“Being an artist and being a teacher are two conflicting things. When I paint, my work manifests the unexpected... In teaching it's just the opposite. I must account for every line, shape and colour and I am forced to give an explanation of the inexplicable and account for the variety of styles the students present.” GivingTwoArtistLinesTeacherTeachingStyleStudentsShapesOppositesAccountsPaintVarietyExplanationColourUnexpectedBeing An ArtistInexplicableBeing A Teacher Author:Pierre Alechinsky
“Since my moral system rests on my accepted version of the facts, he who denies my moral judgments or my version of the facts, is to me perverse, alien, dangerous. How shall I account for him? The opponent has always to be explained, and the last explanation that we ever look for is that he sees a different set of facts. Such an explanation we avoid, because it saps the very foundation of our own assurance that we have seen life steadily and seen it whole.” LooksDifferentWholeFactsLastsMoralDangerousJudgmentAccountsFoundationDenyAcceptedVersionsAliensExplanationOpponentsAssuranceSapMoral Judgment Book:Public Opinion Source: Public Opinion
“I have shown that those who deplore Artificial Intelligence are also those who deplore the evolutionary accounts of human mentality: if human minds are non-miraculous products of evolution, then they are, in the requisite sense, artifacts, and all their powers must have an ultimately mechanical explanation. We are descended from macros and made of macros, and nothing we can do is beyond the power of huge assemblies of macros.” IfsMindHumansMadeCan DoProductsHugeEvolutionAccountsExplanationHuman MindArtificial IntelligenceMentalityArtificialMiraculousAssemblyArtifactsMacro Author:Daniel Dennett
“So, you could often say things are terrible and that accounts for what happened, or things are really bright, and that accounts for what happened. Often, the real explanation for what happened is much more subtle and interesting and involves maybe small shocks or what a couple people did on a Wednesday morning that changed the arc of history.” PeopleRealInterestingMorningHappenedChangedCoupleTerribleAccountsExplanationShockSubtleArcsWednesdayWednesday Morning Author:Cass Sunstein
“Real scientists are required to play by the rules without exception. Creationists follow the rules of science only so long as it is expedient. Then they resort to miracles. But resorting to miracles is not offering an explanation: it is asserting that no real explanation exists. Whenever creationists resort to miracles, they are admitting that their system cannot account for the facts of nature; it cannot explain the world.” WorldLongRealPlayFactsAtheismScientistAccountsMiraclePositive AtheismExplanationExceptionOfferingResortsAdmitting Author:Frank Zindler
“If you're denying God's power, that means you don't really believe they were miracles, and so then why believe they happened at all. What you're saying is you're taking the Bible's account as literally true in need of a scientific explanation rather than just people coming up with stuff to fulfill their religious missions.” PeopleIfsNeedsBelieveMeanStuffReligiousHappenedAccountsMiracleMissionsExplanationDenying God Author:Neil deGrasse Tyson
“Like most young physicists, when I was a kid enraptured with physics, I thought, "Everything can be explained by the theory of the atom!" But as I've gotten older, and I look at the world, I think there's a lot of ways in which that kind of building up from the smallest building blocks doesn't actually account for the world. As I've gotten older, I've also become sensitive to the ways - to all that is not amenable to explanation. Things that, even if you had an explanation, what good would it be?” IfsThinkingWorldWayLooksKindKidsYoungBuildingTheoryAccountsPhysicsBlockSensitiveExplanationAtomsSmallestPhysicistBuilding UpBuilding BlocksAmenable Author:Adam Frank
“Man is so intelligent that he feels impelled to invent theories to account for what happens in the world. Unfortunately, he is not quite intelligent enough, in most cases, to find correct explanations. So that when he acts on his theories, he behaves very often like a lunatic.” MenWorldFeelsEnoughHappensCasesTheoryAccountsIntelligentBehaveExplanationLunatic Book:Texts & pretexts: an anthology with commentaries Source: Texts & pretexts: an anthology with commentaries
“You look at science (or at least talk of it) as some sort of demoralising invention of man, something apart from real life, and which must be cautiously guarded and kept separate from everyday existence. But science and everyday life cannot and should not be separated. Science, for me, gives a partial explanation for life. In so far as it goes, it is based on fact, experience and experiment.” MenGivingShouldLooksRealFactsScienceExistenceExperienceAccountsEverydayReal LifeExperimentsInventionExplanationEveryday LifeGuarded Author:Rosalind Franklin
“It is the desire for explanations that are at once systematic and controllable by factual evidence that generates science; and it is the organization and classification of knowledge on the basis of explanatory principles that is the distinctive goal of the sciences.” ScienceDesireGoalPrinciplesKnowledgeEvidenceOrganizationAccountsBasesExplanationSystematicDistinctiveFactualClassification Author:Ernest Nagel
“The question whether atoms exist or not... belongs rather to metaphysics. In chemistry we have only to decide whether the assumption of atoms is an hypothesis adapted to the explanation of chemical phenomena... whether a further development of the atomic hypothesis promises to advance our knowledge of the mechanism of chemical phenomena... I rather expect that we shall some day find, for what we now call atoms, a mathematico-mechanical explanation, which will render an account of atomic weight, of atomicity, and of numerous other properties of the so-called atoms.” ScienceKnowledgeDevelopmentPromiseWeightAccountsPropertyExplanationAssumptionChemistryChemicalsAtomsMechanismMetaphysicsHypothesisAdapted Author:August Kekule