People From Philadelphia

"Paul DiMaggio (1997) has looked at the interaction between cognition and social life. He notes that under everyday circumstances, people organize information via automatic cognition."

"Both the old and new approaches share a scepticism toward rational-actor models of organisation, and each views institutionalisation as a state-dependent process that makes organisations less instrumentally rational by limiting the options they can pursue. Both emphasise the relationship between organisations and their environments, and both promise to reveal aspects of reality that are inconsistent with organisations’ formal accounts. Each approach stresses the role of culture in shaping organisational reality."

"The new institutionalism focuses instead on nonlocal environments, either organisational sectors or fields roughly coterminous with the boundaries of industries, professions, or national societies. Environments, in this view, are more subtle in their influence; rather than being co-opted by organisations, they penetrate the organisation, creating the lenses through which actors view the world and the very categories of structure, action and thought."

"purportedly represents a distinctive approach to the study of social, economic, and political phenomena; yet it is often easier to gain agreement about what it is not than about what it is."

"Organizations compete not just for resources and customers, but for political power and institutional legitimacy, for social as well as economic fitness."

"Organizations may try to change constantly; but, after a certain point in the structuration of an organizational field, the aggregate effect of individual change is to lessen the extent of diversity within the field."

"Organizations tend to model themselves after similar organizations in their field that they perceive to be more legitimate or successful."

"Institutional theory presents a paradox. Institutional analysis is as old as Emile Durkheim's exhortation to study 'social facts as things', yet sufficiently novel to be preceded by new in much of the contemporary literature."

"By , we mean those organizations that, in the aggregate, constitute a recognized area of institutional life: key suppliers, resource and product consumers, regulatory agencies, and other organizations that produce similar services or products."

"Although there are as many ‘new institutionalisms’ as there are social science disciplines, this book is about just one of them, the one that has made its mark on organisation theory, especially that branch most closely associated with sociology."

"Investigating chemical reactions can be greatly complicated and often obscured by the presence of extraneous materials. So, the first step, therefore, is to learn how to analyze and classify materials to ensure that you are working with pure substances before initiating any reactions."

"The shapes of molecules influence their behavior and function, especially the ease with which they can fit into various guest-host configurations important in biology and biochemistry."

"The conservation of matter in a chemical change is represented in a balanced chemical equation for that process. The study of the relationships between the numbers of reactant and product mole­cules is called stoichiometry. Stoichiometry is fundamental to all as­pects of chemistry."

"We point out that not every reactant is completely consumed in a chemical reaction, and that the limiting reactant determines the maximum theoretical yield; the percentage yield may be somewhat less."

"The central idea of quantum theory is that energy, like matter, is not continuous but it exists only in discrete packets. Discreteness of matter and charge on the microscopic scale seems entirely reasonable and familiar to us, based on the modern picture of atomic structure. But, the idea that energy also exists only in discrete chunks is contrary to our experience of the macroscopic world. The motions of a soccer ball rolling up and down the sides of a gully involve arbitrary amounts of kinetic and potential energy; nothing in ordinary human experience suggests that the energy of a system should change abruptly by “jumps.” Understanding quantum mechanics requires that we develop a new kind of physical intuition, based on the results of experiments that are impossible to understand using classical mechanics. These results are completely divorced from ordinary human experience in the macroscopic world around us, and our physical intuition from the macroscopic world cannot be transferred to the quantum domain. We must resist the urge to interpret these quantum results in terms of ordinary experience."

"The definite mass ratios involved in reactions suggested a convenient method for counting the number of atoms of each element participating in the reaction. These results, summarized as the laws of chemical combination,provided overwhelming, if indirect, evidence for the existence of atoms and molecules."

"Chemists think in the highly visual nanoscopic world of atoms and molecules, but they work in the tangible world of macroscopic laboratory apparatus. These two approaches to the chemical sciences cannot be divorced."

"Knowledge of the components of the atom and of the forces that hold them together stimulated entirely new fields of basic science and technology that continue to the present."

"Quantum mechanics explains the physical stability of the atom by predicting its allowed discrete energy levels and defining the wave functions (also called atomic orbitals) associated with each energy level. The orbitals determine the probability density for finding the electrons at particular locations in the atom when the electrons are in a specific quantum state."

"Chemical reasoning, as used both in applications and in basic research, resembles a detective story in which tangible clues lead to a mental picture of events never directly witnessed by the detective."

"Laboratory or industrial chemical reactions are carried out with quantities that range from milligrams to tons, so we must be able to relate the relative atomic mass scale to the macroscopic scales used in practice. The link between the two scales is provided by Avogadro’s number (NA)."

"Upon encountering a new topic, try this: imagine that you are the first person ever to see the laboratory results on which it is based. Imagine that you must construct the new concepts and explanations to interpret these results, and that you will present and defend your conclusions before the scientific community. Be suspicious. Cross-check everything. Demand independent confirmations. Always remain, with Boyle, the “skeptical chemist.”"

"The science of chemistry rests on two well-established principles: the conservation of matter and the conservation of energy."

"I think I’m starting to resolve a puzzle that’s been bugging me for awhile. Pop economists (or, at least, pop micro-economists) are often making one of two arguments:1. People are rational and respond to incentives. Behavior that looks irrational is actually completely rational once you think like an economist. 2. People are irrational and they need economists, with their open minds, to show them how to be rational and efficient. Argument 1 is associated with “why do they do that?” sorts of puzzles. Why do they charge so much for candy at the movie theater, why are airline ticket prices such a mess, why are people drug addicts, etc. The usual answer is that there’s some rational reason for what seems like silly or self-destructive behavior. Argument 2 is associated with “we can do better” claims such as why we should fire 80% of public-schools teachers or Moneyball-style stories about how some clever entrepreneur has made a zillion dollars by exploiting some inefficiency in the market. The trick is knowing whether you’re gonna get 1 or 2 above. They’re complete opposites!"

"I’m not saying that arguments based on rationality are necessarily wrong in particular cases. (I can’t very well say that, given that I wrote an article on why it can be rational to vote.) I’m just trying to understand how pop-economics can so rapidly swing back and forth between opposing positions. And I think it’s coming from the comforting presence of rationality and efficiency in both formulations. It’s ok to distinguish economists from ordinary people (economists are rational and think the unthinkable, ordinary people don’t) and it’s also ok to distinguish economists from other social scientists (economists think ordinary people are rational, other social scientists believe in “culture”). You just have to be careful not to make both arguments in the same paragraph."

"An evolutionary approach provides powerful lenses that correct for instinct blindness. It allows one to recognize what natural competences exist, it indicates that the mind is a heterogeneous collection of these competences and, most importantly, it provides positive theories of their designs. Einstein once commented that "It is the theory which decides what we can observe". An evolutionary focus is valuable for psychologists, who are studying a biological system of fantastic complexity, because it can make the intricate outlines of the mind's design stand out in sharp relief. Theories of adaptive problems can guide the search for the cognitive programs that solve them; knowing what cognitive programs exist can, in turn, guide the search for their neural basis."

"The true potential of an augmented life is revealed when it provides us with the information we need, at exactly the right time and place."

"Plan for ways to get more enjoyment into your life and you will get more joy out of it."

"Working hard doesn’t make you rich, working smart does."

"A career is just a longer trip with a whole lot more baggage."

"You can truly have it all, just not all at the same time."

"The spatial web holds so much promise for improving our lives that those companies failing to invest and embrace the future will go the way of Kodak, Radio Shack, and Blockbuster."

"Remote Workers are Your New Competitive Advantage."

"If the big multinational corporations are making the bricks, you can make millions supplying the mortar that holds their market together."

"If you don't know where you want to be in five years, how do you ever expect to get there?"

"Spatial reality will be as vital to the success of a two-person startup as it is to the largest multinational conglomerate."

"Starting each day with a positive mindset is the most important step of your journey to discovering opportunity."

"You will have more regrets for the things you didn't try than the ones you tried and didn't succeed at."

"The physical and the virtual will seamlessly meld before our very eyes creating an augmented life called spatial reality."

"You now have access to a global talent pool eager to maintain their freedom. Employees can travel the world while still maintaining a full-time job and not have to wait until they retire to enjoy life."

"Everything is a Tech Startup. Yes, Everything!"

"A dream with a deadline is a goal."

"Each minute, of every day, people watch 4.7 million YouTube videos, send 19 million texts, scroll through 700,000 Instagram pictures, share 2.5 million Snaps, query Google 4.1 million times, send 59 million messages and send 190 million emails."

"No one ever built a billion-dollar company without employees, investors, business partners, and customers."

"Your energy is a valuable resource, distribute it wisely."

"Company mentoring programs are also a key tool in promoting diversity at the workplace."

"If you are spending most of your time and money in the digital world today, why not build your career and business there?"

"Make sure your goals are your goals."

"A negative mind will never find success. I have never heard a positive idea come from a person in a negative state."

"Steve Jobs wasn’t an engineer and he built a trillion-dollar company without ever learning to code."