November 2011
49 posts
4 tags
“ “In the future, when the history of our time will be written from a long-term...”
– Peter Drucker, an influential writer, management consultant, and self-described “social ecologist” (1909-2005), cited in Esko Kilp, The competitive edge of the social business, Social Enterprise Today, Nov 22, 2011.
3 tags
“ “Birds were what became of dinosaurs. Those mountains of flesh whose...”
– Jonathan Franzen, American novelist and essayist, The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006
2 tags
“ “We are awfully lucky to be here-and by ‘we’ I mean every...”
– Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything, Black Swan, 2003
1 tag
“ “If we have never been amazed by the very fact that we exist, we are...”
– Will Durant, American writer, historian, and philosopher (1885-1981)
2 tags
“ “Don’t tell me nature isn’t a miracle. Don’t tell me the world isn’t a...”
– Jostein Gaarder, Norwegian intellectual and writer, The Orange Girl, Orion Publishing, 2004.
3 tags
“‘Life is one huge lottery where only the winning tickets are...”
– Jostein Gaarder, Norwegian intellectual and writer, The Orange Girl, Orion Publishing, 2004. See also: ☞ Are You Totally Improbable Or Totally Inevitable? The chances of anyone existing are one in 102,685,000
2 tags
“ “One describes a tale best by telling the tale. You see? The way one...”
– Neil Gaiman, English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theatre and films, American Gods, William Morrow, 2001
4 tags
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“We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.” ”
– Jack Gilbert, American poet, Tear It Down (Illustration source)
1 tag
“Zygmunt Bauman: ‘Modern society stopped questioning itself’...”
– Zygmunt Bauman, world-renowned Polish sociologist and philosopher, one of the creators of the “postmodernism” concept. Professor of sociology at the University of Leeds, Liquid Modernity, Polity Press, 2000. See also: ☞ Zygmunt Bauman: Europe’s task consists of passing on to all the art of everyone...
3 tags
“ “It is the great irony of life that a mindless act repeated in sequence...”
– Kevin Kelly, writer, the founding executive editor of Wired magazine, and a former editor/publisher of the Whole Earth Catalog, Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World, Addison-Wesley, 1994, p. 292.
2 tags
“ “These slow-changing facts are what I term “mesofacts.” Mesofacts are the...”
– Samuel Arbesman, Senior Scholar at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, also affiliated with the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University, Warning: Your reality is out of date, The Boston Globe, Feb 28, 2010.
6 tags
“ “Look what is coming: Technology is stitching together all the minds of...”
– Kevin Kelly, writer, the founding executive editor of Wired magazine, and a former editor/publisher of the Whole Earth Catalog, What Technology Wants, New York: Viking, The Penguin Group, 2010 cited in Playing the Infinite Game, Reality Sandwich
3 tags
“ “He drew forth a phrase from his treasure and spoke it softly to himself:
A...”
– James Joyce, Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century (1882-1941), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
4 tags
“ “It is not the amount of knowledge that makes a brain. It is not even the...”
– James Gleick, author, journalist, and biographer, whose books explore the cultural ramifications of science and technology, The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood, Pantheon, 2011.
3 tags
“ “No pen, no ink, no table, no room, no time, no quiet, no...”
– James Joyce, Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century (1882-1941) in a letter to his brother, cited in Peter Hartshorn, James Joyce and Trieste, Greenwood Press, 1997, p.43.
3 tags
“ “He lived at a little distance from his body, regarding his own acts with...”
– James Joyce, Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century (1882-1941), Dubliners
3 tags
“ “Interpretations of interpretations interpreted.” ”
– James Joyce, Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century (1882-1941), cited in Teachers College record, Volume 109, Columbia University, 2007, p.1829, oryg. cited in Fletcher, 2001, p. 262.
3 tags
“ “Language is the most massive and inclusive art we know, a mountainous and...”
– Edward Sapir, German-born American anthropologist-linguist and a leader in American structural linguistics (1884-1939), Language: an Introduction to the Study of Speech
1 tag
“ “There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know...”
– William Makepeace Thackeray, English novelist (1811-1863) (tnx fast-t-feasts)
3 tags
“ “He would conclude that nothing was real except chance.” ”
– Paul Auster, American author known for works blending absurdism, existentialism, crime fiction and the search for identity and personal meaning, City of Glass, Penguin, 1987
1 tag
“ “No one was to blame for what happened, but that does not make it any less...”
– Paul Auster, American author known for works blending absurdism, existentialism, crime fiction and the search for identity and personal meaning, Moon Palace, Viking Press, 1989
2 tags
“ “I use ‘truth’ as a shorthand for the property of a human...”
– Norman Schofield, Professor at Department of Political Science, Washington University of St. Louis, Rational choice and political economy (1995), cited in Jeffrey Friedman, The Rational Choice Controversy, New Haven & London, Yale University Press. (tnx whyshouldeye)
3 tags
“ “The same statistical errors – namely, ignoring the “difference in...”
– Ben Goldacre, British science writer, doctor and psychiatrist, The statistical error that just keeps on coming, The Guardian, Sept 9, 2011
3 tags
“ “Science, like art, is not a copy of nature but a re-creation of...”
– Jacob Bronowski, Polish-Jewish British mathematician, biologist, historian of science (1908-1974), Science and Human Values (1956)
4 tags
“Tim Love on Science and the Arts
“Maths and music make claims to be...”
– Tim Love, poet, computer officer at Cambridge University, Science and the Arts, PhysLink, Sept 1995 [1] C. Turbayne, ‘The Myth of Metaphor’, Univ of South Carolina Press, 1970, [2] P.L. Hagen, Peter Lang, ‘Metaphor’s Way of Knowing’, 1995, [3] Ian Mills, ‘The...
2 tags
“ “The core of science is not a mathematical model — it is...”
– Sam Harris, American author, neuroscientist, the co-founder and current CEO of Project Reason, La Jolla meeting, “Beyond Belief 2006: Science, Religion, Reason and Survival”, Nov 2006
3 tags
“ “If we go back to our checker game, the fundamental laws are rules by...”
– Richard Feynman, American physicist, Nobel Laureate in Physics (1918-1988), The Character of Physical Law See also:☞ The Concept of Laws. The special status of the laws of mathematics and physics
3 tags
“ “The adjacent possible is a kind of shadow future, hovering on the edges...”
– Steven Johnson, American popular science author, The Genius of the Tinkerer, WSJ, Sept 25, 2010 See also: ☞ Steven Johnson: Ideas, Recombination and the Adjacent Possible ☞ The Kaleidoscopic Discovery Engine. ‘All scientific discoveries are in principle ‘multiples’
1 tag
“ “Animals have no unconscious, because they have a territory. Men have only had...”
– Jean Baudrillard, French sociologist, philosopher, cultural theorist (1929-2007), Simulacra and Simulation, University of Michigan Press, 1994, p. 139.
1 tag
“ “It is the real, and not the map, whose vestiges persist here and there...”
– Jean Baudrillard, French sociologist, philosopher, cultural theorist (1929-2007), Simulacra and Simulation cited in Jean Baudrillard, Selected Writings, ed, M. Poster, Stanford: Stanford University Press, p.166-184.
4 tags
“How did Einstein’s musical practice inform his scientific work
“If I...”
5 tags
“ “Once you reject evidence as a source of knowledge, you don’t gotta...”
– Tim Minchin, British-Australian comedian, actor, and musician, on Rick Perry, Tim Minchin: Mocking God in the heart of Texas, The Observer, 6 Nov 2011.
2 tags
“ “A concept is a brick. It can be used to build the courthouse of reason. Or it...”
– Brian Massumi, Canadian political philosopher and social theorist, in Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari Introduction to A Thousand Plateaus, Continuum International Publishing Group, 2004, p. xiii cited in Wildcat, Knowmads, of Texture and sensuality in hyperconnectivity
6 tags
“ “We are interested in encounters between languages and the consequences...”
– Asymptote Journal
1 tag
“ “If you wish to understand the secrets of the Universe, think of energy,...”
– Nikola Tesla, Serbian-American inventor, mechanical engineer, and electrical engineer (1856-1943)
4 tags
“Brian Greene: Our Universe May Be a Giant Hologram
“Plato likened our...”
– Brian Greene, American theoretical physicist and string theorist. He has been a professor at Columbia University since 1996, Our Universe May Be a Giant Hologram, Aug 4, 2011, Excerpted from The Hidden Reality, Knopf, 2011. (tnx johnsparker)
3 tags
“ “This flexibility of learning accounts for a large part of what we...”
– David Eagleman, neuroscientist at Baylor College of Medicine, Your Brain Knows a Lot More Than You Realize, DISCOVER Magazine, Oct 27, 2011. See also: ☞ David Eagleman on the conscious mind
3 tags
“ “Eternity is very long, especially towards the end.” ”
– Woody Allen, American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, cited in Martin Rees, Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces that Shape the Universe, Basic Books, 1999, p. 71.
4 tags
“ “Maybe we should be open-minded about the obverse possibility – that we...”
– Lord Rees, British cosmologist and astrophysicist, former President of the Royal Society, Lord Rees explores ‘limits of science’ in Romanes Lecture, University of Oxford, Nov 3, 2011. See also: ☞ video of full lecture (transcript (pdf)).
2 tags
“ “Two plus two is four” is not so clear, you know, and it is not...”
– Shunryu Suzuki, a Sōtō Zen roshi (1904-1971), Emptiness is Form, July 03, 1969
3 tags
“Consciousness: The Black Hole of Neuroscience
“The simplest description...”
– Megan Erickson, Consciousness: The Black Hole of Neuroscience, Big Think, Nov 6, 2011.
5 tags
“ “The platonist metaphor assimilates mathematical enquiry to the...”
– Michael Dummett, British philosopher. He was, until 1992, Wykeham Professor of Logic at the University of Oxford, Truth and Other Enigmas, Harvard University Press, 1978, p.225.
3 tags
“Mark Twain: ‘Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man’...”
– Mark Twain, American author and humorist (1835-1910), Mark Twain’s Autobiography, Volume 1 (1870), Kessinger Publishing, 2003, p.2.
3 tags
“ “Information, defined intuitively and informally, might be something like...”
– Brian Christian, American author and poet, he holds a degree from Brown University in computer science and philosophy, and an MFA in poetry from the University of Washington, The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive, Doubleday, 2011
2 tags
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“In everything, no matter what it may be, uniformity is undesirable....”
– Yoshida Kenkō, Japanese author and Buddhist monk (1283? – 1350?), Tsurezuregusa (Essays in idleness) written in the early 1330s, cited in Nancy G. Hume, Japanese aesthetics and culture: a reader, SUNY Press, 1995, p.32.
1 tag
“ “If you live and think in 2 dimensions, things that are happening in 3...”
– Jordan Greenhall on G+
3 tags
“ “A true noun, an isolated thing, does not exit in nature. Things are only...”
– Ernest Fenollosa, American professor of philosophy and political economy at Tokyo Imperial University (1853-1908), Chapter: From The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry in Symposium of the Whole: A Range of Discourse Toward an Ethnopoetics, University of California Press, 1983, p.21....
3 tags
“ “I think we should - we need to recognize also that sometimes the actual...”
– Lawrence Krauss, American Theoretical Physicist who is Professor of Physics, Foundation Professor of the School of Earth and Space Exploration and Director of the Origins Project at the Arizona State University, ☞ Werner Herzog and Lawrence Krauss on Connecting Science and Art
5 tags
“The Glory of Big Data: We enter an era in which digital data merges with biology...”
– Juan Enriquez, the founding director of the Life Sciences Project at Harvard Business School and a fellow at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs, The Glory of Big Data, PopSci, Oct 31, 2011 