary motion. Basically, a law applies to observed phenomena in one domain (e.g., planetary bodies and their movements), while a theory is intended to unify phenomena in many domains. Thus, Newton’s theory of mechanics explained not only Kepler’s laws, but also Galileo’s findings about the motion of balls rolling down an inclined plane, as well as the pattern of oceanic tides. Unlike laws, theories often postulate unobservable objects as part of their explanatory mechanism. So, for instance, Freud’s theory of mind relies upon the unobservable ego, superego, and id, and in modern physics we have theories of elementary particles that postulate various types of quarks, all of which have yet to be observed."
"Among all the great men who have philosophized about this remarkable effect, I am more astonished at Kepler than at any other. Despite his open and acute mind, and though he has at his fingertips the motions attributed to the earth, he nevertheless lent his ear and his assent to the moon's dominion over the waters, to occult properties, and to such puerilities."
"Afterwards that incomparable Philosopher Sir Isaac Newton, improv'd the hint, and wrote so amply upon this Subject as to make the Theory of the Tides his own, by shewing that the Waters of the Sea rise under the Moon and the Place opposite to it: For Kepler believ'd "that the Impetus occasion'd by the presence of the Moon, by the absence of the Moon, occasions another Impetus; till the Moon returning, stops and moderates the Force of that Impetus, and carries it round with its motion." Therefore this Spheroidical Figure which stands out above the Sphere (like two Mountains, the one under the Moon and the other in the place opposite to it) together with the Moon (which it follows) is carried by the Diurnal Motion, (or rather, according to the truth of the matter, as the Earth turns towards the East it leaves those Eminencies of Water, which being carried by their own motion slowly towards the East, are as it were unmov'd) in its journey makes the Water swell twice and sink twice in the space of 25 Hours, in which time the Moon being gone from the Meridian of any Place, returns to it again."
"Astronomy teaches the correct use of the sun and the planets. These may be put on a frame of little sticks and turned round. This causes the tides."
"But to return to Kepler, his great sagacity, and continual meditation on the planetary motions, suggested to him some views of the true principles from which these motions flow. In his preface to the commentaries concerning the planet Mars, he speaks of gravity as of a power that was mutual betwixt bodies, and tells us that the earth and moon tend towards each other, and would meet in a point so many times nearer to the earth than to the moon, as the earth is greater than the moon, if their motions did not hinder it. He adds that the tides arise from the gravity of the waters towards the moon. But not having just enough notions of the laws of motion, he does not seem to have been able to make the best use of these thoughts; nor does he appear to have adhered to them steadily, since in his epitome of astronomy, published eleven years after, he proposes a physical account of the planetary motions, derived from different principles."
"The allusion to the "puzzling" problem of [the orbit of] Mars shows that Galileo ought not to have been unaware of the great work of Kepler published in 1609: Astronomia nova... in which the first two of Kepler's laws were formulated. Yet he does not mention here at all Kepler's success in solving the problem, nor his laws, nor his name even, which is brought up... only to criticize his belief in the Moon's attraction [effect upon tides], which is quite reasonably presented in the Astronomia nova and founded on astronomical reasons and not on mystical speculations."
"This world was once a fluid haze of light, Till toward the centre set the starry tides, And eddied into suns, that wheeling cast The planets: then the monster, then the man."
"The Academy of Sciences at Paris proposed The Tides as the subject for a prize essay in 1740. Four essays were published in consequence at Paris. One essay was by a Jesuit named Cavallieri; this adopted the Cartesian system of vortices. The other essays were by Daniel Bernoulli, Maclaurin, and Euler; these are reprinted in the Jesuits' edition of the Principia, and it is stated that many errors in the original impression have been corrected. ...The second chapter of Daniel Bernoulli's essay contains some lemmas relating to the Attraction of Bodies. ...he determines the attraction at any superficial or internal point of an ellipsoid of revolution which is nearly spherical, neglecting powers of the ellipticity beyond the first. The method used consists in finding accurately the attraction of a sphere, and then approximately the attraction of the difference between the sphere and the ellipsoid on a particle at the pole or at the equator... this method had been previously used by Clairaut. But Daniel Bernoulli seems to claim the method as his own... Although Daniel Bernoulli employed attraction for the purpose of his essay, yet he seems to have had but a weak faith in the principle... Daniel Bernoulli added nothing to our subject; all his results respecting Attraction are included in the formulæ given by Clairaut in 1737. But his theory of the Tides is very important in the history of that subject..."
"A Frenchman who arrives in London, finds a great alteration in philosophy, as in other things. He left the world full, he finds it empty. At Paris you see the universe composed of vortices of subtile matter, at London we see nothing of the kind. With you it is the pressure of the moon which causes the tides of the sea, in England it is the sea which gravitates towards the moon; so that when you think the moon ought to give us high water, these gentlemen believe that you ought to have low water; which unfortunately we cannot test by experience; for in order to do that, we should have examined the moon and the tides at the moment of the creation. You will observe also that the sun, which in France has nothing to do with the business, here comes in for a quarter of it. Among you Cartesians, all is done by an impulsion which one does not well understand; with the Newtonians, it is done by an attraction of which we know the cause no better. At Paris you fancy the earth shaped like a melon, at London it is flattened on the two sides."
"The theory of the tides has been reduced [in this work] into an extremely simple form, which appears to agree better with all the phenomena, than the more intricate calculations which they have commonly been supposed to require."
"Here lies Isaac Newton, Knight, Who, by a Vigour of Mind almost supernatural, First demonstrated The Motions and Figures of the Planets, The Paths of the Comets, and the Tides of the Ocean. He diligently investigated The different Refrangibilities of the Rays of Light, And the Properties of the Colours to which they give rise. An assiduous, sagacious, and faithful Interpreter Of Nature, Antiquity, and the Holy Scriptures, He asserted his Philosophy of the Majesty of God, And exhibited in his conduct the Simplicity of the Gospel. Let mortals rejoice That there has existed such and so great An Ornament of Human Nature."
"The application of the general doctrines of mechanics to fluids was a natural and inevitable step, when the principles of the science had been generalised. It was easily seen that a fluid is, for this purpose, nothing more than a body of which the parts are moveable amongst each other with entire facility; and that the mathematician must trace the consequences of this condition upon his equations. This accordingly was done, by the founders of mechanics, both for the cases of the equilibrium and of motion. ... The explanation of the Tides, in the way in which Newton attempted it in the third book of the Principia, is another example of a hydrostatical investigation: for he considered only the form that the ocean would have if it were at rest. The memoirs of Maclaurin, Daniel Bernoulli, and Euler, on the question of the tides, which shared among them the prize of the Academy of Sciences in 1740, went upon the same views. The Treatise of the Figure of the Earth by Clairaut, in 1743, extended Newton's solution of the same problem, by supposing a solid nucleus covered with a fluid of different density. No peculiar novelty has been introduced into this subject, except a method employed by Laplace for determining the attractions of s of small eccentricity, which is, as Professor Airy has said, "a calculus the most singular in its nature, and the most powerful in its effects, of any which has yet appeared.""
"Laplace... took up the subject of waves propagated along the surface of water; and deduced a very celebrated theory of the tides, in which he considered the ocean to be, not in equilibrium, as preceding writers had supposed, but agitated by a constant series of undulations, produced by the solar and lunar forces. The difficulty of such an investigation may be judged of from this, that Laplace, in order to carry it on, is obliged to assume a mechanical proposition, unproved, and only conjectured to be true; namely, that "in a system of bodies acted upon by forces which are periodical, the state of the system is periodical like the forces." Even with this assumption, various other arbitrary processes are requisite; and it appears still very doubtful whether Laplace's theory is either a better mechanical solution of the problem, or a nearer approximation to the laws of the phenomena, than that obtained by D. Bernoulli, following the views of Newton."
"In most cases, the solutions of problems of hydrodynamics are not satisfactorily confirmed by the results of observation. Poisson and Cauchy have prosecuted the subject of waves, and have deduced very curious conclusions by a very recondite and profound analysis. The assumptions of the mathematician here do not represent the conditions of nature; the rules of theory, therefore, are not a good standard to which we may refer the aberrations of particular cases; and the laws which we obtain from experiment are very imperfectly illustrated by à priori calculation. The case of this department of knowledge, hydrodynamics, is very peculiar... we want, in addition to what we have, true and useful principles, intermediate between the highest and the lowest;—between the extreme and almost barren generality of the laws of motion, and the endless varieties and inextricable complexity of fluid motions in special cases. The reason of this peculiarity in the science of hydrodynamics appears to be, that its general principles were not discovered with reference to the science itself, but by extension from the sister science of the mechanics of solids...by a perception that the parts of fluids are included in that range of generality which we are entitled to give to the supreme laws of motion of solids. ...[S]olid and fluid dynamics resemble two edifices which have their highest apartment in common, and though we can explore every part of the former building, we have not yet succeeded in traversing the staircase of the latter, either from the top or from the bottom. If we had lived in a world in which there were no solid bodies, we should probably not yet have discovered the laws of motion; if we had lived in a world in which there were no fluids, we should have no idea how insufficient a complete possession of the laws of motion may be, to give us a true knowledge of particular results."
"That all the parts of the universe are drawn and held together by love, or harmony, or some affection to which, among other names, that of attraction may have been given, is an assertion which may very possibly have been made at various times, by speculators writing at random, and taking their chance of meaning and truth. The authors of such casual dogmas have generally nothing accurate or substantial, either in their conception of the general proposition, or in their reference to examples of it... But among those who were really the first to think of the mutual attraction of matter, we cannot help noticing Francis Bacon; for his notions were so far from being chargeable with the looseness and indistinctness to which we have alluded, that he proposed an experiment which was to decide whether the facts were so or not;—whether the gravity of bodies to the earth arose from an attraction of the parts of matter towards each other, or was a tendency towards the centre of the earth. And this experiment is, even to this day, one of the best which can be devised, in order to exhibit the universal gravitation of matter: it consists in the comparison of the rate of going of a clock in a deep mine, and on a high place. Huyghens, in his book "De Causâ Gravitatis," published in 1690, showed that the earth would have an oblate form, in consequence of the action of the centrifugal force; but his reasoning does not suppose gravity to arise from the mutual attraction of the parts of the earth. The influence of the moon upon the tides had long been remarked; but no one had made any progress in truly explaining the mechanism of this influence; and all the analogies to which reference had been made, on this and similar subjects, as magnetic and other attractions, were rather delusive than illustrative, since they represented the attraction as something peculiar in particular bodies, depending upon the nature of each body. That all such forces, cosmical and terrestrial, were the same single force, and that this was nothing more than the insensible attraction which subsists between one stone and another, was a conception equally bold and grand; and would have been an incomprehensible thought, if the views which we have already explained had not prepared the mind for it."
"Newton, in the Principia, had inserted a series of propositions, the object of which was to prove, that the machinery of vortices could not be accommodated to one part of the celestial phenomena, without contradicting another part. A more obvious difficulty was the case of gravity of the earth; if this force arose, as Descartes asserted, from the rotation of the earth's vortex about its axis, it ought to tend directly to the axis, and not to the centre. The asserters of vortices often tried their skill in remedying this vice in the hypothesis, but never with much success. ...The mathematical prize-questions proposed by the French Academy, naturally brought the two sets of opinions into conflict. The Cartesian Memoir of John Bernoulli... was the one which gained the prize in 1730. ...The last act of homage of this kind to the Cartesian system was performed in 1740, when the prize on the question of the tides was distributed between Daniel Bernoulli, Euler, Maclaurin, and Cavallieri; the last of whom had tried to amend and patch up the Cartesian hypothesis on this subject."
"We propose... to enter at some length into the mathematical theories, and the experimental observations, applying to the two subjects of Tides and Waves of water. But we do not intend to treat them with the same extension. We shall give the various theories of Tides in detail sufficient to enable the reader to understand the present state of the science... and we shall advert to the principal observations which throw light either on the ordinary phænomena of tides, or on the extraordinary deviations that occur in peculiar circumstances. In thus treating the Tides, it will be necessary for us to enter largely into the theory of Waves. We shall take advantage of this circumstance for the introduction several propositions, not applying to the theory Tides, but elucidating some of the ordinary observations upon small Waves. But these investigations will be limited to that class which is most closely connected with tides, namely, that in which similar waves follow each other in a continuous series, or in which the same mathematical process may be used as when similar waves follow each other. In this class will be included nearly all the phænomena of waves produced by natural causes, and therefore possessing general interest. But it will not include the waves of discontinuous nature produced by the sudden action of arbitrary causes, which have been the subject of several remarkable mathematical memoirs, but which possess no interest for the general reader."
"We shall describe cursorily the ordinary phænomena of tides."
"We shall explain the Equilibrium-Theory of Tides, including the first tidal theory given by Newton, and the more detailed theory of his successors, especially Daniel Bernoulli."
"We shall give a sketch of Laplace's investigations, (founded essentially on the theory of the motion of water,) in the general form in which he first attempted the theory, as well as with the arbitrary limitations which he found it necessary to use for practical application."
"We shall give an extended Theory of Waves on water, applying principally to the motion of water in canals of small breadth, but with some indications of the process to be followed for the investigation of the motion of Waves in extended surfaces of water."
"The results of a few Experiments on Waves will be given, in comparison with the preceding theory."
"We shall investigate the mathematical expressions for the Disturbing Forces of the Sun and Moon which produce the Tides, and shall use them in combination with the theory of Waves to predict some of the laws of Tides."
"We shall advert to the methods which been used, or which may advantageously be used, for Observation of Tides, and for the Reduction of the Observations."
"We shall give the results of extensive observations of the Tides, as well with regard to the change of the phænomena of tides at different times in the same place, as with respect to the relation which the time and height of tide at one place bear to the time and height at other places, and shall compare these with the results of the preceding theories, as far as possible."
"And as Conclusion, we shall point out what we consider to be the present Desiderata in the Theory and Observations of Tides."
"Caesar, in his account of the invasion of Britain, (De Bella Gallico, lib. iv.) alludes to the nature of spring tides as perfectly well understood in connection with the moon’s age. Some of the peculiarities of river tides, however, were not published in scientific works till the beginning of the last century; and some of the properties of the tides in the English and other channels were not known till the end of that century. ...In the present century, the elaborate discussions of immense collections of accurate tide-observations by M. Laplace, Sir John W. Lubbock, and Professor Whewell, have brought to light and reduced to law many irregularities which were before that time unknown."
"Before entering upon either of the theories explaining the Tides, we must allude to their inadequacy, perhaps not to the explanation of the facts already observed, but certainly to the prediction of new ones. This inadequacy does not appear to arise from any defect in the principles upon which the theory is based,... but from the extreme difficulty of investigating mathematically the motions of fluids under all the various circumstances in which the waters of the sea and of rivers are found. For the problem of the Tides, it is evident, is essentially one of the motion of fluids. Yet so difficult are the investigations of motion that, till the time of Laplace, no good attempt was made to determine, by theory, the laws of the Tides, except on the supposition that the water was at -rest. Since that time theories of motion have been applied..."
"Indeed, throughout the whole of this subject, the selection of the proper theoretical ground of explanation is a matter of judgment. In some cases we may conceive that we are justified in using the Equilibrium theory; in others the Wave-theory will apply, completely or partially... as a last resource, in almost every case, we shall be driven to the same arbitrary suppositions which Laplace introduced. ...In the instances which it does not master completely, it will show that there are ample grounds for the arbitrary alterations of constants introduced by Laplace in his suppositions..."
"[W]e are precluded from further advance, partly by our almost necessary ignorance of the forms of the bottom in deep seas, and partly by the imperfection of our mathematics. ...the first principles of our explanation are correct."
"The popular explanation of the Equilibrium-theory is very simple. If we conceive the earth to be wholly or in a great degree with water, and consider that the attraction of the moon upon different particles (according to the law of gravitation) is inversely as the square of their distance, and is therefore greatest for those particles which are nearest to it; then it will be obvious that the moon attracts the water on that side which is next to her, more than she attracts the great mass of the earth, and therefore tends to raise the water from the earth on the side next to her; but she also attracts the great mass of the earth more than she attracts the water upon the side most distant from her, and therefore tends to draw the earth from the water on the side most distant from her; which will produce exactly the same effect as if a force tended to draw the water away from the earth on that side. Thus the moon’s action tends to raise the water on two opposite sides of the earth; and similarly the sun’s action tends to raise the water on two opposite sides. The close relation, however, which the times of high water bear to the times of the moon’s passage, shows that the moon’s influence in raising the tides must be much greater than the sun's. If the sun and moon are together, as seen from the earth, the elevations produced by these two bodies will coincide in place, and will therefore be added together. Thus Spring Tides will be produced. In other relative positions of the sun and moon, it may happen that the elevation produced by the sun will occur at a place where the moon causes depression: the action of the sun there tends to counteract that of the moon, and Neap Tides will be produced."
"Newton pointed out and assigned generally, not only the nature and the magnitude of the periodical forces which are concerned in producing the tides, but likewise indicated their true character as undulations, in one very remarkable proposition, as well as in a special explanation of... the tides of the Port of Batsha. The equilibrium theory of Daniel Bernoulli adopted the first part of Newton's views but altogether neglected the second."
"It had been shown that if the earth was a spherical body covered with water, and if both the earth and moon were at rest, the water would assume the form of a spheroid of equilibrium, of extremely small eccentricity, such as would be due to the disturbing action of the moon's forces. A similar but less eccentric spheroid would be formed beneath the sun. Under such circumstances the joint effect of the elevations or depressions of the two spheroids would produce the elevation or depression of the water, or the tide. The theory further assumes that the same effects would follow if the earth revolved round her axis and the earth and moon in their orbits, and that no effect was produced by the spontaneous oscillations of the sea. Totally false as are the principal assumptions upon which this theory is founded, it is extremely remarkable that it not only sufficiently separates from each other the principal movements of the tides, but represents generally the law and order of succession of the periodical phenomena which they present. "The greatest mathematicians and the most laborious observers of the present day," says Professor Airy, "including Sir John Lubbock and Dr. Whewell... have agreed equally in rejecting the foundation of this theory, and comparing all their observations with its results.""
"The same eminent authority [Professor Airy] has pronounced the theory proposed by La Place in the Mécanique Céleste,—if viewed with reference to the boldness and comprehensive character of its design rather than to the success of its execution—"as one of the most splendid works of the greatest mathematician of the past age." The problem, however, was not considered by him [La Place] in the most general form which it is capable of receiving. He assumed the earth to be entirely covered by water, and its depth to be uniform, at least throughout the same parallel of latitude, and he neglected the resistance both of the particles of the fluid amongst each other, and of that which arises from the irregular surfaces in the channels over which the tide is transmitted. He was consequently obliged to omit the consideration of the tides in canals, rivers, and narrow seas, which constitute some of the most interesting, and by no means the most unmanageable, of the problems which later, and even in some respects more simple, investigations of the oscillations of the sea have brought within the control of analysis. Imperfect, however, as the results of this theory were as it came from the hand of its author, their importance cannot easily be estimated too highly. Dr. Young adopted the general principles which they involved, though he has subjected them to a totally different treatment; and Professor Airy, who has materially simplified the investigations which it contains, by rejecting some conditions which they included, such as the density of the sea, by which they were made needlessly difficult and complicated, has not only verified the more remarkable of the conclusions at which La Place arrived, but has also made important use of his methods in his own theory of waves and tides, which is by far the most complete and comprehensive that has ever yet appeared."
"There is one result of a very unexpected kind, which La Place regarded as one of the happiest of his discoveries,—it is the entire evanescence, if the sea be of uniform depth, of the diurnal tide in elevation, but not in horizontal motion. At the equator, under such circumstances, the water moves north and south, resting for a moment at the change of motion. At the poles the motion is transverse to the meridian passing through the luminary. At all other points on the earth's surface it is perpetually changing. Few persons have attempted to follow the mazes of the difficult analysis by which this great mathematician has arrived at this conclusion, which has been verified by the Astronomer Royal. Its correctness, however, has been disputed by Dr. Young, who contends that the diurnal tide will not disappear, unless the depth of the sea be not merely uniform, but evanescent."
"Though Dr. Young was not disposed to give his assent to the results of an extremely difficult analysis,—which few persons of his age could venture to follow, and which might appear to those who could not trace them through the long train of consequences... to be either paradoxical or contradictory to the first principles of mechanics—he was sufficiently prepared to seize the general purport of other parts of this comprehensive theory; and by divesting it of the unnecessary generalizations by which it was encumbered, not only to bring its principles to bear immediately upon the ordinary phenomena of the tides, but to apply it to cases which it was otherwise incompetent to reach. Such were the tides of narrow seas and rivers, and the modifications which those tides undergo from the effects of the resistance of the particles of water upon each other, or upon the channels through which they are propagated. The same questions have been made the principal subject of the investigations of the Astronomer Royal, in his Article on Tides and Waves, in the Encyclopædia Metropolitana, where they have been treated with that rare combination of mathematical skill and clearness and completeness of exposition for which all his writings are so remarkable. It will be found, however, that there are not many of his results which Young had not already attained, though in a much less definite form, by methods which are, it is true, much less regular and systematic, but which are not less distinguished for the sagacity and philosophical power which they display."
"In an RCT, if we are lucky, we find the average difference in effect produced by the treatment in the population sampled. That does not tell us what the overall outcome on this effect in question would be from introducing the treatment in some particular way in some uncontrolled situation, even if we consider introducing it only in the very population sampled. For that we need a causal model. Even less does it tell us about “side-effects” of introducing the treatment, either from the treatment itself or from our way of implementing it. These too are crucial in calculating the costs and benefits of a proposed policy. Or, as Heckman argues, suppose one wants to predict what portion of the population will experience a given degree of improvement. RCTs do not deliver that kind of result. Again, we need a causal model."
"Increasingly, our leaders must deal with dangers that threaten the entire world, where an understanding of those dangers and the possible solutions depends on a good grasp of science. The ozone layer, the greenhouse effect, acid rain, questions of diet and heredity. All require scientific literacy. Can Americans choose the proper leaders and support the proper programs if they themselves are scientifically illiterate? The whole premise of democracy is that it is safe to leave important questions to the court of public opinion—but is it safe to leave them to the court of public ignorance?"
"Let me suggest to you a simple test one can apply to scientific activities to determine whether or not they can constitute the practice of physics. Is what you are doing beautiful? Many beautiful things are created without the use of physical knowledge, but I know of no really worthwhile physics that isn’t beautiful. Indeed, one of the most distressing symptoms of scientific illiteracy is the impression so often given to school children that science is a mechanistic activity subject to algorithmic description."
"Rampant scientific illiteracy in the general public is, in my opinion, one major cause of the current lack of opportunities for scientists. … A public that is ignorant of science, and of how science is done, is not going to support scientific research enthusiastically."
"A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare's?"
"Knowing how things work is important, but I think that's an incomplete view of what science literacy is or, at least, should be. Science literacy is an outlook. It's more of a lens through which you observe what goes on around you."
"Crick and Mitchison proposed that a reverse learning mechanism in REM sleep removes certain undesirable modes of interaction in neural networks within the cerebral cortex. If their theory is correct then abnormalities of reverse learning might account for some aspects of schizophrenia, mania, and depression."
"Sleep has been shown to be critical for the transfer and consolidation of memories in the cortex. Like memory consolidation, a role for sleep in adaptive forgetting has both historical precedent, as Francis Crick suggested in 1983 that sleep was for “reverse-learning,” and recent empirical support."
"The idea that sleep might be involved in the erasure or filtering of information has been put forward by several authors ... In particular in 1983, Crick and Mitchison ... proposed, based on a neurocomputational model of associative learning, that dreaming during REM sleep helps to forget “parasitic modes” of activity, thus ensuring an efficient mode of operation of the brain during waking. ... As a solution to this problem, the authors proposed a “reverse learning” mechanism during REM sleep-dreaming that dampens synaptic weights to reduce the probability of these parasitic activity modes and thereby also enhances the efficacy and storage capacity of the network. ... In simulation studies, repeated unlearning procedures indeed improved the learning capability of the network and retrieval of recently learned patterns, but concurrently weakened more remote memories ..."
"In what can be called the eraser theory of REM sleep, Crick and Mitchison have treated its reported absence in the echidna as evidence that it amounts to a mechanism for reverse learning, in which stimulation of the forebrain weakens the synaptic strength of undesirable “parasitic modes” of neuronal activity, thus fine-tuning the brain’s operation ... The echidna, it is said, gets by without REM sleep because its surprisingly large neocortex makes reverse learning unnecessary. If true, an inverse relationship between size of neocortex and REM sleep quotas is to be expected in other species, but supportive data are lacking."
"“There’s a dream that in the future, we’ll be sitting in our home and hit a button to print our prosthetics from scratch,” Sadler says. “That might be a further out vision.” But some people think we’re already there. Sadler agrees with Kuniholn about the difficulty of attaching printed prosthetics, saying, “The fitting is a whole other black art. 3-D printing only gets you part of the way.” Of course, that’s for high-end prosthetics, the kind you hope to have. In some parts of the world, the choice is between having a mediocrely-fitting prosthetic and not having one at all. This is the situation that spurred Summit to action, as well as Patrice Johnson, who, according to Sadler, is, “the only person to have successfully designed and sold [a] functional upper limb prosthesis that used 3-D printing.”"
"“Right on the border of Burma and Thailand, there are landmines like you wouldn’t believe,” he says. These landmines leave many residents as amputees, residents who “would typically never see a prosthesis because of [the] fitting and time it would take.” Armed with Physionetics’ technology and good will, Johnson went to Burma and fitted two amputees with the printed arms. “We donated them,” he says. “All I had to do is go out there, show them how it was fit, and within an hour and a half, we had them on these two guys.” Stories like this are what drive Summit to continue his quest for a “self-use viral app for developing countries” that can create prosthetics. “There will simply never be enough prosthetists to meet their needs.” This isn’t his dream for the future; he thinks it’s a scientific possibility now. And he strongly disagrees that the materials 3-D printing can handle aren’t strong enough to work as limbs. He points out that, “the [human] bones that we have are not as strong as titanium,” a material used in many prosthetic limbs. “When you have great flexibility of geometry, as we do with 3-D printing, you can overcome what strength you don’t have,” Summit says. He says he’s found a way to overcome this strength barrier by creating a hollow prosthetic, then filling it with a lattice structure, similar to the construction of a bird’s bone. “Nature’s been doing this for a long time,” he says."
"An effective prosthesis delivers renewed functionality and is cosmetically pleasing, but it also serves to complete the wearer’s sense of wholeness. A prosthesis then, is as much medical device as it is an emotional comfort, and so the history of prosthetics is not only a scientific history, but the story of human beings since the dawn of civilization who by birth, wound, or accident were left with something missing."
"The earliest example of a prosthesis ever discovered is not a leg, arm, or even a fake eye, it’s a toe. A big toe, belonging to a noblewoman, was found in Egypt and dated to between 950-710 B.C.E. We all know that toes are important, but it’s interesting that our earliest physical example of the history of prosthetics is a toe and not something that might seem more important, like a leg or an arm."
"Stories of lives devastated by conflict or disease are all too common across low-income countries. Lack of an arm or leg can be tough anywhere, but for people in poorer parts of the planet, with so much less support and more rickety infrastructure, it is especially challenging. Some are victims of conflict, others were born with congenitall conditions. Many more are injured on roads, the casualty toll soaring in low-income nations even as it plummets in wealthier ones. Every minute, 20 people are seriously injured worldwide in road crashes. In Kenya, half the patients on surgical wards have road injuries. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates there are about 30 million people like Nhial and Lam who require prosthetic limbs, braces, or other mobility devices. These can be simple to make and inexpensive. As one veteran prosthetist told me, his specialism is among the most instantly gratifying areas of medicine. “A patient comes in on Monday on crutches that leave them unable to carry anything. By Wednesday they are walking on a new leg and on Friday they leave with their life transformed.” Yet more than eight in 10 of those people needing mobility devices do not have them. They take a lot of work and expertise to produce and fit, and the WHO says there is a shortage of 40,000 trained prosthetists in poorer countries. There is also the time and cost to patients, who may have to travel long distances for treatment that can take five days—to assess need, produce a prosthesis and fit it to the residual limb. The result is that unglamorous items such as braces and artificial limbs are among the most-needed devices to assist lives. Yet, as in so many other areas, technology may be hurtling to the rescue, this time in the shape of 3-D printing."
"Yet for all the agonies and difficulties associated with arm loss, the bigger problem in low-income countries is when lower limb disability leads to loss of mobility. Wheelchairs are expensive and can be difficult to use when roads are pot-holed, streets are muddy and pavements are non-existent. Without a prosthetic limb, people struggle to fetch water, to prepare food and, above all, to work. This throws them back on their families and communities, intensifying any hardship and poverty."
"“If you wear a prosthesis you are disabled for about ten minutes in the morning while you have a shower, then you put your leg on and go to work. If you do not have one, then your hands are out of use with crutches so you can’t even take drinks to the table,” said Carson Harte, a 59-year-old prosthetist and chief executive of Exceed. “Without a prosthesis there are no expectations. You just go back and rely on the goodwill of your family.”"
"Traditionally, a prosthetist would wrap a stump with plaster of Paris bandages to make a reverse mold and let it dry, then fill it with more plaster that must harden. From this a socket can be forged that fits, with more modifications for precision, to the bone on the stump. Great care must be taken to avoid nerves and tender areas that are not tolerant of pressure. The key for the technician is to understand the pathology of a stump, which differs for each person. This is a cumbersome process that can take a week, especially with gait training for new patients that lasts three days. It can also be messy work, mixing up and molding the plaster, while a prosthetist visiting a rural area must cart around 20-kilo packs of plaster. But with a 3-D scanner, a digital image can be made in half an hour and sent by email, and there is no mess."
"For Wright, the prosthetic had to have a purpose. She wasn’t interested in something that made her look “normal” if it wasn’t going to help her actually do anything better. And she isn’t alone. More and more amputees, engineers, and prospective cyborgs are rejecting the idea that the “average” human body is a necessary blueprint for their devices. “We have this strong picture of us as human beings with two legs, two hands, and one head in the middle,” says Stefan Greiner, the founder of Cyborgs eV, a Berlin-based group of body hackers. “But there’s actually no reason that the human body has to look like as it has looked like for thousands of years.” Greiner himself has magnetic implants in his fingers and an RFID chip in his skin. “We actually already live in a cyborg society,” he said."
"For a long time the history of prosthetics has been inextricably linked with the history of war, and thus of men. After World War II, when soldiers were returning from the battlefield, there was a collective anxiety about whether they’d be able to re-enter their families and workplaces. Many people wanted soldiers to come back, and for everything to go back to normal. But an amputation was a physical reminder that things were not the same. “Physicians, therapists, psychologists, and ordinary citizens alike often regarded veterans as men whose recent amputation was physical proof of emasculation or general incompetence, or else a kind of monstrous de-familiarization of the 'normal' male body,” writes the professor David Serlin in the book Artificial Parts, Practical Lives. Serlin describes the ways in which the media and the military talked about these soldiers, pushing for them to be seen as “normal” in the eyes of the public. In 1946, the comic Gasoline Alley featured a man named Bix whose prosthetic lets him be a “normal American guy.” The comic shows Bix stocking shelves, and features a very surprised boss who exclaims, “I didn’t expect he’d be perfectly normal”—before hiring the man on the spot. Professional photographs taken at Walter Reed Army hospital depicted men with prosthetic devices doing “normal” male activities like lighting a cigarette and reading the sports page, their prosthetic legs adorned with “tattoos” of pinup girls."
"In a 2013 interview with The New York Times, De Oliveira Barata described her work on prosthetics as outside of engineering or medicine—the industries with which artificial limb-making are typically associated. “Making an alternative limb is like entering a child’s imagination and playing with their alter ego,” she said. “You’re trying to find the essence of the person.” She works with clients to figure out how they want to look. “It’s their choice of how to complete their body—whether that means having a realistic match or something from an unexplored imagination,” she told The Times. These sculptures aren’t accessible to everyone. Wright says she would love a custom leg, but it’s out of reach for her. “I’ve inquired about getting one,” she told me, “but it’s very ex-pensive! Crazy expensive.” Depending on what the limbs are made of, they can cost anywhere from $4,600 to $21,000. But even if not every amputee gets or wants a spike leg or a feathery suit of armor or even the curved cheetah leg, the fact that people see these alternative bodies out in the world seems to have helped push a cultural shift in how people think about normalcy. That is, at least, in Western nations. In many countries, the stigma against disability and amputation remains. In the United States, Mullins says that today’s kids don’t question her normalcy the way her peers once did, they don’t see her as disabled at all. “They see a rebuilt body as something powerful. If I’m walking around in carbon fiber or titanium or bionics, standing on a street corner, and some little kid is walking by, they presume power. They want to know if I can fly, how fast I can run.”"
"The earliest known prosthesis, dating possibly as far back as 950 B.C., was discovered in Cairo on the mummified body of an ancient Egyptian noblewoman. The prosthesis is made largely of wood, molded and stained, its components bound together with leather thread. It is, as prostheses go, tiny. Because it is a toe. The prosthetic digit—the oldest little piggy in the world—is extraordinarily lifelike, its curved nail sunken into a similarly curved bed. Which is, in its way, remarkable. A toe! One that is several thousand years old! And it's not just a toe-sized peg—a little device that would have made mobility more manageable for someone who was, by reasons of birth or amputation, missing her big toe. The prosthesis is, as much as it possibly could be, humanoid: maximally lifelike and maximally toe-like. The "Cairo Toe," as it's been dubbed, is prosthetic and cosmetic at once—evidence not just of ancient manufacturing stepping in where biology was limited, but of manufacturing engaging in an ancient form of biomimcry. Compare the Cairo Toe to today's prostheses, many of which—especially those that dominate the public imagination—seem to be inspired less by "man," and more by the Bionic Man. The blades. The hooks. The exoskeletons. This week alone has brought news of a roboticized prosthetic hand that, possibly inspired by the workings of the claw crane, foregoes five fingers for three. It has brought news of a woman who created her own prosthetic leg ... out of LEGOs. Those stories come as part of a flood of coverage of the next generation of prostheses, in which technologies from adjacent fields—3D-printing, robotics, chemistry—are helping humans to transcend nature's narrow definition of humanity."
"One of the earliest written references to prosthetics is found in a book published in France in 1579. That year, French surgeon Ambrose Pare (1510–1590) published his complete works, part of which described some of the artificial limbs he fitted on his amputees. As a military surgeon, Paré had re-moved many a soldier's shattered arm or leg, and he eventually began designing and building artificial limbs to help the men who had been maimed. Ambroise Paré was the official royal surgeon to four successive kings, and earned his position by practicing medicine on the battlefield, attempting to save, or at least treat, wounded soldiers. As a doctor, he was most disturbed by the reaction of some of the people whom he had saved. He found that some soldiers took their own lives rather than live without limbs, or with terrible wounds. To try to combat this problem, Paré began crafting artificial limbs. This was not new. There is evidence for the use of prostheses from the times of the ancient Egyptians. Prostheses were developed for function, cosmetic appearance and a psycho-spiritual sense of wholeness. Amputation was often feared more than death in some cultures. It was believed that it not only affected the amputee on earth, but also in the afterlife. The ablated limbs were buried and then disinterred and reburied at the time of the amputee’s death so the amputee could be whole for eternal life. One of the earliest examples comes from the 18th dynasty of ancient Egypt in the reign of Amenhotep II in the fifteenth century B.C. A mummy in the Cairo Museum has clearly had the great toe of the right foot amputated and replaced with a prosthesis manufactured from leather and wood. The first true rehabilitation aids that could be recognised as prostheses were made during the civilisations of Greece and Rome. During this period, prostheses for battle and hiding deformity were heavy, crude devices made of available materials—wood, metal and leather. Records of ancient prosthesis can be found all over the world."
"In China, King-his Tse, invented in the 500 b. C. a flying magpie of wood and bam-boo, and a wooden horse able to jump. Around year 200 B.C., Philo of Byzantium, inventor of the repetitive catapult, constructed an aquatic robot. In 206 B.C., the first Han Emperor found the Chin Shih Hueng Ti's treasure. It included a mechanical toy orchestra that moved independently. In old Greece, Archytas of Tarento (referenced in [English]] as Archytas of Tarentum, and in some references in Spanish as Architas de Tarento), philosopher, mathematician and contemporary politician of Plato, considered the father of mechanical engineering and precursory of the robotics, in-vented the [w:Screw|screw]] and the pulley, among other many devices. The materials used for the construction of robots were wood (parts with form), iron (fixed structure, supports, hinges), copper (which is mouldable and allowed the construction of thinner parts), leather (cables, footwear) and fabrics. The first models used the application of direct force to make movements, facilitated with sets of pulleys, gears and handles. In this phase the robots were replicas of the human being that made a series of simple movements. The machines began assuming tasks of aid to the man and ended up repelling their conception of the world and animated beings. The mechanics affected the study of nature, spreading to the anatomy science; of which agreed models with that conception were elaborated, such as “De Humani Corporis Fabrica” (On the workings of the human body) from Andreas Vesalius (1514–1564) who conceived the man as a complex mechanical structure."
"People have used all sorts of artificial devices probably from the beginnings of human history to help them compensate for the loss of a limb. Thus in very ancient times, the first and simplest prosthesis may have been a forked tree that was used as a crutch to help someone walk whose leg may have been badly damaged or lost in an accident or to a disease. What began as a modified crutch with a wooden or leather cup and progressed through many metamorphoses has now developed into a highly sophisticated prosthetic limb made of space-age materials."
"A 3000-year-old mummy was recently discovered sporting a prosthetic big toe. The wooden toe had been meticulously fit to the woman’s foot, with attachment straps designed for comfort. The craftsmanship was extraordinary; the toe could even flex. The toe is one of the oldest examples, but from pirates’ peg legs to Tycho Brahe’s metal nose, replacement body parts have a long and inventive history. Even before the toe’s discovery, prosthetics were known to be ancient technology. Replacement body parts are mentioned prominently in the classical literature of multiple cultures. The mythical Greek hero Pelops, accidentally ingested by the Gods, sported an ivory shoulder after his reconstruction. Herodotus mentions warriors with wooden feet, and there are examples from Asia and Rome as well."
"In France and Switzerland, from the late fifteenth through the nineteenth centuries, a variety of custom-designed limbs were built. Made of combinations of wood, metal, Leather|leather, and other materials, some of these designs were truly fantastic. Controlled by cables, gears, cranks, and springs, these limbs could be rotated and bent. There were prosthetic fingers made to grip objects. The limbs were not completely practical, as they had to be operated by a different hand, but they had their uses. For example, a hand could be cranked shut around a pen or fork. Flexing, spring-loaded legs were also available. These fantastic objects were ahead of their time: cable control was a precursor to the standard post-World War II design. Following those early designs, prosthetic limbs improved by leaps and bounds. World Wars I and II, as well as other large-scale conflicts, such as Vietnam, unfortunately increased demand for prosthetics, leading to improvements."
"There is a moment when each ultra-realistic prosthetic limb crafted by Sophie de Oliveira Barata transitions from a hunk of silicon into something more. “It happens around this point,” the artist explained, gesturing to a half-finished leg jutting mid-kick from her work bench. “I’ll know it’s happened when I handle a limb a bit roughly, and I find myself apologizing to it: ‘Oh, sorry!’” It’s an easy mistake to make. With precision molding, hand-painted veins, and real human hairs, the limbs scattered around Sophie’s studio look uncannily real: legs on the verge of dancing and hands ready to burst into applause. With these prostheses, Sophie enables her customers to conceal their absences and blend in. But the artist also caters to another kind of clientele: amputees wanting to stand out. She works with these clients to imagine the missing parts of their bodies as fantastical works of art: an arm housing a motorized coiling snake, a jewel-studded leg with embedded stereo, a bird-wing arm with a metal hook for a talon. “Instead of seeing what’s missing,” she remarked, “you see what’s there.”"
"Q: Do the clients always know what they want?"
"Q: Being so focused on other people’s limbs all the time, I wonder, what’s your relationship with your own limbs like?"
"[H]uge number of casualties in the American Civil War caused demand for artificial limbs to skyrocket. Many veterans turned to designing their own prosthetics as a response to the limiting capabilities of the limbs on offer."
"For the first time, artificial limbs were being mass-produced in response to the enormous number of casualties in World War One. In the US, the Walter Reed Army Hospital produced a large number of artificial limbs for the returning veterans. This example is of a welding attachment and other tools integrated into the limbs for amputees to return to work after the war. It wasn’t all work, however. Also in the collection of the National Museum of Health and Medicine, USA, is an attachment for playing baseball. The Walter Reed Army Hospital is still a centre for artificial limb production in the US, 100 years later. The technology continued to develop after WW1. DW Dorrance invented the split hook artificial hand shortly before World War I. It became popular with labourers after the war who were able to return to work using the attachment because of its ability to grip and manipulate objects. It’s one of the few designs that have remained relatively unchanged over the past century. Dorrance demonstrated its multi-functionality in the 1930s by driving a car using the arm. In the UK, Queen Mary’s Hospital, Roehampton, became a centre for manufacturing artificial limbs in the World War Two. It opened in 1939. In its first year, 10,987 war pensioners attended the centre, with an additional 16,251 limbs being sent by post. At the outbreak of war, the factory was expanded because of the realisation that 40,000 UK servicemen had lost limbs in WW1. However in WW2 there was around half the number of amputees. As Leon Gillis, QMH Consultant Surgeon from 1943-1967, observed, advances in surgical techniques, treatment of infections and the availability of blood transfusion after WW1 all reduced the need for amputation."
"At a lab at Johns Hopkins University, researchers are building a prosthetic hand unlike any other: It can sense pain. It’s easy to understand why you might want a prosthesis that can feel the squishiness of a grape or the warmth of another person’s hand. But pain? Well, pain could be useful, too. “If you think about how we humans use pain, it’s to protect our bodies, to prevent damage,” says Luke Osborn, a graduate student in Nitish Thakor’s lab at Hopkins, who co-authored a new paper on the pain-sensitive hand. People born without the ability to feel pain stumble through life with dangerous freedom. Babies who do not feel pain are known to chew their fingers raw; children without pain will plunge their hands into boiling water. Pain is a signal that says, Hey, watch out. “People do damage their prosthetic limbs a lot. They use them as tools they weren’t designed to be used as,” says Levi Hargrove, a bioengineer at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, who was not involved in the study. It’s easy, for example, to bang an unfeeling piece of plastic and metal against a table. Pain could make a prosthesis feel more real, more lifelike—less a tool and more like a natural part of the body."
"The concept of an ‘automatic’ body-powered upper limb prosthesis was pioneered by German dentist Peter Baliff in 1818. Using transmission of tension through leather straps, Baliff’s device enabled the intact muscles of the trunk and shoulder girdle to elicit motion in a terminal device attached to the amputation stump. For the first time, an amputee was able to operate his prosthesis with fluid body motions, rather than as a distinct foreign object. In the 1860s, the Comte de Beaufort in France adapted the design for use by wounded soldiers. A shoulder harness with a strap buttoned to the trousers was passed through a loop to the contralateral axilla and missing limb, allowing an amputee to manipulate the strap tension to open and close a double spring hook, or flex and extend the thumb on a simple hand with fused fingers. In 1916, German surgeon Dr Ferdinand Sauerbruch described his prosthetic design with digits controlled by transmission of upper arm muscle movements. Video captures from the era show amputees effectively using the prosthesis to drink from a teacup and even to remove a match from a box to light a cigarette. Unfortunately, due to the high cost of production, few individuals were able to afford the device."
"World War I (1914 to 1918) resulted in casualties in numbers previously unimagined. In the United States (US), amputee rehabilitation programs were created to help the >4400 amputees, of which the majority (54%) were upper limb, to regain some ability to work on farms or in factories. The distribution of prosthetics with sockets and a universal terminal device allowed the attachment of various work tools. In 1917, the Surgeon General of the US Army is-sued a landmark invitation for limb makers to meet in Washington, DC. The result was the creation of the Association of Limb Manufacturers of America, today the American Orthotic & Prosthetic Association. In Canada, a national charter in 1920 recognized the need to provide support to amputees, leading to the creation of the Amputations Association of The Great War, today known as the War Amps."
"During World War II (1939 to 1945), improved shock management and antibiotics saved lives but resulted in 3475 upper limb amputees in the US (9). The huge demand for artificial limbs led to the creation of a US Committee on Prosthetics Research and Development in 1945 and the Canadian Association of Prosthetics and Orthotics in 1955. The thalidomide tragedy (1958 to 1962) resulted in the birth of many children with shortened limbs, further driving demand and investment for improved prosthetics. In 1948, the Bowden cable body-powered prosthesis was introduced, replacing bulky straps with a sleek, sturdy cable. Despite new materials and improved craftsmanship, today’s body-powered prostheses are essentially adaptations of the Bowden design. Durable, portable and relatively affordable, body-powered prostheses allow the user an impressive range of motion, speed and force in operating a terminal device – most commonly a two-pronged hook – by changing the tension in a cable via preserved shoulder and body movements. The ability to use both hands simultaneously, rather than requiring a healthy hand to control the prosthesis, permits the user to complete tasks more efficiently. Furthermore, by sensing cable tension, the amputee is able to predict and adjust the position of the prosthesis without visual feedback. Although prolonged wearing can be uncomfortable, complicated motor tasks are limited and appearance is not human-like, body-powered prostheses are widely used"
"In 1919, a German book titled Ersatzglieder und Arbeitshilfen (Limb Substitutes and Work Aids) contained conceptual designs for the first externally powered prostheses, using pneumatic and electric power sources. Unfortunately, these revolutionary designs were too complex to be feasible with contemporary technology."
"In 1948, Reinhold Reiter, a physics student at Munich University (Munich, Germany), created the first myoelectric prosthesis, a device that amplifies surface electromyography (EMG) potentials to power motorized parts. Although Reiter published his work, it was not widely appreciated, and this potentially ground-breaking invention did not gain commercial or clinical acceptance."
"And it is We who have constructed the heaven with might, and verily, it is We who are steadily expanding it."
"He created the heavens and the Earth with truth. He wraps the night around the day and wraps the day around the night, and has made the Sun and Moon subservient, each one running for a specified term. Is He not indeed the Almighty, the Endlessly Forgiving?"
"And the Sun runs to its resting place. That is the decree of the Almighty, the All-Knowing. "It is He Who created the night and the day, and the sun and the moon. They swim along, each in an orbit. ""
"Do not the Unbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were joined together (as one unit of creation), before We clove them asunder, and We made from water every living thing. Will they not then believe?""
"We made the sky a preserved and protected roof yet still they turn away from Our Signs.."
"…And We sent down iron in which there lies great force and which has many uses for mankind...."
"The above observation makes the hypothesis advanced by those who see Muhammad as the author of the Qur'an untenable. How could a man, from being illiterate, become the most important author, in terms of literary merits, in the whole of Arabic literature? How could he then pronounce truths of a scientific nature that no other human being could possibly have developed at that time, and all this without once making the slightest error in his pronouncement on the subject?""
"A totally objective examination of it [the Qur'an] in the light of modern knowledge, leads us to recognize the agreement between the two, as has been already noted on repeated occasions. It makes us deem it quite unthinkable for a man of Muhammad's time to have been the author of such statements on account of the state of knowledge in his day. Such considerations are part of what gives the Qur'anic Revelation its unique place, and forces the impartial scientist to admit his inability to provide an explanation which calls solely upon materialistic reasoning.""
"Islam, from among all religions, best suits the science discoveries and is the most ready to edify souls and force them to abide by justice, kindness and toleration."
"Every person I met believes if there is any disagreement between the Koran and science, then the Koran wins. It's just utterly deplorable. These are now British children who are having their minds stuffed with alien rubbish. Occasionally, my colleagues lecturing in universities lament having undergraduate students walk out of their classes when they talk about evolution. This is almost entirely Muslims."
"From a new angle and with a fresh vigour, Islam took up that systematic development of positive knowledge which the Greeks had begun and relinquished. If the Greek was the father, then the Arab was the foster-father of the scientific method of dealing with reality, that is to say, by absolute frankness, the utmost simplicity of statement and explanation, exact record and exhaustive criticism. Through the Arabs it was, and not by the Latin route, that the modem world received that gift of light and power."
"If America owned the future, the Islamic fundamentalists laid claim to the past. They were not rejecting technology or science; indeed, many of the leaders of al-Qaeda, such as Ayman al-Zawahiri and Abu Hajer, were men of science themselves. But they were ambivalent about the way in which technology weakened the spirit. This was reflected in bin Laden's interest in earth-moving machinery and genetic engineering of plants, on one hand, and his rejection of chilled water on the other."
"The doctrine of Reincarnation differs from the accepted theory of Evolution in admitting a gradual but continuous evolution of the subtle body through many gross forms. The gross body may appear or disappear, but the subtle body continues to exist even after the dissolution of the gross body and re-manifests itself in some other form...The theory of Reincarnation when properly understood will appear as a supplement to the theory of Evolution. Without this most important supplement the Evolution theory will never be complete and perfect. Evolution explains the process of life, while Reincarnation explains the purpose of life. Therefore, both must go hand in hand to make the explanation satisfactory in every respect."
"Evolution of the body depends upon the evolution of the germ of life or the individual soul. When these two are combined the explanation becomes perfect. The theory of Reincarnation is a logical necessity for the completion of the theory of Evolution. If we admit a continuous evolution of a unit of the germ of life through many gross manifestations then we unconsciously accept the teachings of the doctrine of Reincarnation. In passing through different forms and manifestations the unit of life does not lose its identity or individuality. As an atom does not lose its identity or individuality (if you allow me to suppose an atom has a kind of individuality) although it passes from the mineral, through the vegetable, into the animal, so the germ of life always preserves its identity or individuality although it passes through the different stages of evolution."
"There is a very interesting analogy between the evolution of the atom and of man in the two methods of unfoldment that are followed. We have seen that the atom has its own atomic life, and that every atom of substance in the solar system is likewise a little system in itself, having a positive centre, or central sun, with the electrons, or the negative aspect, revolving in their orbits around it. Such is the internal life of the atom, its self-centred aspect."
"The atom is now being studied along a newer line... Much of the earlier teaching of physical science has been revolutionised by the discovery of radium, and the more scientists find out, the more it becomes apparent (as they themselves realise), that we are standing on the threshold of very great discoveries, and are on the eve of profound revelations. In the human being, as he evolves and develops, these two stages can equally be seen. There is the early or atomic stage, in which a man's whole centre of interest lies within himself, within his own sphere, where self-centredness is the law of his being, a necessary protective stage of evolution. He is purely selfish, and concerned primarily with his own affairs. This is succeeded by a later stage, in which a man's consciousness begins to expand, his interests begin to lie outside his own particular sphere, and the period arrives in which he is feeling for the group to which he belongs. This stage might be viewed as corresponding to that of radio-activity. He is now not only a self-centred life, but he is also beginning to have a definite effect upon his surroundings. He is turning his attention from his own personal selfish life, and is seeking his greater centre. From being simply an atom he is, in his turn, becoming an electron, and coming under the influence of the great central Life which holds him within the sphere of Its influence."
"Evolution, as we understand it, and as it must be studied by the human intellect, is the story of the evolution of consciousness, and not the story of the evolution of the form. This latter evolution is implicit in the other, and of secondary importance from the occult angle."
"Under the great evolutionary process, men and races differ in mental development, in physical stamina, in creative possibilities, in understanding, in human perceptiveness, and in their position upon the ladder of civilization; this, however, is temporary, for the same potentialities exist in all of us without exception, and will eventually display themselves."
"The Law of Rebirth (Reincarnation) is a great natural law upon our planet... It is a process, instituted and carried forward under the Law of Evolution... It is closely related to, and conditioned by, the Law of Cause and Effect."
"Narrowing down our view to the chain of which our globe is one, we see life-waves sweep round informing the kingdoms of nature, the three elemental, the mineral, vegetable, animal, human. Narrowing down our view still further to our own globe and its surroundings, we watch human evolution, and see man developing self-consciousness by a series of many life-periods; then centering on a single man we trace his growth and see that each life-period has a threefold division that each is linked to all life-periods behind it reaping their results, and to all life-periods before it sowing their harvests, by a law that cannot be broken; that thus man may climb upwards with each life-period adding to his experience, each life-period lifting him higher in purity, in devotion, in intellect, in power of usefulness, until at last he stands where They stand who are now the Teachers, fit, to pay to his younger brothers the debt he owes to Them. p. 39"
"The second great wave of evolution, the evolution of form, and the third great wave, the evolution of self-consciousness, will be dealt with later on. These three currents of evolution are distinguishable on our earth in connection with humanity; the making of the materials, the building of the house, and the growing of the tenant of the house, or, as said above, the evolution of spirit-matter, the evolution of form, the evolution of self-consciousness. If the reader can grasp and retain this idea, he will find a helpful clue to guide him through the labyrinth of facts. p. 45"
"If it be admitted that the soul of the savage is destined to live and evolve, and that he is not doomed for eternity to his present infant state, but that his evolution will take place after death and in other worlds, then the principle of soul-evolution is conceded, and the question of the place of evolution alone remains."
"Were all souls on earth at the same stage of evolution, much might be said for the contention that further worlds are needed for the evolution of souls beyond the infant stage. But we have around us souls that are far advanced, and that were born with noble mental and moral qualities. p. 108"
"Human evolution is the evolution of the Thinker... At first, as little conscious as a baby’s earthly body, he almost slept through life after life, till the experiences playing on him from without awakened some of his latent forces into activity; but gradually he assumed more and more part in the direction of his life, until, with manhood reached, he took his life into his own hands, and an ever-increasing control over his future destiny. p. 131"
"Evolution. — The development of higher orders of animals from the lower. Modern, or so-called exact science, holds but to a one-sided physical evolution, prudently avoiding and ignoring the higher or spiritual evolution, which would force our contemporaries to confess the superiority of the ancient philosophers and psychologists over themselves. The ancient sages, ascending to the unknowable, made their starting-point from the first manifestation of the unseen, the unavoidable, and from a strict logical reasoning, the absolutely necessary creative Being, the Demiurgos of the universe. Evolution began with them from pure spirit, which descending lower and lower down, assumed at last a visible and comprehensible form, and became matter. Arrived at this point, they speculated in the Darwinian method, but on a far more large and comprehensive basis."
""True science has no belief," says Dr. Fenwick, in Bulwer-Lytton's Strange Story; "true science knows but three states of mind: denial, conviction, and the vast interval between the two, which is not belief, but the suspension of judgment." Such, perhaps, was true science in Dr. Fenwick's days. But the true science of our modern times proceeds otherwise; it either denies point-blank, without any preliminary investigation, or sits in the interim, between denial and conviction, and, dictionary in hand, invents new Graeco-Latin appellations for non-existing kinds of hysteria! Chapter VII"
"To be at the height of their calling, men of Science have to reject the very possibility of Materialistic doctrines having aught to do with the Atomic Theory; and we find that Lange, Butlerof, Du Bois Reymond—the last probably unconsciously—and several others, have proved it. And this is, furthermore, demonstrated by the fact, that Kanâda in India, and Leucippus and Democritus in Greece, and after them Epicurus—the earliest Atomists in Europe—while propagating their doctrine of definite proportions, believed in Gods or supersensuous Entities, at the same time. Their ideas upon Matter thus differed from those now prevalent... the Atomic Theory kills Materialism."
"Modern Physics, in borrowing from the Ancients their Atomic Theory, forgot one point, the most important point of the doctrine; hence they have got only the husks and will never be able to get the kernel. In adopting physical Atoms, they omitted the suggestive fact that, from Anaxagoras to Epicurus, to the Roman Lucretius, and finally even to Galileo, all these Philosophers believed more or less in animated Atoms, not in invisible specks of so-called “brute” matter. According to them, rotatory motion was generated by larger... Atoms forcing other Atoms downwards; the lighter ones being simultaneously thrust upward... No Ancient Philosopher, not even the Jewish Kabalists, ever dissociated Spirit from Matter, or Matter from Spirit."
"It is nineteen centuries since, as we are told, the night of Heathenism and Paganism was first dispelled by the divine light of Christianity; and two-and-a-half centuries since the bright lamp of Modern Science began to shine on the darkness of the ignorance of the ages. Within these respective epochs, we are required to believe, the true moral and intellectual progress of the race has occurred. The ancient philosophers were well enough for their respective generations, but they were illiterate as compared with modern men of science. The ethics of Paganism perhaps met the wants of the uncultivated people of antiquity, but not until the advent of the luminous "Star of Bethlehem," was the true road to moral perfection and the way to salvation made plain... Now, the dullest may read the will of God in His revealed word; men have every incentive to be good, and are constantly becoming better. This is the assumption; what are the facts? On the one hand an unspiritual, dogmatic, too often debauched clergy... On the other hand, scientific hypotheses built on sand; no accord upon a single question; rancorous quarrels and jealousy; a general drift into materialism. A death-grapple of Science with Theology for infallibility — "a conflict of ages.""
"Between these two conflicting Titans — Science and Theology — is a bewildered public, fast losing all belief in man's personal immortality, in a deity of any kind, and rapidly descending to the level of a mere animal existence. Such is the picture of the hour, illumined by the bright noonday sun of this Christian and scientific era!... The whole question of phenomena rests on the correct comprehension of old philosophies. Whither, then, should we turn, in our perplexity, but to the ancient sages, since, on the pretext of superstition, we are refused an explanation by the modern? Let us ask them what they know of genuine science and religion; not in the matter of mere details, but in all the broad conception of these twin truths — so strong in their unity, so weak when divided. Besides, we may find our profit in comparing this boasted modern science with ancient ignorance; this improved modern theology with the "Secret doctrines" of the ancient universal religion. Perhaps we may thus discover a neutral ground whence we can reach and profit by both. It is the Platonic philosophy, the most elaborate compend of the abstruse systems of old India, that can alone afford us this middle ground."
"At Berlin — one of the great seats of learning — professors of modern exact sciences, turning their backs on the boasted results of enlightenment of the post-Galileonian period, are quietly snuffing out the candle of the great Florentine; seeking, in short, to prove the heliocentric system, and even the earth's rotation, but the dreams of deluded scientists, Newton a visionary, and all past and present astronomers but clever calculators of unverifiable problems. Between these two conflicting Titans — Science and Theology — is a bewildered public, fast losing all belief in man's personal immortality, in a deity of any kind, and rapidly descending to the level of a mere animal existence. Such is the picture of the hour, illumined by the bright noonday sun of this Christian and scientific era!"
"The discoveries of modern science do not disagree with the oldest traditions which claim an incredible antiquity for our race. Chapter I"
"Science tells us that heat may be shown to develop electricity, electricity produce heat; and magnetism to evolve electricity, and vice versa. Motion, they tell us, results from motion itself, and so on, ad infinitum. This is the A B C of occultism and of the earliest alchemists. The indestructibility of matter and force being discovered and proved, the great problem of eternity is solved. Chapter VII"
"Evidently Proclus does not advocate here simply a superstition, but science; for notwithstanding that it is occult, and unknown to our scholars, who deny its possibilities, magic is still a science. It is firmly and solely based on the mysterious affinities existing between organic and inorganic bodies, the visible productions of the four kingdoms, and the invisible powers of the universe. Chapter VII"
"That which science calls gravitation, the ancients and the mediaeval hermetists called magnetism, attraction, affinity. It is the universal law, which is understood by Plato and explained in Timaeus as the attraction of lesser bodies to larger ones, and of similar bodies to similar, the latter exhibiting a magnetic power rather than following the law of gravitation. Chapter VII"
"The discoveries of modern science do not disagree with the oldest traditions which claim an incredible antiquity for our race. Within the last few years geology, which previously had only conceded that man could be traced as far back as the tertiary period, has found unanswerable proofs that human existence antedates the last glaciation of Europe — over 250,000 years! A hard nut, this, for Patristic Theology to crack; but an accepted fact with the ancient philosophers. Moreover, fossil implements have been exhumed together with human remains, which show that man hunted in those remote times, and knew how to build a fire."
"The forward step has not yet been taken in this search for the origin of the race; science comes to a dead stop, and waits for future proofs. Unfortunately, anthropology and psychology possess no Cuvier; neither geologists nor archaeologists are able to construct, from the fragmentary bits hitherto discovered, the perfect skeleton of the triple man — physical, intellectual, and spiritual. Because the fossil implements of man are found to become more rough and uncouth as geology penetrates deeper into the bowels of the earth, it seems a proof to science that the closer we come to the origin of man, the more savage and brute-like he must be. Strange logic! Does the finding of the remains in the cave of Devon prove that there were no contemporary races then who were highly civilized? When the present population of the earth have disappeared, and some archaeologist belonging to the "coming race" of the distant future shall excavate the domestic implements of one of our Indian or Andaman Island tribes, will he be justified in concluding that mankind in the nineteenth century was "just emerging from the Stone Age"?"
"Science tells us that heat may be shown to develop electricity, electricity produce heat; and magnetism to evolve electricity, and vice versa. Motion, they tell us, results from motion itself, and so on, ad infinitum. This is the A B C of occultism and of the earliest alchemists. The indestructibility of matter and force being discovered and proved, the great problem of eternity is solved."
"Science, dimly perceiving the truth, may find Bacteria and other infinitesimals in the human body, and see in them but occasional and abnormal visitors to which diseases are attributed. Occultism -- which discerns a life in every atom and molecule, whether in a mineral or human body, in air, fire or water -- affirms that our whole body is built of such lives, the smallest bacteria under the microscope being to them in comparative size like an elephant to the tiniest infusoria."
"As it is claimed to be unphilosophical to inquire into first causes, scientists now occupy themselves with considering their physical effects. The field of scientific investigation is therefore bounded by physical nature. When once its limits are reached, enquiry must stop, and their work be recommenced. With all due respect to our learned men, they are like the squirrel upon its revolving wheel, for they are doomed to turn their "matter" over and over again. Science is a mighty potency, and it is not for us pigmies to question her. But the "scientists" are not themselves science embodied any more than the men of our planet are the planet itself. We have neither the right to demand, nor power to compel our "modern-day philosopher" to accept without challenge a geographical description of the dark side of the moon. But, if in some lunar cataclysm one of her inhabitants should be hurled thence into the attraction of our atmosphere, and land, safe and sound, at Dr. Carpenter's door, he would be indictable as recreant to professional duty if he should fail to set the physical problem at rest. For a man of science to refuse an opportunity to investigate any new phenomenon, whether it comes to him in the shape of a man from the moon, or a ghost from the Eddy homestead, is alike reprehensible. (5)"
"Scientists who believe they have adopted the Aristotelian method only because they creep when they do not run from demonstrated particulars to universals, glorify this method of inductive philosophy, and reject that of Plato, which they treat as unsubstantial. Professor Draper laments that such speculative mystics as Ammonius Saccas and Plotinus should have taken the place "of the severe geometers of the old museum." (Conflict between Religion and Science, ch. i.) He forgets that geometry, of all sciences the only one which proceeds from universals to particulars, was precisely the method employed by Plato in his philosophy. As long as exact science confines its observations to physical conditions and proceeds Aristotle-like, it certainly cannot fail. But notwithstanding that the world of matter is boundless for us, it still is finite; and thus materialism will turn forever in this vitiated circle, unable to soar higher than the circumference will permit. The cosmological theory of numerals which Pythagoras learned from the Egyptian hierophants, is alone able to reconcile the two units, matter and spirit, and cause each to demonstrate the other mathematically. (7) If the Pythagorean metempsychosis should be thoroughly explained and compared with the modern theory of evolution, it would be found to supply every "missing link" in the chain of the latter. But who of our scientists would consent to lose his precious time over the vagaries of the ancients.(9) The ancients knew more concerning certain sciences than our modern savants have yet discovered. Reluctant as many are to confess as much, it has been acknowledged by more than one scientist. (25) (Dr. A. Todd Thomson below)"
"Truly says Cudworth that the greatest ignorance of which our modern wiseacres accuse the ancients is their belief in the soul’s immortality. Like the old skeptic of Greece, our scientists—to use an expression of the same Dr. Cudworth—are afraid that if they admit spirits and apparitions they must admit a God too; and there is nothing too absurd, he adds, for them to suppose, in order to keep out the existence of God. The great body of ancient materialists, skeptical as they now seem to us, thought otherwise, and Epicurus, who rejected the soul's immortality, believed still in a God, and Demokritus fully conceded the reality of apparitions. The preexistence and God-like powers of the human spirit were believed in by most all the sages of ancient days. (251)"
"For, as planetary development, is as progressive as human or race evolution, the hour of the Pralaya's coming catches the series of worlds at successive stages of evolution; (i.e.) each has attained to some one of the periods of evolutionary progress— each stops there, until the outward impulse of the next manvantara sets it going from that very point—like a stopped time-piece rewound. p. 67 I will not enter here on the details of mineral and vegetable evolution, but I will notice only man—or—animal man. He starts downward as a simply spiritual entity—an unconscious seventh principle.... with the germs of the other six principles lying latent and dormant in him. Gathering solidity at every sphere—his six principles when passing through the worlds of effects, and his outward form in the worlds of causes (for these worlds or stages on the descending side we have other names) when he touches our planet he is but a glorious bunch of light upon a sphere itself yet pure and undefiled (for mankind and every living thing on it increase in their materiality with the planet). At that stage our globe is like the head of a newly born babe—soft and with undefined features, and man—an Adam before the breath of life Was breathed into his nostrils (to quote your own bungled up Scriptures for your better comprehension). p. 74"
"Man No. 1 makes his appearance at the apex of the circle of the spheres on sphere No. 1 after the completion of the seven rounds or periods of the two kingdoms (known to you) and thus he is said to be created on the eighth day (see Bible Chapter II; note verses 5 and 6 and think what is meant there by 'mist,' and verse 7 wherein Law the Universal great fashioner is termed 'God' by Christians and Jews, and understood as Evolution by Cabalists). During this first round 'animal man' runs, as you say, his cycle in a spiral. On the descending arc—whence he starts after the completion of the seventh round of animal life on his own individual seven rounds—he has to enter every sphere not as a lower animal as you understand it but as a lower man. Since during the cycle which preceded his round as a man he performed it as the highest type of animal. Your Lord God, says Bible, chapter I, verse 25 and 26—after having made all said: "Let us make man in our image," etc., and creates man an androgyne ape! (extinct on our planet) the highest intelligence in the animal kingdom and whose descendants you find in the anthropoids of to-day. p. 74"
"The present mankind is at its fourth round (mankind as a genus or a kind not a race nota bene) of the post-pralayan cycle of evolution; and as its various races, so the individual entities in them are unconsciously to themselves performing their local earthly seven-fold cycles—hence the vast difference in the degree of their intelligence, energy and so on. Now every individuality will be followed on the ascending arc by the law of retribution—Karma and Death accordingly. The perfect man or the entity which reached full perfection (each of his seven principles being matured), will not be re-born here. p 75"
"If men understood the plan of evolution, instead of working each for his own personal ends they would all join together as a community and work harmoniously for the good of all with mutual tolerance and forbearance. It is obvious that if this were done all of these evils would almost immediately cease or at any rate could very shortly be removed. p. 326"
"This is a school in which no pupil ever fails; every one must go on to the end. He has no choice as to that; but the length of time which he will take in qualifying himself for the higher examinations is left entirely to his own discretion. The wise pupil, seeing that school-life is not a thing in itself, but only a preparation... endeavours to comprehend as fully as possible the rules of his school, and shapes his life in accordance with them as closely as he can, so that no time may be lost in the learning of whatever lessons are necessary. He co-operates intelligently with the Teachers, and sets himself to do the maximum of work which is possible for him, in order that as soon as he can he may come of age and enter into his kingdom as a glorified ego."
"Theosophy explains to us the laws under which this school-life must be lived, and in that way gives a great advantage to its students. The first great law is that of evolution. Every man has to become a perfect man, to unfold to the fullest degree the divine possibilities which lie latent within him, for that unfoldment is the object of the entire scheme so far as he is concerned. The second great law under which this evolution is taking place is the law of cause and effect. There can be no effect without its cause, and every cause must produce its effect. They are in fact not two but one, for the effect is really part of the cause, and he who sets one in motion sets the other also. There is in Nature no such idea as that of reward or punishment, but only of cause and effect. Anyone can see this in connection with mechanics or chemistry..."
"The Existence of Perfected Men is one of the most important of the many new facts which Theosophy puts before us. It follows logically from the other great Theosophical teachings of karma and evolution by reincarnation. As we look round us we see men obviously at all stages of their evolution—many far below ourselves in development, and others who in one way or another are distinctly in advance of us. Since that is so, there may well be others who are very much further advanced; indeed, if men are steadily growing better and better through a long series of successive lives, tending towards a definite goal, there should certainly be some who have already reached that goal."
"Since in the course of our development we have become able to communicate with the Adepts, we have naturally asked them with all reverence how they have attained to that level. They tell us with one accord that no long time ago they stood where we stand now. They have risen out of the ranks of ordinary humanity, and they have told us that we in time to come shall be as they are now, and that the whole system is a graded evolution of Life extending up and up, further than we can follow it, even unto the Godhead itself. We find that as there are definite stages in the earlier evolution— the vegetable above the mineral, the animal above the vegetable and the human above the animal—so in the same way the human kingdom has a definite end, a boundary at which it passes into a kingdom distinctly higher than itself, that beyond men there are the Supermen."
"In the study of this system of evolution, we have learnt that there are in every man three great divisions—body, soul and spirit; and each of these is capable of further subdivision. That is the definition which was given by St. Paul two thousand years ago. The Spirit or Monad is the breath of God (for the word spirit means breath, from the Latin spiro), the divine spark which is truly the Man, though it may more accurately be described as hovering over man as we know him. The scheme of its evolution is that it should descend into matter, and through its descent obtain definiteness and accuracy in material detail."
"Indeed, if I may be allowed the anachronism, the Hindus were Spinozists more than two thousand years before the advent of Spinoza, and Darwinians many centuries before Darwin, and Evolutionists many centuries before the Doctrine of Evolution was accepted by the scientists of the present age, and before any word like ’Evolution’ existed in any language of the world."
"Evolution proceeds on three general lines: the spiritual, the mental-emotional,and the astral-vital; and the physical body is the channel through which all these in wrapped capacities, tendencies, and powers, express themselves on the physical plane, if the environment at any particular moment or at any particular passage of time be appropriate and fit for the expression of this or that or of some other such attribute, power, or faculty. The combination of these two — the inner urge, the drive, and a fit and appropriate environment or field— means the evolving, the coming out into manifestation, the expression, of those inner forces or powers. As is evident, this includes a far wider and vaster conception of evolution than any that has hitherto been entertained in the ranks of scientific researchers."
"When we believe that science or religion "has the truth," we stop our speculations. While still referring to the theory of evolution, science accepts it as a fact, about existence, and therefore any speculation that threatens that theory becomes almost heretical."
"I shall finish my address to woman with a page from The Teaching of Life: “When nations started disunity, the result was self-destruction. And only a return to balance can stop this self-destruction. Humanity does not apply the principles of creativeness in right proportion and thus violates the foundations of Being. When by the law of the Cosmic Magnet the lower forms are subordinated to the higher, this concerns only the energies which should be transmuted. But when the Origins are called to create and give life, it is impossible to remove one of the Origins without self-destruction. Therefore, humanity will start its real evolution only when both Origins are affirmed in life. All principles which do not include the understanding of the dual Origin can only increase the lack of balance. Humanity must understand the law of the Cosmic Magnet. Much can be done for evolution by the realization of the grandeur of the dual Origin which is the basis of Life.”"
"Its Humanity develops fully only in the Fourth—our Fourth—our present Round. Up to this fourth Life-Cycle, it is referred to as 'humanity' only for lack of a more appropriate term. Like the grub which becomes chrysalis and butterfly, Man, or rather that which becomes man, passes through all the forms and kingdoms during the first Round and through all the human shapes during the two following Rounds... During the three Rounds to come, Humanity, like the globe [planet] on which it lives, will be ever tending to reassume its primeval form, that of a Dhyan-Chohanic Host. Man tends to become a God and then—GOD, like every other atom in the Universe..."
"People often talk about Macrocosm and microcosm, and at the same time, do not see their main foundations. They do not admit the existence of the primary energy, the Supermundane World and the spiritual basis of everything. What kind of Macrocosm could it be without basic foundations? It would be a poor ruin and the microcosm would be a pitifully deformed creature.... Some insightful scientists sense that even in their most brilliant discoveries something is lacking. They understand inwardly that the laws discovered by them are only partial and can be extended to new boundaries. But, since from their early childhood no one ever spoke to them about the law of the spirit, they do not find within themselves the courage to seek unlimited knowledge. Examples can be cited of serious researchers who concealed their broad observations. They were afraid to go beyond the boundaries of their limited science. In secret they read the works of great thinkers but would never admit to their own new paths. (934)"
"Nothing compares with the light wave. Even the very best electricity, even the bluest, yields eight thousand times less light than a ray of the sun. Soon the study of photoplasm will impart a new direction to methods of work. One can see how the pollen of photoplasm surges forth and conveys through tiny funnels the treasure received, carrying it into the pores of the skin. Not only the spaciousness of work areas but also proper access to light needs to be studied. The sun’s rays should be appreciated as a universal treasure. A scientist who studies the topics above will also easily come to understand the flow of rays from other luminaries. 356."
"When people say, “This is the language of my father,” ask them: “Are the worn-out shoes of your father still usable?” Every science is in need of new formulas. Likewise, the certain periods of life bring new expressions. One must rejoice at each new expression. Nothing is worse than the embrace of a corpse!... Seek renovation in all of life. 141."
"Should not a true understanding of life promote care for the future along with the present? This is the immediate duty of every scientist. Until now scientists have dealt with life as finite — is it not now their mission to see life as extending into Infinity? 553."
"The conditions of new scientific achievements must correspond to the demands of the future. If scientists would understand that the manifestation of continuous expansion underlies the growth of science, there would be no place for criminal antagonism. Each scientist who understands the law of the expansion of consciousness has already smashed the wall of prejudice. 427."
"Religion and science must not be considered separate in their essential nature. Subtle study of matter and the atom leads to the conclusion that vital energy is not electricity but Fire. Thus science and religion merge upon a single principle. Matter is affirmed as a fiery substance, and no thoughtful spirit will deny that the higher force is Fire. Science cannot destroy the concept of the divinity of Fire, nor can religion impose an interdiction on the subtle analyses made by science. In this way, then, the understanding and the harmony of the concepts of religion and science are affirmed. A subtle parallel can be drawn between science and religion, which will reveal all the higher stages. Therefore, it is so important that scholars should be in possession of subtle occult receptivity. 60."
"The conditions of new scientific achievements must correspond to the demands of the future. If scientists would understand that the manifestation of continuous expansion underlies the growth of science, there would be no place for criminal antagonism. But We do not wish to upset their achievements — only to broaden them. Each scientist who understands the law of the expansion of consciousness has already smashed the wall of prejudice. 427."
"A certain scientist speaks of the mistakes in the books of H. P. Blavatsky. I would like to ask him whether he has calculated as accurately the mistakes in the books of the past and contemporary scientists. In The Secret Doctrine many pages are full of quotations of the contradictory opinions and conclusions of the scientists and all of their inflated theories and hypotheses. And as for the person who repeats verbatim the words of the scientist mentioned above, I feel like saying, "Do not be a parrot!" Check this yourself, and if you have a chance, compare with the true TEACHING; but it is not advisable to cast into space something not verified by one's consciousness."
"One outstanding American scientist when asked how he pictured heaven gave a fine answer, "It is what scientists call the true world, and our earthly world is but its reflection." (One could have added—a dreadfully distorted reflection.) This is a truly Eastern explanation. Who knows, perhaps this scientist, alone in his bedroom with closed door, read The Secret Doctrine and similar works of the great Carriers of Light, who, even now, are so cruelly persecuted by ignorant representatives of our biped kingdom. Verily, the extinguishers of Light do not deserve to be called men; they are on an even lower level than the animals."
"The Lord let the house of a brute to the soul of a man, And the man said, "Am I your debtor?" And the Lord—"Not yet: but make it as clean as you can, And then I will let you a better.""
"Is there evil but on earth? Or pain in every peopled sphere? Well, be grateful for the sounding watchword "Evolution" here."
"Evolution ever climbing after some ideal good And Reversion ever dragging Evolution in the mud."
"One morning just after sunrise: The first flower ever to appear on the planet opens up to receive the rays of the sun. Prior to this momentous event that heralds an evolutionary transformation in the life of plants, the planet had already been covered in vegetation for millions of years... Much later, those delicate and fragrant beings we call flowers would come to play an essential part in the evolution of consciousness of another species. Humans would increasingly be drawn to and fascinated by them... They provided inspiration to countless artists, poets, and mystics... Jesus tells us to contemplate the flowers and learn from then how to live. The Buddha is said to have given a “silent sermon” once during which he held up a flower and gazed at it. After a while, one of those present, a monk called Mahakasyapa, began to smile... Seeing beauty in a flower could awaken humans, however briefly, to the beauty that is an essential part of their own innermost being, their true nature."
"The first recognition of beauty was one of the most significant events in the evolution of human consciousness. The feelings of joy and love are intrinsically connected to that recognition. Without our fully realizing it, flowers would become for us an expression in form of that which is most high, most sacred, and ultimately formless within ourselves. Flowers... would become like messengers from another realm, like a bridge between the world of physical forms and the formless. They not only had a scent that was delicate and pleasing to humans, but also brought a fragrance from the realm of spirit."
"The lives and writings of the mystics of all great religions bear witness to religious experiences of great intensity, in which considerable changes are effected in the quality of consciousness. Profound absorption in prayer or meditation can bring about a deepening and widening, a brightening and intensifying, of consciousness, accompanied by a transporting feeling of rapture and bliss. The contrast between these states and normal conscious awareness is so great that the mystic believes his experiences to be manifestations of the divine; and given the contrast, this assumption is quite understandable. Mystical experiences are also characterized by a marked reduction or temporary exclusion of the multiplicity of sense-perceptions and restless thoughts. This relative unification of mind is then interpreted as a union or communion with the One God. ... The psychological facts underlying those religious experiences are accepted by the Buddhist and are well-known to him; but he carefully distinguishes the experiences themselves from the theological interpretations imposed upon them. ... The meditator will not be overwhelmed by any uncontrolled emotions and thoughts evoked by his singular experience, and will thus be able to avoid interpretations of that experience not warranted by the facts. Hence a Buddhist meditator, while benefiting from the refinement of consciousness he has achieved, will be able to see these meditative experiences for what they are; and he will further know that they are without any abiding substance that could be attributed to a deity manifesting itself to his mind. Therefore, the Buddhist’s conclusion must be that the highest mystical states do not provide evidence for the existence of a personal God or an impersonal godhead."
"Looking around us, what do we find? A continuous change.... This is what is called evolution. It is an old, old idea, as old as human society, only it is getting fresher and fresher as human knowledge is progressing. .. This coming out of the fine and becoming gross, simply changing the arrangements of its parts, as it were, is what in modern times called evolution. This is very true, perfectly true; we see it in our lives. No rational man can possibly quarrel with these evolutionists ... The theory of evolution, which is the foundation of almost all the Indian schools of thought, has now made its way into the physical science of Europe."
"The normal microbial colonization of sites in the body's tissues by certain bacteria requires that the bacteria first bind to extracellular secreted constituents, cell-surface membranes, or cell matrixes. This study examines two interactions of a variety of bacteria with the cell matrix noncollagenous proteins fibronectin and laminin and with basement membrane (Type IV) collagen. Adherence of bacteria to matrix proteins coated on tissue culture wells was examined with the use of radiolabeled bacteria. Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus pyogenes, and Streptococcus sanguis bound well to fibronectin, laminin, and Type IV collagen, whereas a variety of gram-negative organisms did not bind. The interaction of soluble laminin, fibronectin, and Type IV collagen with bacteria was monitored by nephelometry with the use of a platelet aggregometer. S. aureus aggregated in response to fibronectin, laminin, or Type IV collagen. In contrast, gram-negative organisms did not aggregate with these proteins. It appears that fibronectin, laminin, and Type IV collagen can bind and aggregate certain gram-positive bacteria, and this binding is dependent on the surface characteristics of the organism. These adhesion molecules may play a role in the normal colonization of sites by microorganisms and in invasion during infections."
"Anti-laminin antibodies were sought for in the serum of workers exposed to mercury vapour (Hg, n = 58), lead (Pb, n = 38) or cadmium (Cd, n = 47). Thirty-one workers removed from Cd exposure for an average of eight years were also examined. Compared with control workers matched for age and socio-economic status, the prevalence of circulating anti-laminin antibodies was not increased in workers exposed to Hg (mean duration of exposure: 7.9 years and mean urinary excretion of Hg: 72 μg/g creatinine) nor in those exposed to Pb (mean duration of exposure: 10.6 years and mean Pb levels in blood: 535 μg/l). In contrast, anti-laminin antibodies were significantly more prevalent in Cd-exposed workers whose urinary Cd exceeded 20 μg/g creatinine. This observation was made in both currently exposed workers and in workers removed from Cd exposure (mean duration of exposure: 9.4 and 24.6 years and mean urinary Cd: 7.8 and 13.4 μg/g creatinine respectively). These autoantibodies were found in Cd workers with normal renal function as well as in those with increased proteinuria."
"The major glycoprotein component of animal cell basement membranes, laminin, is involved in a variety of cellular activities, including cell adhesion, differentiation, and mito- genesis, that are mediated by the interaction of laminin with specific cell-surfacereceptors. A laminin-binding protein with an apparent molecular mass of 68 to 72 kD was first char- acterized in mammalian tumor cells and considered as “the laminin receptor” (Liotta et al., 1986; Wewer et al., 1986). Severa1 putative cDNA clones encoding this protein have been isolated from mammals (Yow et al., 1988; Rao et al., 1989; Van den Ouweland et al., 1989; Grosso et al., 1991). A11 the clones contained an open reading frame coding for a highly conserved polypeptide with a calculated molecular mass of 33 kD. Independently, a cDNA encoding an identical polypeptide was isolated from mouse tumor cells (Makrides et al., 1988), but the expressed protein, named factor p40, was shown to be a component of the translation machinery (Auth and Brawerman, 1992). Recently, DNA-deduced amino acid sequences exhibiting homology with the previ- ously characterized 33-kD ”laminin receptor” were identified from hydra (Keppel and Schaller, 1991), Drosophila (M.B. Melnick, T.B. Chou, and N. Perrimon, accession No. M90422), and yeast (J. Miles and T.G. Formosa, accession No. M88277)."
"Extracellular matrix protein laminin binds specifically to yeast forms of Paracoccidioides brasiliensis and enhances adhesion of the fungus to the surface of epithelial Madin-Darby canine kidney cells in vitro. Immunoblotting of fungal extracts showed that the gp43 glycoprotein is responsible for adhesion. This was confirmed by binding assays using purified gp43, with a Kd of 3.7 nM. The coating of P. brasiliensis yeast forms with laminin before injection into hamster testicles enhanced the fungus virulence, resulting in a faster and more severe granulomatous disease. These results indicate that interaction of fungi with extracellular matrix elements may constitute a basis for the evolution of fungal infection toward regional spreading and dissemination."
"Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a major human pathogen known to infect tissues that have been previously damaged in some way. In wounded human respiratory tissues, P. aeruginosa cells were found attached to exposed basement membranes following epithelial denudation, suggesting that the affinity for extracellular matrix proteins may account for the bacterium's opportunistic character. By using microtiter wells coated with different P. aeruginosa strains, we demonstrated that laminin binds to both colonizing bacterial strains, isolated from asymptomatic carriers, and strains isolated from infected patients. Binding of soluble laminin to piliated P. aeruginosa PAK and to the nonpiliated isogenic mutant PAK/p—was shown to be saturable. Binding of laminin to the piliated PAK strain was not different from binding to the nonpiliated PAK/p—strain but was significantly higher than binding to the avirulent, nonpiliated PAK-N1 rpoN mutant. By transmission electron microscopy, we localized the laminin-binding sites on a loose material in the outermost layer of the bacteria. Western immunoblotting results suggested that 57- and 59-kDa nonpilus adhesins from the microbial outer membranes account for the binding of P. aeruginosa to laminin. We speculate that bacterial affinity for laminin may be of biological significance in the pathogenesis of P. aeruginosa infection of injured tissues."
"Retinal explants from embryonic or adult mice were placed on laminin or merosin substrates and the outgrowth of optic fibers was assayed under serum-free conditions. Both substrates strongly promoted outgrowth. A blocking antibody to the β1/β3 integrin subunits completely blocked laminin-dependent growth of embryonic optic fibers but had no detectable effect on adult fibers. Similarly, a blocking antibody against the main neurite-promoting region within the globular domain of the E8 fragment of laminin inhibited growth of embryonic fibers but had no effect on adult optic fibers. The β1 integrin subunit was identified immunohistochemically on both embryonic and adult fibers. These findings indicate that adult fibers have lost the β1 function which dominates laminin-dependent growth in embryonic fibers but express a receptor for laminin-dependent growth that is not detectable in embryonic fibers. These findings suggest that there are intrinsic differences between embryonic and adult optic fibers that may have implications for regenerative failure in the central nervous system of adult mammals."
"Adhesion of Aspergillus fumigatus, the causative agent of human aspergillosis, to the extracellular matrix protein laminin has been previously demonstrated. This study investigated the expression of laminin receptors during swelling of conidia, a step leading to germination and subsequent colonization of tissues. Scanning electron microscopy showed that the laminin binding sites were distributed over the external rodlet layer of resting conidia. During swelling, the characteristic rodlet layer progressively disintegrated and conidia surrounded by a smooth cell wall layer appeared. Flow cytometry using fluorescein isothiocyanate-conjugated laminin demonstrated that expression of laminin receptors at the surface of conidia was swelling dependent. Resting conidia expressed high levels of laminin receptors on their surface. A gradual decrease of laminin binding was then observed as swelling occurred, reaching a minimum for 4-h-swollen conidia. This correlated with a loss of adherence of swollen conidia to laminin immobilized on microtiter plates. Trypsin pretreatment of conidia reduced laminin binding. Analysis by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and ligand blotting with laminin identified in a cell wall extract a major 72-kDa cell wall glycoprotein which binds laminin. Thus, one of the initial events in the host colonization may be the recognition of basement membrane laminin by this 72-kDa cell wall surface component."
"Laminins, heterotrimers of α, β, and γ chains, are prominent constituents of basal laminae (BLs) throughout the body. Previous studies have shown that laminins affect both myogenesis and synaptogenesis in skeletal muscle. Here we have studied the distribution of the 10 known laminin chains in muscle and peripheral nerve, and assayed the ability of several heterotrimers to affect the outgrowth of motor axons. ... we show that motor axons respond in distinct ways to different laminin heterotrimers: they grow freely between laminin 1 (α1β1γ1) and laminin 2, fail to cross from laminin 4 to laminin 1, and stop upon contacting laminin 11. The ability of laminin 11 to serve as a stop signal for growing axons explains, in part, axonal behaviors observed at developing and regenerating synapses in vivo."
"We have previously demonstrated that Staphylococcus aureus, a highly invasive bacteria, presents a 52-kDa surface protein that mediates its binding to laminin. In order to better characterize this receptor, we excised this putative laminin receptor from two-dimensional (2-D) PAGE and used it as antigen for raising a mouse hyperimmune serum which was for screening an S. aureus expression library. A single clone of 0.3 kb was obtained, and its sequence revealed 100% homology with S. aureus α-enolase. Moreover, amino acid sequencing of the 52-kDa protein eluted from the 2-D gel indicated its molecular homology with α−enolase, an enzyme that presents a high evolutionary conservation among species. In parallel, monoclonal antibodies raised against the S. aureus 52-kDa band also recognized yeast α-enolase in western blot analysis. These monoclonal antibodies were also able to promote capture of iodine-labeled bacteria when adsorbed to a solid phase, and this capture was inhibited by the addition of excess rabbit muscle α-enolase. Finally, the cell surface localization of S. aureus α-enolase was further confirmed by flow cytometry. Hence, α-enolase might play a critical role in the pathogenesis of S. aureus by allowing its adherence to laminin-containing extracellular matrix."
"Mutations of LAMB2 typically cause autosomal recessive Pierson syndrome, a disorder characterized by congenital nephrotic syndrome, ocular and neurologic abnormalities, but may occasionally be associated with milder or oligosymptomatic disease variants. LAMB2 encodes the basement membrane protein laminin β2 which is incorporated in specific heterotrimeric laminin isoforms and has an expression pattern corresponding to the pattern of organ manifestations in Pierson syndrome. Herein we review all previously reported and several novel LAMB2 mutations in relation to the associated phenotype in patients from 39 unrelated families. The majority of disease-causing LAMB2 mutations are truncating, consistent with the hypothesis that loss of laminin β2 function is the molecular basis of Pierson syndrome. While truncating mutations are distributed across the entire gene, missense mutations are clearly clustered in the N-terminal LN domain, which is important for intermolecular interactions. There is an association of missense mutations and small in frame deletions with a higher mean age at onset of renal disease and with absence of neurologic abnormalities, thus suggesting that at least some of these may represent hypomorphic alleles. Nevertheless, genotype alone does not appear to explain the full range of clinical variability, and therefore hitherto unidentified modifiers are likely to exist."
"Laminins are large molecular weight glycoproteins constituted by the assembly of three disulfide-linked polypeptides, the α, β and γ chains. The human genome encodes 11 genetically distinct laminin chains. Structurally, laminin chains differ by the number, size and organization of a few constitutive domains, endowing the various members of the laminin family with common and unique important functions. In particular, laminins are indispensable building blocks for cellular networks physically bridging the intracellular and extracellular compartments and relaying signals critical for cellular behavior, and for extracellular polymers determining the architecture and the physiology of basement membranes."
"Laminin-211 is a major constituent of the skeletal muscle basement membrane. It stabilizes skeletal muscle and influences signal transduction events from the myomatrix to the muscle cell. Mutations in the gene encoding the α2 chain of laminin-211 lead to congenital muscular dystrophy type 1A (MDC1A), a life-threatening disease characterized by severe hypotonia, progressive muscle weakness, and joint contractures. Common complications include severely impaired motor ability, respiratory failure, and feeding difficulties. Several adequate animal models for laminin-α2 chain deficiency exist and analyses of different MDC1A mouse models have led to a significant improvement in our understanding of MDC1A pathogenesis. Importantly, the animal models have been indispensable tools for the preclinical development of new therapeutic approaches for laminin-α2 chain deficiency, highlighting a number of important disease driving mechanisms that can be targeted by pharmacological approaches."
"Laminins are composed of three polypeptide chains, designated as α, β, and γ. The C-terminal region of laminin heterotrimers, containing coiled-coil regions, short tails, and laminin globular (LG) domains, is necessary and sufficient for binding to integrins, which are the major laminin receptor class. Laminin recognition by integrins critically requires the α chain LG domains and a glutamic acid residue of the γ chain at the third position from the C-terminus. Furthermore, the C-terminal region of the β chain contains a short amino acid sequence that modulates laminin affinity for integrins. Thus, all three of the laminin chains act cooperatively to facilitate integrin binding. Mammals possess 5 α (α1–5), 3 β (β1–3), and 3 γ (γ1–3) chains, combinations of which give rise to 16 distinct laminin isoforms. Each isoform is expressed in a tissue-specific and developmental stage-specific manner, exerting its functions through binding of integrins."
"... We here postulate that basement membrane laminin is the key antigen in driving psoriasis, inducing a T cell-mediated autoimmune response. For laminin to be considered as the key autoantigen in psoriasis, it would be reasonable to expect the following to be demonstrable: (1) that autoantigens are present in psoriatic inflammation; (2) that basement membrane laminin is perturbed in involved and uninvolved skin, and that some of the pathological changes associated with psoriasis could be predicted as a sequel to this; (3) that disruption of the basement membrane is among the earliest events in the evolution of psoriatic lesions; (4) that as streptococcal pharyngitis is the most clearly defined event to trigger or exacerbate psoriasis, then a T cell-mediated autoimmune response to laminin should be anticipated as a potential sequelae to streptococcal pharyngitis; (5) that T cells in psoriasis can be shown to react to peptides with homology to laminin; (6) that HLACw6, as the most closely related gene associated with psoriasis and which is involved in antigen expression, should be preferentially expressed within lesional psoriasis towards the basement membrane, together with other proximal associated immune activity; and (7) that there is some association between antilaminin pemphigoid, a humorally mediated autoimmune disease to skin basement membrane laminin, and psoriasis."
"Integrins play an important role in cell adhesion by linking the cytoskeleton of cells to components in the extracellular matrix. In this capacity, integrins cooperate with different cell surface receptors, including growth factor receptors and G-protein coupled receptors, to regulate intracellular signaling pathways that control cell polarization, spreading, migration, survival, and gene expression. A distinct subfamily of molecules in the integrin family of adhesion receptors is formed by receptors that mediate cell adhesion to laminins, major components of the basement membrane that lie under clusters of cells or surround them, separating them from other cells and/or adjacent connective tissue. During the past decades, many studies have provided evidence for a role of laminin-binding integrins in tumorigenesis, and both tumor-promoting and suppressive activities have been identified."
"Laminin-α2-related congenital muscular dystrophy (LAMA2-CMD) is a devastating neuromuscular disease caused by mutations in the LAMA2 gene. These mutations result in the complete absence or truncated expression of the laminin-α2 chain. The α2-chain is a major component of the laminin-211 and laminin-221 isoforms, the predominant laminin isoforms in healthy adult skeletal muscle. Mutations in this chain result in progressive skeletal muscle degeneration as early as neonatally. Laminin-211/221 is a ligand for muscle cell receptors integrin-α7β1 and α-dystroglycan. LAMA2 mutations are correlated with integrin-α7β1 disruption in skeletal muscle."
"The research on laminin α2 chain-deficient congenital muscular dystrophy (LAMA2-CMD) advanced rapidly in the last few decades, largely due to availability of good mouse models for the disease and a strong interest in preclinical studies from scientists all over the world. These mouse models continue to provide a solid platform for understanding the LAMA2-CMD pathology. In addition, they enable researchers to test laborious, necessary routines, but also the most creative scientific approaches in order to design therapy for this devastating disorder."
"The capacity of pathogenic microorganisms to adhere to host cells and avoid clearance by the host immune system is the initial and most decisive step leading to infections. Bacteria have developed different strategies to attach to diverse host surface structures. One important strategy is the adhesion to extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins (e.g., collagen, fibronectin, laminin) that are highly abundant in connective tissue and basement membranes. Gram-negative bacteria express variable outer membrane proteins (adhesins) to attach to the host and to initiate the process of infection. Understanding the underlying molecular mechanisms of bacterial adhesion is a prerequisite for targeting this interaction by “anti-ligands” to prevent colonization or infection of the host. Future development of such “anti-ligands” (specifically interfering with bacteria-host matrix interactions) might result in the development of a new class of anti-infective drugs for the therapy of infections caused by multidrug-resistant Gram-negative bacteria. This review summarizes our current knowledge about the manifold interactions of adhesins expressed by Gram-negative bacteria with ECM proteins and the use of this information for the generation of novel therapeutic antivirulence strategies."
"In adult rat testes, the basement membrane is structurally constituted by laminin and collagen chains that lay adjacent to the blood-testis barrier (BTB). It plays a crucial scaffolding role to support spermatogenesis. On the other hand, laminin-333 comprised of laminin-α3/ß3/γ3 at the apical ES (ectoplasmic specialization, a testis-specific cell-cell adherens junction at the Sertoli cell-step 8–19 spermatid interface) expressed by spermatids serves as a unique cell adhesion protein that forms an adhesion complex with α6ß1-integrin expressed by Sertoli cells to support spermiogenesis. Emerging evidence has shown that biologically active fragments are derived from basement membrane and apical ES laminin chains through proteolytic cleavage mediated by matrix metalloproteinase 9 (MMP9) and MMP2, respectively. Two of these laminin bioactive fragments: one from the basement membrane laminin-α2 chain called LG3/4/5-peptide, and one from the apical ES laminin-γ3 chain known as F5-peptide, are potent regulators that modify cell adhesion function at the Sertoli-spermatid interface (i.e., apical ES) but also at the Sertoli cell-cell interface designated basal ES at the blood-testis barrier (BTB) with contrasting effects. These findings not only highlight the physiological significance of these bioactive peptides that create a local regulatory network to support spermatogenesis, they also open a unique area of research."
"Laminin, a non-collagenous glycoprotein present in the brain extracellular matrix, helps to maintain blood–brain barrier (BBB) integrity and regulation. Neuroinflammation can compromise laminin structure and function, increasing BBB permeability. ... We found that laminin may be a good indicator of BBB overall structural integrity, although changes in expression are dependent on the pathologic or experimental model used. In ischemic stroke, permanent vascular damage correlates with increased laminin expression (β and γ subunits), while transient damage correlates with reduced laminin expression (α subunits). Laminin was reduced in traumatic brain injury and cerebral hemorrhage studies but increased in multiple sclerosis and status epilepticus studies. Despite these observations, there is limited knowledge about the role played by different subunits or isoforms (such as 411 or 511) of laminin in maintaining structural architecture of the BBB under neuroinflammation."
"Blood vessels in the central nervous system (CNS) are unique in having high electrical resistance and low permeability, which creates a selective barrier protecting sensitive neural cells within the CNS from potentially harmful components in the blood. The molecular basis of this blood–brain barrier (BBB) is found at the level of endothelial adherens and tight junction protein complexes, extracellular matrix (ECM) components of the vascular basement membrane (BM), and the influence of adjacent pericytes and astrocyte endfeet. Current evidence supports the concept that instructive cues from the BBB ECM are not only important for the development and maturation of CNS blood vessels, but they are also essential for the maintenance of vascular stability and BBB integrity. In this review, we examine the contributions of one of the most abundant ECM proteins, laminin to BBB integrity, and summarize how genetic deletions of different laminin isoforms or their integrin receptors impact BBB development, maturation, and stability."
"Much of the Hindu attitude and approach to mathematics was certainly conveyed to Western Europe through the Arabs. The algebraic methods formerly considered to have been invented by Al-Khowarizmi can now be seen to stem from Hindu sources."
"I have decided first to consider the majority of the authors who up to now have written about [algebra], so that I can fill in what they have missed out. They are very many, and among them Mohammed ibn Musa [Al-Khwarizmi], an Arab, is believed to be the first [...] I believe that the word “algebra” came from him, because some years ago, Brother Luca [Pacioli] of Borgo San Sepolcro of the Minorite order, having set himself the task of writing on this science, as much in Latin as in Italian, said that the word “algebra” was Arabic [...] and that the science came from the Arabs. Many who have written after him have believed and said likewise, but in recent years, a Greek work on this discipline has been discovered in the Library of our Lord in the Vatican, composed by a certain Diophantus of Alexandria, a Greek author [...] Antonio Maria Pazzi and I have translated five books (of the seven) [...] In this work we have found that he cites the Indian authors many times, and thus I have been made aware that this discipline belonged to the Indians before the Arabs."
"As in the rest of mathematical science, so in trigonometry, were the Arabs pupils of the Hindus […]"
"That he [Al-Khwarizmi] should have borrowed from Diophantus is not at all probable; … It is far more probable that the Arabs received their first knowledge of algebra from the Hindus, who furnished them with the decimal notation of numerals, and with various important points of mathematical and astronomical information."
"However, it is not unlikely that the Arabs, who received from the Indians the numeral figures (which the Greeks knew not), did from them also receive the use of them, and many profound speculations concerning them, which neither Latins nor Greeks know, till that now of late we have learned them from thence. From the Indians also they might learn their algebra, rather than from Diophantus."
"By comparison, the Sanskrit and Greek traditions were absorbed in a rather piecemeal fashion. In the one case there was a fragmentary rendering of Hindu literature and scientific works (channeled through Sind, until the Abbasids lost their grip on the province). Indian numerals, arithmetic, mathematics, philosophy and logic, mysticism, ethics, statecraft, military science, medicine, pharmacology, toxicology (works on snakes (sarpavidya) and poison (visavidya)), veterinary science, eroticism, astronomy, astrology and palmistry were transmit ted. Chess and chausar games were brought from India. We have a reference by an Arabic author from Andalusia to an Indian book on tunes and melodies. Indian fables and literary works are reflected in the Thousand and One Nights. Al-Biruni, before he came to India, had some Indian works in his library which were translated into Arabic under the early Abbasid caliph Al-Mansur (754-775) and the Barmakid vazirs of Harun ar-Rashid; amongst these were the Brahmasiddhanta or Sindhind and the Pahcatantra. When, in 1020, Al-Biruni began his study of Indian astronomy from the Sanskrit originals he was to find that the early works were still held in the same high esteem.13 To an appreciable extent, Sanskrit philosophy had already come to the attention of the Sasanid Persians and its influence in the Islamic world was sometimes mediated by Sasanid schools. ‘It was recognized among the Khusros (Akasira) of Persia that wisdom (hikma) originally came from al-Hind’.14 In Islam however Indian influences submerged under the tide of Greek and Hellenistic learning, falsafa and science, from the ninth century onwards."
"I could have restricted myself in this book to only the most sober physical calculations. But in order to create the necessary respect for my idea (otherwise a realization of this idea is unthinkable), I felt impelled to draw a few pictures of the future... and I have set up some fantastic claims. Naturally, here also, I have said nothing that might not be possible by present scientific standards, and I will now show that I am also on completely scientific ground with this idea of a reflector."
"A rocket with the necessary equipment is sent aloft and there given a lateral propulsion which puts it into an elliptical orbit around the earth. I will call this rotation about the earth "revolution". Major axis perpendicular to the ecliptic, perigee in the south 1,000 km above the earth's surface, apogee in the north 5,000 km above the earth's surface."
"The miniature facets are adjusted by hand... It is sufficient to simply let the sun shine on the miniature reflector and then turn the facets so that the reflected light strikes those parts of the globe corresponding to the region to be irradiated."
"Whether we must seek to constantly reflect the light on the earth vertically or are, in fact, able to is another question. I will assume that we can in order to study the single elements which determine the path of the reflector. (s are also used in calculations, although it is known that they do not exist.)"
"In the south... the main task of large reflectors... of making polar regions arable, is not feasible. If the glaciers of Antarctica were melted, the level of the ocean would rise uncomfortably (6-8 m). Hopefully, by then man will be sensible enough at least to leave a cold zone for the protection of nature."
"So for the southern hemisphere and the tropics there would only remain the illumination of large cities at night and perhaps supplying solar plants with more light as well as the influencing of the weather."
"In the north, on the other hand, outside of , there are no such masses of land-ice (however much ice there may be, no danger arises from melting ice that floats in the water), and the glaciers of Greenland will remain because if their high location and because there will be more snowfall on Greenland if the polar sea melts."
"The cultural tasks are... possible to fulfill. For example, if a sea route to the ports of Siberia is to be kept ice-free, a route must only be chosen that runs approximately in the direction of the winter wind from the Gulf Stream... light is thrown on a relatively narrow and short strip running from east to west... to the extent that the sky clouds over at this place. ...[T]he direction of the wind and ...the earth's rotation coincide. Hereby the earth always rotates as we need it ...By the time the light patch has passed along the whole stretch, the fog at the beginning will either have settled or been blown away... Then one can begin at the beginning again, Since the clouds hold the heat above the shipping lane... a reflector 100 km in diameter is... sufficient."
"Enough of this. They are only dreams of the future. Bold ones? Perhaps, but we have already experienced... bolder ideas. Who would have believed in 1894 that, a few years later, one would see through a person by means of Roentgen rays? PHILANDER's statement (Medical Fairy Tales), "Man will be made transparent like a jelly-fish", was bolder than this dream of the future; that required finding something completely new, while here we are dealing with laws of nature already known.—Accomplishing these things will certainly require the conversion of enormous energies. But were not hundred times greater sums of money expended during the World War? In one year, the nations of Europe spend more on smoking and drinking than the whole sodium reflector would cost. War and narcotics are quite unnecessary things, yet more money is spent on them than on something useful. Should not mankind, in an exceptional case, also save something for constructive work?"
"Ref: Philander, Medizinische Märchen"
"shields for planets such as Venus or Mars would... be large, complex structures requiring vast amounts of lunar or asteroidal material... and long-range transportation... One... stepping stone to understanding and mastering the technologies and processes... would be the construction of a shield to offset the greenhouse effect on... Earth. Such... would not require interplanetary capabilities."
"The time required for the removal of... [[w:Greenhouse gases|[greenhouse] gases]] from the atmosphere by natural processes is... uncertain: current estimates are several centuries. The uncertainties... [have] led to calls for... restrictions on the generation of greenhouse gases. ...The existence of a possible technical solution could... have a major short-term impact in influencing short term consumption restrictions, even if the solution could not be implemented until the next century."
"A conceptually simple method for offsetting the greenhouse radiation trapping effects would be to decrease the solar heating by the use of a space-based solar shield."
"Approximately 2% of the solar radiation reaching Earth must be blocked to offset the predicted greenhouse trapping in the next century."
"An ideal opaque shield would scatter the Earth bound solar energy into diffuse infrared energy."
"The shield may also be transparent and simply scatter the visible photons away from the Earth. ...A glass shield may act as a prism to deflect the sunlight away from the planet in accordance with ."
"can be formed into glass for either a transparent or opaque shield."
"The glass may be launched to the shield location by a . A number of studies have indicated that mass drivers are feasible and economical for launching unmanned payloads from the lunar surface. If the glass sheet is sufficiently flexible it may be formed into sheet on the lunar surface and launched in rolls."
"Oberth... began the book Men in Outer Space: New Projects for Rockets and Space Travel... written in the style accessible to the general reader. ...Published in 1955 in German, it was translated into English, French, Italian, Dutch, and even in Croatian! ...Oberth's new book was indeed "cosmic," and this gave it a cardinal distinction from his classic book of the 1920s. ...A supplemental chapter ...is devoted to "s," a theme which occupied Oberth all his life. A short description ...is already present in the 1923 book. In 1929, when he published his fundamental work, Ways to Space Travel, he included a much more comprehensive description... in the chapter... "Space Stations." ...[A]lmost the entire chapter is devoted to space mirrors. In the 1954 book... a new varient... is presented. Eventually in Bucharest in 1978, an entire book (in German) was devoted to this theme. ...[T]he primary purpose for the space mirror would today be called an ecological one ...At the time ...there was ...no robotics technology, and he assumed all the work after ...erection ...would ...be carried out manually by astronauts."
"[A] giant net (similar to a trawl) would be erected in outer space, constructed in a hexagonal mesh pattern. This net would be stretched out and a tension sufficient to rotate the entire net would be maintained by . The rotation would be begun by special rockets and... continue because it was in a vacuum. The diameter of each hexagon would be about 10 kilometers, and the entire mirror would have a circular disk shape with a diameter of about 100 to 200 kilometers. Within each hexagon, a round mirror approximately 10 kilometers in diameter, would be installed. ...[Each] single mirror would be capable of being [independently] tilted... initiated by... electric s."
"Such a mirror, he asserted, could not only light up the cities at night... but could also have a decisive influence on weather and climate."
"[T]he ice in the usable areas of the north polar seas could be melted... to navigate the northern coasts of Europe and Siberia year round. The warming of the Caspian Sea could... produce rain in arid regions of Central Asia. Directing... rays... where spring and autumn frosts are expected would allow... increase[d] fertility... Oberth claimed... it would open up... predicting the weather, but also... determining the weather."
"Oberth proposed to shade planets located close to the sun... with gigantic cosmic shields... Vice versa, the planets... further from the sun... would be warmed... with... gigantic cosmic mirrors."
"[H]is belief... a reduction in the cost of building large structures in outer space could be achieved by delivering the necessary materials from the moon... [H]e presupposed the existence of the necessary industrial plants on the moon, but the end result would be a thousand-fold reduction in the cost of building large structures in space."
"[T]he problem of possible changes in climate may be better solved by cooperative application of modern technologies rather than by international measures focused on prohibitions."
"Greenhouse warming of the Earth due to human activities is a possibility, moreover one for which mitigative/remedial actions of the types proposed here can be at once deliberate and effective. In contrast, Ice Age-severity cooling... that have occurred quasi-periodically many times during the last 1.2 million years, is a practical certainty. Moreover, a several-decade duration cold snap of Ice Age Maximum temperature-drop is known to have occurred in the Northern Hemisphere with essentially no warning during the last interglacial period, under precursor climatic conditions only slightly warmer than the present-day one."
"A wide range of techniques has been proposed for increasing the planetary , ranging from painting surfaces white to placing mirrors in orbit between the Earth and the sun."
"This sense of taboo was based on a range of arguments against research on albedo modification that have been raised by the broader scientific community, including: 1. the so-called moral hazard issue, that is, the possibility that research on climate engineering could be perceived as an implicit legitimization, and thus reduce the motivation for mitigating anthropogenic emissions; 2. the concern that reducing temperatures by albedo modification could distract from other impacts of a fossil-fuel-based economy and the resulting CO2 emissions, such as ocean acidification; 3. the “slippery slope” concern that research into understanding the potential effectiveness could cascade toward the development and deployment of the techniques under investigation; and 4. contention about the perceived “techno-fix” approach to address environmental challenges, that is, the notion that technology-caused problems can simply be fixed with more and better technology."
"[G]iven the balance of results of model studies over the last decade... and the challenging directions that this implies both for future research and also for sociopolitical aspects, especially public perception and the development of good governance principles, we have to conclude that the overall verdict is still out. The responsibility still resides with the scientific community to conduct research and engage in the broader dialogue in a responsible way, so that whatever the outcome, historians will hopefully look back and conclude that it was indeed of value—and in that sense a moral imperative—to begin carefully investigating this topic... Perhaps this will already be clear by the time of the next special section like this one, which, following those in 1996 and 2006, should be due in 2026."
"If someone associates with a true Pythagorean, what will he will get from him, and in what quantity? I would say: statesmanship, geometry, astronomy, arithmetic, harmonics, music, medicine, complete and god-given prophecy, and also the higher rewards — greatness of mind, of soul, and of manner, steadiness, piety, knowledge of the gods and not just supposition, familiarity with blessed spirits and not just faith, friendship with both gods and spirits, self-sufficiency, persistence, frugality, reduction of essential needs, ease of perception, of movement, and of breath, good color, health, cheerfulness, and immortality."
"Give me a place to stand and with a lever I will move the whole world."
"It seems to me that they do well to study mathematics, and it is not at all strange that they have correct knowledge about each thing, what it is. For if they knew rightly the nature of the whole, they were also likely to see well what is the nature of the parts. About geometry, indeed, and arithmetic and astronomy, they have handed us down a clear understanding, and not least also about music. For these seem to be sister sciences; for they deal with sister subjects, the first two forms of being."
"It has fallen to the lot of one people, the ancient Greeks, to endow human thought with two outlooks on the universe neither of which has blurred appreciably in more than two thousand years. ...The first was the explicit recognition that proof by deductive reasoning offers a foundation for the structure of number and form. The second was the daring conjecture that nature can be understood by human beings through mathematics, and that mathematics is the language most adequate for idealizing the complexity of nature into appreciable simplicity. Both are attributed by persistent Greek tradition to Pythagoras in the sixth century before Christ. ...there is an equally persistent tradition that it was Thales... who first proved a theorem in geometry. But there seems to be no claim that Thales... proposed the inerrant tactic of definitions, postulates, deductive proof, theorem as a universal method in mathematics."
"The Pythagorean mathematical concepts, abstracted from sense impressions of nature, were... projected into nature and considered to be the structural elements of the universe. [Pythagoreans] attempted to construct the whole heaven out of numbers, the stars being... material points. ...they identified the regular geometric solids... with the different sorts of substances in nature. ...This confusion of the abstract and the concrete, of rational conception and empirical description, which was characteristic of the whole Pythagorean school and of much later thought, will be found to bear significantly on the development of the concepts of calculus. It has often been inexactly described as mysticism, but such stigmatization appears to be somewhat unfair. Pythagorean deduction a priori having met with remarkable success in its field, an attempt (unwarranted...) was made to apply it to the description of the world of events, in which the Ionian hylozoistic interpretations a posteriori had made very little headway. This attack on the problem was highly rational and not entirely unsuccessful, even though it was an inversion of the scientific procedure, in that it made induction secondary to deduction."
"Ionian philosophers... had sought to identify a first principle for all things. Thales had thought to find this in water, but others preferred to think of air or fire as the basic element. The Pythagoreans had taken a more abstract direction, postulating that number... was the basic stuff behind phenomena; this numerical atomism... had come under attack by the followers of Parmenides of Elea... The fundamental tenet of the was the unity and permanence of being... contrasted with the Pythagorean ideas of multiplicity and change. Of Parmenides' disciples the best known was Zeno the Eleatic... who propounded arguments to prove the inconsistency in the concepts of multiplicity and divisibility."
"[T]he authority of Anaximenes was so great that both Leukippos and Demokritos adhered to his theory of a disc-like earth. ...This, in spite of the fact that the spherical form of the earth was already a commonplace in circles affected by Pythagoreanism."
"[T]he religious revival... suggested the view that philosophy was above all a "way of life." Science too was a "purification," a means of escape from the "wheel." This is the view expressed so strongly in Plato’s Phaedo, which was written under the influence of Pythagorean ideas."
"The Pythagoreans held, [Aristotle] tells us that there was "boundless breath" outside the heavens, and that it was inhaled by the world. In substance, this is the doctrine of Anaximenes, and... it was that of Pythagoras... Xenophanes denied it. ...[F]urther development of the idea is ...due to Pythagoras ...We are told that, after the first unit had been formed ...the nearest part of the Boundless was first drawn in and limited; and... the Boundless thus inhaled... keeps the units separate from each other. It represents the interval between them. This is a... primitive way of describing... discrete quantity."
"Aristotle is... decided in his opinion that Pythagoreanism was intended to be a cosmological system like the others. "Though the Pythagoreans... made use of less obvious s and elements than the rest, seeing that they did not derive them from sensible objects, yet all their discussions and studies had reference to nature alone. They describe the origin of the heavens, and they observe the phenomena of its parts, all that happens to it and all it does." They apply their first principles entirely to these things, "agreeing... with the other natural philosophers in holding that reality was just what could be perceived by the senses, and is contained within the compass of the heavens," though "the first principles and causes of which they made use were... adequate to explain realities of a higher order than the sensible.""
"When the Pythagoreans returned to Southern Italy, they must have found views... there which... demanded a partial reconstruction of their own system. ...Empedokles founded a philosophical society, but ...influence[d] ...the medical school of these regions; and ...Philolaos played a part in the history of medicine."
"The account of the doctrine given by Plato is... in accordance with the view that it was of medical origin. Simmias says: "Our body being... strung and held together by the warm and the cold, the dry and the moist... [etc.,] our soul is a sort of temperament and attunement of these, when... mingled... well and in due proportion. If, then, our soul is an attunement,... when the body has been relaxed or strung up out of measure by diseases and other ills, the soul must... perish at once." This is... an application of the theory of Alkmaion, and is in accordance with... the Sicilian school of medicine. It completes the evidence that the Pythagoreanism of the end of the fifth century was an adaptation of the old doctrine to the new principles introduced by Empedokles."
"The planetary system which Aristotle attributes to "the Pythagoreans" and Aetios to Philolaos is... remarkable. The earth is no longer in the middle of the world; its place... taken by a central fire, which is not... the sun. Round this fire revolve ten bodies. First comes the Antichthon or , and next the earth, which thus becomes one of the planets. After the earth comes the moon, then the sun, the five planets, and the heaven of the fixed stars. We do not see the central fire and the antichthon because... [our] side of the earth... is always turned away from them.., explained by the analogy of the moon. ...[M]en living on the other side of it would never see the earth. ...[A]ll these bodies rotate on their axes in the same time as they revolve round the central fire."
"Plato states it as ...a novelty that the earth does not require ...support ...to keep it in its place. ...Anaxagoras had not been able to shake himself free of that idea, and Demokritos still held it."
"The... inference from the Phaedo would... be that the theory of a spherical earth, kept in the middle of the world by its equilibrium, was that of Philolaos... If so, the doctrine of the central fire would belong to a somewhat later generation of the school, and Plato may have learnt it from Archytas and his friends after he had written the Phaedo."
"[I]t is... incredible that the heaven of the fixed stars should have been regarded as stationary. That would have been the most startling paradox that any scientific man had yet propounded, and we should have expected the comic poets and popular literature generally to raise the cry of atheism... [W]e should have expected Aristotle to say something... He made the circular motion of the heavens the... keystone of his system, and would have regarded... a stationary heaven as blasphemous. ...[H]e argues against those who, like the Pythagoreans and Plato, regarded the earth as in motion; but he does not attribute the view that the heavens are stationary to any one. There is no necessary connexion between the two ideas. All the heavenly bodies may be moving as rapidly as we please, provided that their relative motions are such as to account for the phenomena."
"[T]he Aristotelian doctrine of inertia was a doctrine of rest—it was motion, not rest, that always required to be explained."
"[T]he peculiar character of that Aristotelian universe... things... in motion had to be accompanied by a mover all of the time. A universe... [that] had the door half-way open for spirits...unseen hands had to be in constant operation... sublime Intelligences had to roll the planetary spheres... Alternatively, bodies had to be endowed with souls and aspirations... [M]atter itself seemed to possess mystical qualities."
"For out of olde feldes, as men seith, Cometh al this new corn fro yeer to yere; And out of olde bokes, in good feith, Cometh al this newe science that men lere."
"[T]he Pythagorean One, or Monad, splits into two principles, male and female, the Even and the Odd, which are the elements of all numbers and so of the universe. ...One is not simply a numerical unit, which gives rise to other numbers by ...addition. That conception belongs to the later atomistic number-doctrine ...In the earlier Pythagoreanism, we must think of the One (which is not itself a number at all) as analogous to Anaximander's ἄπειρον. It is the primary, undifferentiated group-soul, or , of the universe, and numbers must arise from it by a process of differentiation or 'separating out' (ἀπόκρισις). Similarly, each of these numbers is not a collection of units, built up by addition, but itself a sort of minor group-soul—a distinct 'nature,' with various mystical properties. In the same way, it is by dividing up the whole interval of the that the harmonic proportions are determined."
"Pythagorean science... will inevitably reproduce the later and inconsistent conception of the atomic, indestructible, individual soul. ...The later Pythagoreans of the fifth century 'construct the whole world out of numbers, but they suppose the units to have magnitude. As to how the first unit with magnitude arose, they appear to be at a loss'... because they could not realise that this physical doctrine was ...a reflection of the belief in a plurality of immortal souls, which contradicted their older faith that Soul was a Harmony—a bond linking all things in one. This Soul had formerly been the One God manifest in the logos; now it is broken up into a multitude of individual atoms, each claiming an immortal and separate persistence. And the material world suffers a corresponding change. In place of the doctrine of procession from the Monad, bodies are built up out of numbers, now conceived as collections of ultimate units, having position and magnitude. Thus, Pythagoreanism is led... from a temporal monism to a spatial pluralism—a doctrine of number-atoms hardly distinguishable from the atoms of Leukippus and Democritus, who, as Aristotle says, like these Pythagoreans, 'in a sense make all things to be numbers and to consist of numbers.' But the development of this number-atomism was predestined by religious representations of the nature of soul older than Pythagoreanism itself, and already contained in the blend of Dionysiac and Olympian conceptions inherited by Pythagoras from ."
"The tendency which impelled Pythagorean science towards a materialistic atomism is only the recoil of that same tendency which exalted Pythagoras, from his position as the indwelling daemon of his church, to the distant heaven of the immortals. It is the tendency to dualism. When God ceases to be the immanent Soul of the world, living and dying in its ceaseless round of change, and ascends to the region of immutable perfection, it is because man has acquired a soul of his own, a little indestructible atom of immortality, a self-subsistent individual. 'Nature' likewise loses her unity, continuity, and indwelling life, and is remodelled as an aggregate of little indestructible atoms of matter. But note the consequence: she, too, is now self-subsistent. The world of matter becomes the undisputed dominion of , or Chance, or Necessity—of Moira, ', . There is no place in it for the God who has vanished beyond the stars."
"Greek and medieval knowledge accepted the world in its qualitative variety, and regarded nature's processes as having ends, or in technical phrase as teleological. New science was expounded so as to deny the reality of all qualities in real, or objective, existence."
"With the discovery of the law of inertia and the subsequent downfall of the Aristotelian theory of motion on which Kepler had based his work, his physical theories soon became outmoded and were then rendered obsolete by Newton's work. Yet Kepler's laws of planetary motion remained, so that Edmond Halley could write in his review of Newton's Principia that the first eleven propositions were found to agree with the phenomena of celestial motions, as discovered by the great sagacity and diligence of Kepler."
"Scientific thought is a development of pre-scientific thought."
"The Egyptians were also busy with agriculture, dairying, pottery, glass-making, weaving, ship-building, and carpentry of every sort. This technical activity rested upon a basis of empirical knowledge... To deny it the name of science because it was, perhaps, handed down by tradition to apprentices instead of being written in a book is not wholly just. Technical problems also certainly clamoured for solution in connection with their gold-work, weaving, pottery, hunting, fishing, navigation, basket-work, culture of cereals, culture of flax, baking and brewing, vine-growing and wine-making, stone-cutting and stone-polishing, carpentry, joinery, boat-building, and the many other processes so accurately figured on the walls of the tombs of the nobles at Sakara. In all these techniques lay the germ of science."
"Progress was often achieved by a "criticism from the past"… After Aristotle and Ptolemy, the idea that the earth moves - that strange, ancient, and "entirely ridiculous", Pythagorean view was thrown on the rubbish heap of history, only to be revived by Copernicus and to be forged by him into a weapon for the defeat of its defeaters. The Hermetic writings played an important part in this revival, which is still not sufficiently understood, and they were studied with care by the great Newton himself. Such developments are not surprising. No idea is ever examined in all its ramifications and no view is ever given all the chances it deserves. Theories are abandoned and superseded by more fashionable accounts long before they have had an opportunity to show their virtues. Besides, ancient doctrines and "primitive" myths appear strange and nonsensical only because their scientific content is either not known, or is distorted by philologists or anthropologists unfamiliar with the simplest physical, medical or astronomical knowledge."
"[F]itness to support desirable conduct on the part of citizens or, briefly, to support moral behavior, has served through the ages as a reason for the acceptance of a theory. In antiquity, the physics of Aristotle and Plato seemed to be fitter, in this respect, than the physics of Epicurus. According to the first, the celestial bodies were made of a nobler material than our earth, while according to the "materialistic" doctrine of Epicurus, all these bodies consisted of the same elements. This latter doctrine, however, made it more difficult to teach the existence of a difference between material and spiritual beings. Since a great many educators and statesmen have been convinced that the belief in this difference is important for the education of good citizens, the Epicurean doctrine was rejected by powerful groups. ...Plato ...in his description of "good government" included the requirement that the followers of Epicurean philosophy should be silenced."
"We may... go to our... statement from Aristotle's treatise on the Pythagoreans, that according to them the universe draws in from the Unlimited time and breath and the void. The cosmic nucleus starts from the unit-seed, which generates mathematically the number-series and physically the distinct forms of matter. ...it feeds on the Unlimited outside and imposes form or limit on it. Physically speaking this Unlimited is [potential or] unformed matter... mathematically it is extension not yet delimited by number or figure. ...As apeiron in the full sense, it was... duration without beginning, end, or internal division—not time, in Plutarch's words, but only the shapeless and unformed raw material of time... As soon... as it had been drawn or breathed in by the unit, or limiting principle, number is imposed on it and at once it is time in the proper sense. ...the Limit, that is the growing cosmos, breathed in... imposed form on sheer extension, and by developing the heavenly bodies to swing in regular, repetitive circular motion... it took in the raw material of time and turned it into time itself."
"There is an enormous difference between modern science and Greek philosophy, and that is just the empiristic attitude... Since the time of Galileo and Newton, modern science has been based upon a detailed study of nature and upon the postulate that only such statements should be made, as have been verified or at least can be verified by experiment. The idea that one can single out some events from nature by an experiment... to find out what is the constant law in the continuous change, did not occur to the Greek philosophers. Therefore, modern science has from its beginning stood on a much more modest, but at the same time much firmer, basis than ancient philosophy. Therefore, the statements of modern physics are in some way meant much more seriously than the statements of Greek philosophy."
"Nicomachus... mentions the customary Pythagorean divisions of quantum and the science that deals with each. Quantum is either discrete or continuous. Discrete quantum in itself considered, is the subject of Arithmetic; if in relation, the subject of Music. Continuous quantum, if immovable, is the subject of Geometry; if movable, of Spheric (Astronomy). These four sciences formed the of the Pythagoreans. With the (which Nicomachus does not mention) of Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric, they composed the seven liberal arts taught in the schools of the Roman Empire."
"The Neo-Pythagoreans treated all the divisions of philosophy. In Metaphysics they held that the Unit and the (indeterminate) Two are the basis of all things. the Unit being the form, and the Two the matter. ...The Unit being the prior principle may be identified with Deity, and, as such, was thought of either as the former [creator] of indefinite matter into individual things, or, as in Neo-Platonism, as the transcendent origin of the derivative Unit and Two. Another mode of conception was to identify the numbers with the Platonic Ideas and then to think of the Unit as comprehending them in the same manner as the mind comprehends its thoughts and gives them form. In Logic the Neo-Pythagoreans were for the most part imitators of Aristotle. Their Physics was Aristotelian and Stoic. ...In all this Neo-Pythagoreanism has little originality."
"All "if" statements about the past are as dubious as prophecies of the future are. It seems fairly plausible that if Alexander or Ghengis Khan had never been born, some other individual would have filled his place and executed the design of the Hellenic or Mongolic expansion; but the Alexanders of philosophy and religion, of science and art, seem less expendable; their impact seems less determined by economic challenges and social pressures; and they seem to have a much wider range of possibilities to influence the direction, shape and texture of civilizations."
"We are tempted to... fall into the mistaken belief that the advance of knowledge has always been a continuous, cumulative process along a road which steadily mounts from the beginnings of civilization to our present dizzy height. This, of course, is not the case. In the sixth century B.C., educated men knew that the earth was a sphere; in the sixth century A.D., they again thought it was a disc, or resembling in shape the Holy Tabernacle. In looking back... There are tunnels on the road, whose length is measured in miles, alternating with stretches in full sunlight of no more than a few yards. Up to the sixth century B.C., the tunnel is filled with mythological figures; then for three centuries there is a shrill light; then we plunge into another tunnel, filled with different dreams."
"I could easily believe that Aristotle had stumbled, but not that, on entering physics, he had totally collapsed. Might not the fault be mine rather than Aristotle's... Perhaps his words had not always meant to him and his contemporaries quite what they meant to me and mine. ...I was sitting at my desk with the text of Aristotle's Physics ...Suddenly the fragments in my head sorted themselves out in a new way, and fell into place... My jaw dropped, for all at once Aristotle seemed a very good physicist... of a sort I'd never dreamed possible. Now I could understand why... [and] what he'd said, and... his authority... Statements that had... seemed egregious mistakes, now seemed at worst near misses within a powerful and generally successful tradition. That sort of experience—the pieces suddenly sorting themselves out and coming together in a new way—is the first general characteristic of revolutionary change... Though scientific revolutions leave much piecemeal mopping up to do, the central change... involves... relatively sudden and unstructured transformation in which... the flux of experience sorts itself out... and displays patterns... not visible before."
"Although modern Science includes ideas not less transcendental than those included in ancient Science... As abstract expressions of the observed order of nature they are liable at any moment to be displaced in favour of expressions more accurate. They serve as guides and starting-points in research. They are not believed in as absolute existences. In ancient science they were held to be absolute existences, which it was the primary object of research to find, and which, when disclosed to the imagination, required no confrontation with reality."
"He who is ignorant of Motion, says Aristotle, is necessarily ignorant of all natural things. ...Not only was he entirely in the dark respecting the Laws, he was completely wrong in his conception of the nature of Motion. ...He thought that every body in motion naturally tends to rest."
"The attitude of Aristotelian physics toward lawfulness takes a new direction. ...The highest degree of lawfulness, beyond mere frequency, was characterized by the idea of the always eternal."
"Why was the Tetraktys so revered? Because to the eyes of the sixth century BC Pythagoreans, it seemed to outline the entire nature of the universe. In geometry — the springboard to the Greeks' epochal revolution in thought — the number 1 represented a point... 2 represented a line... 3 represented a surface... and 4 represented a three-dimensional tetrahedral solid... The Tetraktys, therefore appeared to encompass all the perceived dimensions of space."
"On the question whether mathematics was discovered or invented, Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans had no doubt — mathematics was real, immutable, omnipresent, and more sublime than anything that could conceivably emerge from the human mind. The Pythagoreans literally embedded the universe into mathematics. In fact, to the Pythagoreans, God was not a mathematician — mathematics was God! ...By setting the stage, and to some extent the agenda, for the next generation of philosophers — Plato in particular — the Pythagoreans established a commanding position in Western thought."
"All things that are of perishable body must needs have been consumed by infinite time and ages past. But if through that space of time past there have been bodies from which this sum of things subsists being made again, imperishable indeed must their nature be; therefore things cannot severally return to nothing."
"There is so great a difference and distinction in these things that what is one man's meat is another man's rank poison."
"There is a fault in this regard which you should earnestly crave to escape, and shun error with exceeding fearfulness—do not suppose that the clear senses and light of the eyes was made in order that we might made be able to see before us; or that the ends of the thighs and calves were jointed and placed upon the foundation of the feet, only to enable us to march forward with long forward strides; that the forearms again were fitted upon sturdy upper arms, and ministering hands given on either side, only that we might be able to do what should be necessary for life. Such explanations, and all other such that men give, put effect for cause and are based on perverted reasoning; since nothing is born in us simply in order that we may use it, but that which is born creates the use. There was no sight before the eyes with their light were born, no speaking of words before the tongue was made; but rather the origin of the tongue came long before speech, and the ear was made long before sound was heard, in a word all the members, as I think, existed before their use: then they could not have grown up for the sake of use."
"By what law all things were made, how bound they are to abide in it, how impotent to annul the strong statutes of time."
"A part of the soil again is reduced to dissolution by rain, and the scraping rivers nibble their banks away. Besides, whatever she takes her part in nourishing, she increases [and is herself diminished; but when the nursling perishes, it is all] given back; and since beyond all doubt she is seen to be at once the mother of all and the universal sepulchre, therefore you see that the earth is diminished and is increased and grows again."
"I now return to the world’s infancy, what first the fields of earth in their tender age thought fit to bring forth into the regions of light with new birth-throes and to commit to the wayward winds."
"Even now many living creatures arise from the earth, formed by the rain and the warm heat of the sun, so that it is less wonderful if then more and larger ones arose, which grew up when earth and air were young. First the race of winged things and the different birds issued from their eggs being hatched in the springtime, even as now in summer the cicalas of their own accord leave their flimsy husks, to seek life and living. Then first, look you, the earth gave forth the generations of mortal creatures. For there was great abundance of heat and moisture in the fields."
"Many species of animals must have perished at that time, unable by procreation to forge out the chain of posterity: for whatever you see feeding on the breath of life, either cunning or courage or at least quickness must have guarded and kept that kind from its earliest existence; many again still exist, entrusted to our protection, which remain, commended to us because of their usefulness. Firstly, the fierce brood of lions, that savage tribe, has been protected by courage, the wolf by cunning, by swiftness the stag."
"When they had got them huts and skins, and fire, and woman mated with man was appropriated to one, [and the laws of wedlock] became known, and they saw offspring born to them, then first the human race began to grow soft. For the fire saw to it that their shivering bodies were less able to endure cold under the canopy of heaven."
"When a wind gathering together from some one quarter through the hollow places beneath the earth throws itself forward, and bears hard, thrusting with great force into the lofty caverns, the earth leans over in the direction of the wind's headlong force. Then those buildings which are built up above the earth, and each all the more, the more they tower up towards heaven, lean suspended, pushing forward in the same direction, and the beams dragged forward hang over ready to go. And yet people fear to believe that this great universe has waiting for it some period of destruction and ruin, although they see the earth's mighty mass leaning over. Yet if the winds should never blow backwards, no force could curb the world back or hold it back in its rush to perdition. As it is, because in turns they do blow back gathering force, and rally as it were and come back, and then are driven back in retreat, for this reason the earth more often threatens to fall than it does fall; for it inclines forward and then again springs back, and brings back its overhanging weights to their proper place. This then is how all buildings totter, the top more than the middle, the middle than the foundation, the foundation the merest trifle."
"Galileo's comprehension of the concept of acceleration, which he defined as a change of velocity either in magnitude or direction... was an abstract idea that no one seems to have thought much about before. And in using it to test the still accepted Aristotelian precept that a moving object requires a force to maintain it, Galileo easily demonstrated that it is not motion but rather acceleration which cannot occur without an external force. Deliberately rejecting common sense as a prejudiced witness, he let nature herself speak..."
"Neu regio foret ulla suis animantibus orba, Astra tenent cæleste solum, formæque deorum."
"As a moral philosopher, many of his precepts relating to the conduct of life will be found in the verses which bear the name of the of Pythagoras. It is probable they were composed by some one of his school, and contain the substance of his moral teaching. The speculations of the early philosophers did not end in the investigation of the properties of number and space. The Pythagoreans attempted to find, and dreamed they had found, in the forms of geometrical figures and in certain numbers, the principles of all science and knowledge, whether physical or moral. The figures of Geometry were regarded as having reference to other truths besides the mere abstract properties of space. They regarded the unit, as the point; the duad, as the line; the triad, as the surface; and the , as the geometrical . They assumed the pentad as the physical body with its physical qualities. They seem to have been the first who reckoned the elements to be five in number, on the supposition of their derivation from the five regular solids. They made the cube, earth; the pyramid, fire; the octohedron, air; the icosahedron, water; and the dodecahedron, aether. The analogy of the five senses and the five elements was another favourite notion of the Pythagoreans."
"Histories of scientific thought tend to obscure the revolutionary state of knowledge in the age of Archimedes—the Hellenistic period—toning down the differences between it, the natural philosophy of classical Greece two centuries earlier, and even the prescientific knowledge of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia."
"It is childish to assume that science began in Greece; the Greek "miracle" was prepared by millenia of work in Egypt, Mesopotamia and possibly in other regions. Greek science was less an invention than a revival."
"Hellenic science is a victory of rationalism, which appears greater, not smaller, when one is made to realize that it had been won in spite of the irrational beliefs of the Greek people; all in all, it was a triumph of reason in the face of unreason. Some knowledge of Greek superstitions is needed not only for a proper appreciation of that triumph but also for the justification of occasional failures, such as the many Platonic aberrations."
"That the Babylonians were Syrians, I believe that nobody will deny. Consequently, they are greatly mistaken who say that it is not possible that the Syrians know something of such matters (astronomy), since these Syrians were the inventors and the first Masters in these matters. Ptolemy again renders witness to this in the "Syntax" (Almageste), because when he chooses an origin for the computation of the Sun, the Moon and the five planets, he does not start with the years of Greek kings, but with those of the kings of Babylon, that is, Nebuchadnezzar, king of the Assyrians. I said Nebuchadnezzar, not the one of whom the prophet Daniel was the contemporary, but another more ancient. Ptolemy has thus given in the "Syntax" that the years that have passed since this first Nebuchadnezzar ---- i.e. of the Babylonian and Persian kings ---- until Philip (Arrhidaeus) the Macedonian, the successor of Alexander the founder of Alexandria, (are in the number of) four hundred and twenty-four years. There he rightly shows that he found among the Babylonians, and not among the Greeks, the beginning and foundation of the calculations which he made. It is thus on this foundation that he built and that he piled up the many calculations that he made."
"While most s emphasized the reality of change — in particular, the Atomists, followers of and Democritus — the Pythagoreans stressed the study of the unchangeable elements in nature and society. In their search for the eternal laws of the universe they studied geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music (the '). Their most outstanding leader was Archytas of Tarentum...and to whose school, if we follow... E. [Eva] Frank, much of the Pythagorean brand of mathematics may be ascribed."
"[T]he ancients possessed a considerable acquaintance with many operations of technical chemistry... Their methods were probably jealously guarded and handed down by successive members of the crafts as precious secrets. ...But, under the conditions in which their industries were prosecuted, the scientific spirit was not free to develop, for science depends essentially upon free inter-communication of facts ...Moreover, the great intellects of antiquity, for the most part, had little sympathy with the operations of artisans, who, at least among the Greeks and Romans, were, for the most part, slaves. Philosophers taught that industrial work tended to lower the standard of thought. The priests, in most ages, have looked more or less askance at attempts, on the part of the laity, to inquire too closely into the causes of natural phenomena. The investigation of nature in early times was impossible for religious reasons. There was an outcry in Athens when the thunderbolts of Zeus were ascribed to the collision of clouds. Anaxagoras, , Plato, Aristotle, Diagoras, and Protagoras were charged by the priests with blasphemy and driven into exile. Prodikos, who deified the natural forces, as did Empedokles the primal elements, was executed for impiety. Sacerdotalism in Athens had no more sympathy with science than had the Holy Congregation in Italy when it banned the writings of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, and sent Giordano Bruno to the stake. The educated Greeks had no interest in observing or in explaining the phenomena of technical processes. However prone they might be to speculation, they had no inclination to experiment or to engage in the patient accumulation of the knowledge of physical facts. ...The influence of a spurious , which lasted through many centuries and even beyond the time of Boyle, was wholly opposed to the true methods of science, and it was only when philosophy had shaken itself free from that chemistry, as a science, was able to develop."
"Kenny has shown the Aquinas' Five Ways—his five proofs of God's existence—are absolutely dependent on Aristotelian physics... Aquinas... was one of the leading scholars of Aristotelian physics... and... was primarily responsible for... [its] general acceptance throughout Europe. We could call Aquinas a great physicist as well as a great theologian, for, although Aristotelian physics was wrong, it was an essential precursor of modern physics."
"[T]he most striking result of the Greeks' faith that the world could be understood in terms of rational principles was the invention of abstract mathematics. The most grandiose ambition they conceived was to explain all the properties of Nature in arithmetical terms alone. This was the aim of the Pythagoreans... [T]hey... knew that the phenomena of the Heavens recurred in a cyclical manner; and... discovered ...that the sound of a vibrating string ...is simply related to the length ...and its 'harmonics' always go with simple fractional lengths. ...[S]ince the Pythagoreans were a religious brotherhood... they thought that this search would lead to more than explanations alone. If one discovered the mathematical harmonies in things, one should... discover how to put oneself in harmony with Nature. ...[T]hey had ...positive grounds for thinking that both astronomy and were at the bottom arithmetical; and the study of simple fractions was called 'music' right down until the late Middle Ages."
"[T]he most important question for the history of culture is: How did our modern natural science come about? It will be conceded that most historical writings either do not consider this question at all, or else deal with it in a very unsatisfactory manner. For example, which are the histories of Greek culture that mention the names of Theaetetus and of Eudoxus, two of the greatest mathematicians of all times? Who realizes that, from the historical point of view, Newton was the most important figure of the 17th century?"
"Without the stupendous work of Ptolemy, which completed and closed antique astronomy, Kepler's , and hence the mechanics of Newton, would have been impossible. Without the conic sections of Apollonius, which Newton knew thoroughly, his development of the law of gravitation is equally unthinkable. And Newton's integral calculus can be understood only as a continuation of Archimedes' determination of areas and volumes. The history of mechanics as an exact science begins with the law of the lever, the laws of hydrostatics and the determination of mass centers by Archimedes. ...all the developments which converge in the work of Newton, those of mathematics, of mechanics and of astronomy, begin in Greece."
"It is said, that Alexander the Great wrote to his former tutor to this effect; "You have not done well in publishing these lectures; for how shall we, your pupils, excel other men, if you make that public to all, which we learnt from you." To this Aristotle is said to have replied; "My Lectures are published and not published; they will be intelligible to those who heard them, and to none beside." This may very easily be a story invented and circulated among those who found the work beyond their comprehension; and it cannot be denied, that to make out the meaning and reasoning of every part, would be a task very laborious and difficult, if not impossible."
"Herein lies the truth of all bibles, and especially of our own. ...they are eminently precious, not as a record of outward fact, but as a mirror of the evolving heart, mind, and soul of man. They are true because they have been developed in accordance with the laws governing the evolution of truth in human history, and because in poem, chronicle, code, legend, myth, apologue, or parable they reflect this development of what is best in the onward march of humanity. To say that they are not true is as if one should say that a flower or a tree or a planet is not true; to scoff at them is to scoff at the law of the universe. In welding together into noble form, whether in the book of Genesis, or in the Psalms, or in the book of Job, or elsewhere, the great conceptions of men acting under earlier inspiration, whether in Egypt, or Chaldea, or India, or Persia, the compilers of our sacred books have given to humanity a possession ever becoming more and more precious; and modern science, in substituting a new heaven and a new earth for the old—the reign of law for the reign of caprice, and the idea of evolution for that of creation..."
"The physical doctrine of the atom has got into a state which is strongly suggestive of the epicycles of astronomy before Copernicus."
"W. F. H. King, ed. Classical and Foreign Quotations, 3rd ed. (1904), nos. 1680, 2138"
"In 1953, Watson and Crick wrote a letter to that must be one of the most important publications in the biological sciences. ... It occupied just more than one page of the journal, including the references and the acknowledgements. It is a good example of clear scientific writing, and many of the principles of clear writing are well illustrated by their opening paragraph. We wish to suggest a structure for the salt of . This structure has novel features which are of considerable biological interest."
"Besides books, the other major predecessor and rival for communicating new science in the seventeenth century was the "learned letter," most famously illustrated by Galileo's letters on s and the . As the ideas of the scientific revolution spread in England and on the Continent, the accelerated pace of scientific activity compelled natural philosophers to communicate their recent findings through personal correspondence within and between countries. But these are not "letters" in the traditional sense of the word; authors wrote these epistles on some scientific or technical topic with the understanding that they would be passed on to others. Thus the actual intended audience was interested members of the scientific community at large, though short passages within them may personally address the primary recipient. To disseminate the information in these learned letters more efficiently, industrious scholars became centers for spreading the latest technical news at home and abroad. Their job was to receive letters, make copies, and pass them on to other interested scholars. After the emergence of , the job of "trafficker in intelligence" became more formalized in that the societies themselves appointed a secretary to handle correspondence and circulate newsworthy learned letters among society members and friends."
"… writing is one of the most inadequately developed of all the skills that scientists use in their research activities. Let us look briefly at the statistics: • 99% of scientists agree that writing is an integral part of their job as scientists. • fewer than 5% have ever had any formal instruction in scientific writing as part of their scientific training. • for most, the only learning experience they have is the example they get from the scientific literature that they read. • About 10% enjoy writing; the other 90% consider it a necessary chore. These figures are, of course, approximate but they come from informal surveys conducted over many years in many countries and, I believe, are close to reality."
"The impact of depends critically on how well it is communicated to others. In most sciences, this means writing a scientific paper that other scientists will read. Perhaps you have done amazing experiments and think that this will guarantee success. However, without good writing, you may struggle to get your paper published and your brilliant experiments will not have the impact they deserve. Good writing can't save bad science, but bad writing can sink good science ..."
"The concept seemed ambiguous to me, and the emphasis with which "pastorality" was attributed to the current Council was somewhat suspect: was it not meant to implicitly say that the previous Councils did not intend to be "pastoral" or had not been pastoral enough? Had it not had pastoral relevance to make it clear that Jesus of Nazareth was God and consubstantial with the Father, as defined at Nicaea? Had it not had pastoral relevance to clarify the realism of the Eucharistic presence and the sacrificial nature of the Mass, as had been done at Trent?. There was a danger of no longer remembering that the first and irreplaceable mercy for lost humanity is, according to the clear teaching of Revelation, the mercy of truth, a mercy that cannot be exercised without the explicit, firm, constant condemnation of every misrepresentation and every alteration of the deposit of faith, which must be preserved. St Thomas Aquinas noted this in the 'Summa contra Gentiles' (I, 2): the task of theology is to "manifest the truth professed by the Catholic faith, eliminating errors contrary to it"."
"The imagination ... that reconciling and mediatory power, which incorporating the reason in images of the sense and organizing (as it were) the flux of the senses by the permanence and self-circling energies of the reason, gives birth to a system of symbols, harmonious in themselves, and consubstantial with the truths of which they are the conductors."
"Night hung its blue over the garden. Satan fell asleep. He had a dream, and in that dream, soaring over the earth, he saw it covered with angels in revolt, beautiful as gods whose eyes darted lightning. And from pole to pole one single cry, formed of a myriad cries, mounted towards him, filled with hope and love. And Satan said: "Let us go forth! Let us seek the ancient adversary in his high abode." And he led the countless host of angels over the celestial plains. And Satan was cognizant of what took place in the heavenly citadel. When news of this second revolt came thither, the Father said to the Son: "The irreconcilable foe is rising once again. Let us take heed to ourselves, and in this, our time of danger, look to our defences, lest we lose our high abode." And the Son, consubstantial with the Father, replied: "We shall triumph under the sign that gave Constantine the victory.""
"Just as the ritual of life has materialized on earth since ancient times, persisting even today in the gentle light of the sun, the poetic expression establishes itself in our tangible world like a gentle sunray that confirms that the human destiny originated in the being. However, as one can notice, in the eternal corroborative kaleidoscope of existence, the contemporary society is nothing but the fruit of the creative power of the wise man that intensely investigates the direct reality, from one end to the other, to the most hidden details, and imagines it in its infinity, even if, ignoring the play with the nothingness and the barriers of the heart, today there is no doubt that the same reality is indefinitely broader than reason and than man’s illusory ambitions to truly appropriate the mysteries of the universe. The rhetoric of my (purely metaphysical) verse does nothing but interrogate the vast universe of the human condition, consubstantially transposed by the instance of the poetic thought on the eternal winding path of the natural intramundane dimension."
"Paul VI's intention regarding the liturgy, regarding the vulgarisation of the Mass, was to reform the Catholic liturgy so that it would coincide more or less with the Protestant liturgy... with the Protestant Supper. And further on: "... I repeat that Paul VI did everything in his power to bring the Catholic Mass – beyond the Council of Trent – closer to the Protestant Supper. He was particularly helped by Monsignor Bugnini, who did not always enjoy his confidence on this point. [...] Of course, I did not attend the Calvinist Supper, but I did attend Paul VI's Mass. And Paul VI's Mass presents itself first and foremost as a banquet, does it not? It insists very much on the aspect of participation in a banquet, and much less on the notion of sacrifice, of ritual sacrifice, in the face of God, while the priest shows only his back. So I do not think I am mistaken in saying that the intention of Paul VI and of the new liturgy that bears his name is to ask the faithful for greater participation in the Mass, to give a greater place to Sacred Scripture and a lesser place to everything else in it, some say “magical”, others “consubstantial consecration”, [correcting himself] transubstantiation, which is the Catholic faith. In other words, Paul VI had the ecumenical intention of removing – or at least correcting, attenuating – what was too “Catholic”, in the traditional sense, in the Mass, and of bringing the Catholic Mass – I repeat – closer to the Calvinist Mass."
"The Emperor Constantine, who lifted Christianity into power, murdered his wife Fausta, and his eldest son Crispus, the same year that he convened the Council of Nice to decide whether Jesus Christ was a man or the Son of God. The council decided that Christ was consubstantial with the father. This was in the year 325. We are thus indebted to a wife-murderer for settling the vexed question of the divinity of the Savior."
"Arius, the heretic, reduced the Creator to the rank of creatures and did not recognize Him as consubstantial and co-eternal with the Father, a single Being with Him and the Holy Spirit."
"Inhuman solitude made of sand and God. Surely only two kinds of people can bear to live in such desert: lunatics and prophets. The mind topples here not from fright but from sacred awe; sometimes it collapses downward, losing human stability, sometimes it springs upward, enters heaven, sees God face to face, touches the hem of His blazing garment without being burned, hears what He says, and taking this, slings it into men's consciousness. Only in the desert do we see the birth of these fierce, indomitable souls who rise up in rebellion even against God himself and stand before Him fearlessly, their minds in resplendent consubstantiality with the skirts of the Lord. God sees them and is proud, because in them his breath has not vented its force; in them, God has not stooped to becoming a man."
"The German is just the opposite. It comes from a romantic faith, from the capacity for divinizing a race. Therefore it is just to assert that Hitlerism is a mystical movement, very consubstantial with German psychology. The Germans can sing in choruses very well... yet all the movements of insubordination, of rebellion in the world, in the Spartacus manner, have come from Germany. Neither can the totalitarian state save us from the invasion of barbarians, all the more because the truly totalitarian state cannot exist""
"If we were to ask which country is the most corrupt in the world, the first answer to come to mind would be dictated by the perceived level of corruption. Perhaps one might think of Mexico, of South American countries, of African countries, of the Middle East or Italy. But the most corrupt is the UK. It’s not a type of a corruption that concerns civil servants, policemen or mayors; it’s a type of a corruption that is consubstantial to economic system. The British economic system feeds itself on corruption. And in the midst of this, the and its citizens have not woken up to the plight that their country is going through. A plight greater than earthquakes, greater than terror attacks."
"has not been generally used as a feedstock in simple thermal cracking... because the decomposition temperature is too high and yield of useful products too low. Nevertheless... pyrolysis of methane has been used for the production of acetylene and ... Diamonds can be formed... under suitable conditions... [E]arly stages of...decomposition are... well understood... but... details of later stages are not... clear... All oxidation reactions, including oxidative pyrolysis, have been excluded."
"[A]n overall model for the simulation of pyrolysis reactors should... include the heat, momentum, s differential equations, physicochemical properties (specific heats, enthalpies, thermal conductivities, etc.) firing-box patterns, and sometimes fluid dynamic characterization (as in advanced cracking reactors)."
"Flash pyrolysis has the potential of producing maximum yields of gases and liquids from coal and organic solid wastes such as municipal refuse, tree bark, cow manure, rice hulls and grass straw using simple process equipment. The main features of the process are near ambient pressure, no requirement for added chemicals, low capital investment, high feed throughput flexibility of feedstock, variability of temperature, and minimum feed pretreatment."
"The pyrolysis of and is often the process of choice for the production of . ...Marketing of the products of from ethane pyrolysis is greatly simplified by the low yield of by-products. ...Pyrolysis of ethane and propane produces the lowest yield of byproducts, which... minimizes the size of downstream units... as the depropanizer, debutanizer, and compressors."
"Fire, as the agent for , was a favorite tool of the alchemist. Although the general prevalence... of pyrolysis has long been recognized... in the last six decades... the subject has assumed a scientific basis. Since many... data on have been incidental observations... the information is widely scattered... [T]hat ...records of many melting-point determinations are accompanied by ..."It melts with decomposition" is ...evidence ...the subject ...has ...an unorganized past."
"The transformation of a compound into another substance, or... substances, through... heat alone is... pyrolysis."
"Frequently, pyrolyses are s, but... "Pyrolysis" is... broader... [and] more concise. In "decompositions", there is... formation of at least two simpler substances. In pyrolyses... not always... [R]earrangements may be caused by heat alone. ...[F]ormation of large molecules ...is often effected by heat. Both ...are pyrolytic ...but it would be awkward to classify them as decompositions."
"Some compounds decompose at the temperature of boiling water... others require red heat. ...[C]ompounds may be stable at -40° but not at 0°. All... if caused by temperature alone, are... pyrolysis."
"[T]he great majority of pyrolyses occur at "high" temperatures, but this only means... familiarity with compounds which cannot exist at ordinary temperatures is... extremely limited."
"Occasionally... it will be helpful to note the effect of catalysts... Frequently in s, it is difficult to distinguish between the catalytic and the non-catalytic. ...Glass, or surfaces are the ones which are most used in laboratory pyrolyses. Their catalytic action is, at the best, very slight."
"In larger scale work... metallic surfaces [are usually necessary]. Wilson and Bahlke... reported that in cracking stills... -steels ("stainless" steels) [are best], or aluminum or calorized iron. Copper and some s are not satisfactory, neither... [is] ... These authors were interested in ..."
"Franz Fischer... performed... pyrogenic experiments in a tinned-iron tube, which would have failed in an iron tube because of deposition or other causes. ...[He] has shown that a ferrous sulfide inner lining [formed by passing through] in an iron tube also prevents carbon deposit[s] ..."
"The subject of wood distillation has... been treated in... this series. ...[W]ood is not a compound."
"[S]ubstances... identified among... products of wood distillation may be arranged... in a few groups of related compounds. Much of the accurate knowledge... is due to the work of Klason."
"The groups from [wood distillation] are 1. s; formic to caproic, especially . Also, furoic, angelic, s, and valerolactone. For different woods, the total acid, calculated as acetic acid, varies between 4.3 and 6.8[%]... In vacuum distillation... formic acid may be... as high as 35[%] of the acetic acid, but in ordinary distillation at atmospheric pressure, it varies from 10-20[%] of the acetic acid. Only these two acids appear to be formed in appreciable amounts. 2. Alcohols; especially and , but also isoamyl and isobutyl alcohols, and buten-3-ol-2. The content is usually... 1.3-2[%]. 3. Esters; formed by interaction of the above acids and alcohols. 4. Ketones; ... and... its homologs... [plus] small quantities of , methyl cyclopentanone, and . The acetone is not a primary [distillation] product... but is formed secondarily from the acetic acid... homologs of acetone have a similar history. 5. Aldehydes; , , methylal and dimethyl acetal, valeric aldehyde, and methyl furfural. The pentosans are... the source of the furfural and other... homologs of furan... 6. Phenols and phenol methyl ethers [only about 1 percent of the wood distilled], mostly s of di- and tris. ...These substances come largely from the . 7. [< 0.2 percent of the total] , methyl amine, and methyl pyridine... 8. , , melene, etc. 9. es; the yields of , and vary with the maximum temperature of distillation, but at 350-400° the yields from s are about 8, 4 and 1.5[%], respectively. 10. Water; the yield... varies... 22.3-27.8[%]. 11. '. ...30-45[%] ...depending on the wood, and on the maximum temperature."
"The of mineral or organic material was one of the few preparative methods available to the alchemists and the first chemists. That materials could undergo profound changes at high temperatures became a well-recognized principle... emphasized by... landmarks as the formation of by heating ferrous sulfate (copperas) described by ... Brandt's discovery of in 1669 by destructive distillation of residues from ... isolation of benzene from oil gas by Faraday in 1825 and of pyrrole from bone oil by Runge in 1834."
"s, alkalis, and many other inorganic reagents were available... in the early nineteenth century... [T]heir use often added to... descriptive organic chemistry... without clarifying structural relationships. ...[V]igorous pyrolysis of organic compounds, involving no addition of further groups, remained a common technique until about the end of the nineteenth century. ...[M]any high-temperature reactions are fragmentations which produce simple products ...[D]irect of ...carboxylic acids and ...similar decomposition of carboxylic salts by heating with lime or are... examples."
"Mitscherlich prepared benzene as early as 1834 by vigorous distillation of and lime."
"Prompted by the need of non-petroleum-based fuels, coal research has reemerged... Pyrolysis research... has gained... momentum because of its close connection to combustion, hydropyrolysis and liquification. Spectroscopic and other instrumental techniques are... producing... information about coal structure and pyrolysis mechanisms, while modeling efforts are breaking new ground in sorting out chemical and physical phenomena... [P]ostulates and assumptions of current work provide a meaningful starting point in... theoretical descriptions of greater validity and applicability."
"[T]he survey of experimental results will be confined to flash pyrolysis at the exclusion of slow pyrolysis or ."
"Flash pyrolysis poses three experimental difficulties..: (i) control and measurement of the temperature-time history of the coal particles (ii) suppression of secondary reactions (iii) quantitative collection of products."
"[M]easurement of the coal particles' temperature is not trivial. In many cases the temperature... must be calculated from a model. The other two experimental problems, the suppression of secondary reactions and the collection of products, depend on the reactor geometry and flow pattern..."
"[P]roduct distribution is the most essential information relative to the commercial utilization of pyrolysis and... sheds considerable light on reaction mechanisms."
"[P]roducts can be classified into two groups relative to the temperature dependence of the yields. , water and evolve at lower temperatures with ultimate yields that are essentially independent of temperature above 700°C. The second group... of gaseous hydrocarbons, and evolve at higher temperatures. The ultimate yield of these... continues increasing... up to 1,000°C or higher."
"In s, makes up 50-80% of the weight loss, the remaining consisting of gases, water and ."
"We are... concerned with the evolution of tar and gases during the plastic state of coal. In this... consists of two processes in series: diffusion through the molten coal to some internal surface, that of a bubble or a pore; and transport with the bubble or through the pore to the surface of the particle. The role of preexisting pores is not well understood. ...[A] certain fraction of preexisting pores (< 60 Å) collapse during pyrolysis perhaps due to effects. Pores... 60-300 Å were preserved... but one could not distinguish preexisting pores and pores generated by the evolution of bubbles. It appears likely... the major... mass transfer occurs via bubbles while preexisting bubbles play a... minor role."
"Fast pyrolysis is a new technology that shows... potential for producing... liquid... for fuel applications or as a source for... chemicals."
"Wood and biomass can be used in a variety of ways to provide energy: • by direct combustion... for... heating.., steam production and hence electricity generation. • by gasification to provide fuel gas... for heat, or in an engine or turbine for electricity generation. • by fast pyrolysis to provide a liquid fuel... for fuel oil in... static heating or electricity generation... [and] to produce... chemicals."
"Fast pyrolysis is a high temperature process in which biomass is rapidly heated in the absence of oxygen. ...[I]t decomposes to generate mostly vapours... s and some . After cooling and condensation, a... liquid is formed which has a heating value about half... conventional . ...Fast pyrolysis ...is carefully controlled to give high yields ..."
"[E]ssential features... • high heating and heat transfer rates... usually requires finely ground biomass feed • carefully controlled... reaction temperature... [~]500C... vapour phase... short vapour residence typically [<]2 sec... • rapid cooling of pyrolysis vapours to give... bio-oil product."
"[M]ain product, bio-oil... in yields up to 80%... with byproduct char and ... used within... process so no waste..."
"Pitch is a highly viscous residue remaining from wood pyrolysis... In the days of s, pitch was extremely valuable to seal the wood planking and for... where a tightly sticking, water-resistant material was needed."
"Eventually it was understood that the residue from a fire came from... insufficient oxygen (air) to consume the wood completely. From that... came... recognition of making charcoal deliberately by heating wood in the absence of air, or burning under severely air-limited conditions. ...[I]t was [later] realized ...volatile materials "cooked" out ...during conversion... also had valuable uses."
"Production of ... with [other] chemical products... involves pyrolysis, i.e. decomposition of compounds through application of heat."
"Because pyrolysis converts wood to highly ... charcoal... [it] is also known as . Since volatile compounds are driven off, but... residual non-volatile[s are] altered.., another name... is ."
"[T]hermal decomposition of wood begins [≈]250°C. Industrial carbonization... at ≈500°C."
"Carbonization drives off moisture... with... low molecular weight organic compounds... from extractives and... pyrolysis of ... s. Condensing vapors from carbonization produces... ... a dilute solution of up to 50 small, polar (...[i.e.] water soluble) organic compounds. ...[M]ost important ...are , , and ."
"Condensable non-aqueous ...wood tars ...[are] produced by pyrolysis and destructive distillation. Tars can be fractionated into [1] light oils, boiling below 200°C... [2] heavy tars, boiling above that... and [3] pitch. Light tars tend to be mixtures of aldehydes, carboxylic acids, esters, and ketones. Heavy oil contains... phenol derivatives; one of its uses... a wood preservative... wood tar creosote..."
"In fuel chemistry... we deal with several kinds of bond, and mixtures of... different compounds. At temperatures high enough to drive pyrolysis of... one kind of bond... other kinds... break... [I]mmediate products may undergo... subsequent reactions. As a result, pyrolysis... give[s] complex mixtures of products... of little utility if the intent is to produce a single product..."
"With... ... sealed within layers of inorganic ... long... geological processes can operate. Assuming typical s... [b]urial to 10 km would be equivalent to... 100-300°C. These... seem too low to drive... pyrolysis reactions... significant at... [≈]350°C. But... time is on our side... in geological time, tens of millions of years for catagenesis of humic kerogen."
"Like their aliphatic counterparts, the smaller phenols are also water-soluble. Phenol... has... solubility...[≈]82 g/kg water. ...Phenols are produced in coal and wood pyrolysis. Any water used in such processes becomes contaminated with phenols (as well as other compounds) and requires processing before being released... into the environment."
"The organic material in oil shales requires pyrolysis to force the catagenesis of ... This can be done above ground in kilns, or underground with the shale still in place."
"Gasification of coal... [goes] back to the 1790s at least. Before World War II, the United States... had... [≈20,000] small coal gassifiers... a popular fuel gas until... the interstate natural gas pipeline network... after World War II. Many... were simple pyrolysis or steam-carbon reactions in... crude equipment having serious environmental problems."
"Groundwater could become contaminated by organic compounds during coal pyrolysis, and by various inorganic compounds liberated as the coal is consumed. Some... pose problems for environmental quality or human health."
"To a large extent, biomass resembles gasification, with some distinctions... The kinds... considered... include wood, wood wastes (e.g. sawdust), and s. Some... grass, such as switchgrass... grown as energy crops might also serve... [R]elative to coal, biomass usually has lower calorific value... and sulfur... higher moisture, higher... and oxygen, and produces a higher yield of volatiles on pyrolysis. ...Generally biomass chars are more reactive than coal chars, so... may[be]... less and oxygen are needed for... [its] gasification."
"[L]iquids can be produced from coal by... pyrolysis... by dissolution... [i.e.] solvent extraction... or by reaction of coal with or with solvents... donating hydrogen (hydroliquification). All... constitute... coal-to-liquids (CTL) technology."
"Pyrolysis of biomass, heavy petroleum fractions, , , and usually produces some amount of liquid product. Pyrolysis... without an externally added... [source] is constrained... Pyrolysis produces liquids, but leaves a residue of carbonaceous char or coke. Usually... gases also form. The... proportions of solid, liquid, and gas depend on the... feedstock and... reaction conditions."
"[L]arge particles may not be heated uniformly... consequently pyrolysis yields are less. Heating rate is also important. During slow heat-up as... in simple... s most coals begin to decompose [≈]350-400°C. ...[L]iquid and gaseous products ...peak ...[≈]425-475°C. This phase of pyrolysis ends ...[≈]500-550°C. ...[V]ery rapid heating [e.g.] in entrained flow gasifiers ...quickly by-passes this stage, so... evolution of liquids is nil."
"pyrolysis is... complicated... by the fact... primary pyrolysis products... are... able to react among themselves... with ... from the moisture in the coal... with char or coke, or... several of these. The products... often called secondary... may differ... from the primary... Primary products can be studied... if... quench[ed]... rapidly or... [fed] directly into a suitable... instrument... [e.g.] a gas chromatograph."
"In industrial practice... design of the pyrolysis reactor affects... composition of liquid products, because... [it] determines how long... primary products are exposed to pyrolysis temperatures..."
"Commercial... applications of pyrolysis have been to produce... a eous fuel... or a char... Liquids... directly are unsuitable... as fuels... Some... downstream operations would be required... Nevertheless, low-temperature s can be refined... into or ."
"Possibly, future events on the world energy scene will revive interest... Pyrolysis offers... simplicity of process and equipment design relative to gasification and hydroliquification. ...[But] competing technologies usually provide high yields of a single type... gas, liquid or solid... which may offset the added complexity and cost..."
"[R]ules change when an external supply of is... available. Hydropyrolysis, i.e. pyrolizing coal in a hydrogen atmosphere, increases the yields of liquids and gases... [H]ydrogen... stabilizes radicals by hydrogen capping before... termination by recombination reactions that... lead to char... Despite this advantage... hydropyrolysis has never been commercialized."
"[S]tories... about "free oil" from coal pyrolysis, often in reference to a low-temperature ... by ... [≈]80 years ago. Many... accompanied by... conspiracy theories... The , and similar carbonization processes... produce a liquid. Presumably, a... clever accountant could figure out how this... could be "free," provided... markets existed for... large amounts of char and gas produced at the same time, and... could be sold... high enough to compensate for giving away the liquid. Then there's the cost of refining the low-temperature into specification-grade marketable fuel..."
"Often... terms carbonization and pyrolysis are used almost interchangeably. Pyrolysis has the broader meaning: breaking... molecules by... heat or thermal energy. ...[P]yrolysis ...could be run to make gases and liquids rather than solids as the primary product. ... narrowly defined, refers to conversion of a starting material into carbon, or a carbon-rich solid. ...[One can] pyrolyze a hydrocarbon feedstock for the purpose of carbonization, but carbonization is not... pyrolysis by another name. Carbonization can be effected without heat as... primary driving force... Carbonization driven by thermal energy usually requires >500°C."
"Pyrolysis of an oil product or natural gas leads to thermal blacks. ...Acetylene black is made by of acetylene. ...[P]reheated to 800°C ...acetylene is introduced and... because the pyrolysis is exothermic, the temperature... reaches ~2500°C. formation takes place... [800°C-~]2000°C. ...2000-2500°C induces partial of the carbon black. Due to... partial graphitic nature, acelylene blacks have... applications where good [electrical and thermal] conductivity... or... very low chemical reactivity is desirable."
"Almost all pyrolysis reactions are endothermic because they involve breaking bonds in stable compounds."
"Pyrolysis of fossil or s... is... accompanied by char formation. In some cases, this is the point... being an example. ...[I]f pyrolysis were ...done to make gaseous or liquid fuels, and no... market existed for the char, it would be possible to... bury the char... [which] would sequester carbon..."
"[P]yrolysis of biomass to produce char for carbon sequestration has multiple benefits... The product... is... called or Agri-char, sometimes (dark earth)... Trials in Australia have produced a doubling... or tripling of crop production... [C]har is likely to retain some... , , and ... Biochars are very porous... taking up and holding moisture. ...By ...stimulating plant growth, biochar has a double impact... First, it... sequesters carbon. Second... increased growth of plants removes CO, from the atmosphere..."
"Annual production of worldwide amounts to some four gigatonnes. A pyrolysis... that yielded only ten percent could produce enough to fertilize some forty million hectares..."
"s are... ancient technology. Biomass pyrolysis would be "low tech." Farmers could build and install their own... Alternatively, a biochar kiln could be mounted on... a truck... and taken from farm to farm..."
"A comprehensive program..: harvesting and shipping biomass to a centralized biomass or plant within the economically limiting radius, and beyond... converting biomass to biochar in small, decentralized units."