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Quote by Ludwig von Bertalanffy

“Considering the inconceivable complexity of processes even in a simple cell, it is little short of a miracle that the simplest possible model - namely, a linear equation between two variables - actually applies in quite a general number of cases.”

Quote by Ludwig von Bertalanffy

Author

Ludwig von Bertalanffy

Biologist and one of the founders of systems theory, making significant contributions to the development of biology and systems science. more

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“Thus even supposedly unadulterated facts of observation already are interfused with all sorts of conceptual pictures, model concepts, theories or whatever expression you choose. The choice is not whether to remain in the field of data or to theorize; the choice is only between models that are more or less abstract, generalized, near or more remote from direct observation, more or less suitable to represent observed phenomena.”

Facts Choices Fields Expression Theory Models Concepts Direct Observation Data Abstract You Choose Suitable

Author:Ludwig von Bertalanffy

“I may remark parenthetically that the modern apparatus of the theory of small samples, once it goes beyond the determination of its own specially defined parameters and becomes a method for positive statistical inference in new cases, does not inspire me with any confidence unless it is applied by a statistician by whom the main elements of the dynamics of the situation are either explicitly known or implicitly felt.”

Source: Cybernetics Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine

“People actually live with their id exposed. They're not good at concealing what's going on inside.”

People Exposed Concealing

Author:Philip Seymour Hoffman

“Anyone can squash a bug but all professors of this world couldn't build one.”

World This World Professors Bugs Squash

Author:Arthur Schopenhauer

“To function effectively, the system scientist must know a considerable amount about the natural world AND about mathematics, without being an expert in either field. This is clearly a prescription for career disaster in today's world of ultra-high specialization.”

Knows World Today Natural Careers Fields Amount Scientist Function Mathematics Disaster Experts Natural World Prescriptions Today's World Specialization Ultras

Author:John L. Casti

“We see an ever-increasing move toward inter and trans- disciplinary attacks upon problems in the real world ... The system scientist has a central role to play in this new order, and that role is to first of all understand ways and means of how to encode the natural world into "good" formal structures.”

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Author:John L. Casti

“The quest for precision is analogous to the quest for certainty and both - precision and certainty are impossible to attain.”

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Author:Karl Popper

“All models divide naturally...into two a priori parts: one is kinematics, whose aim is to parameterize the forms of the states of the process under consideration, and the other is dynamics, describing the evolution in time of these forms.”

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Author:Rene Thom

“It follows that the word probability, in its mathematical acceptance, has reference to the state of our knowledge of the circumstances under which an event may happen or fail. With the degree of information we possess concerning the circumstances of an event, the reason we have to think that it will occur, or, to use a single term, our expectation of it will vary. Probability is the expectation founded upon partial knowledge.”

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Book:An Investigation of the Laws of Thought

Source: An Investigation of the Laws of Thought

“The physical laws, in their observable consequences, have a finite limit of precision.”

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Author:Kurt Gödel