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Complexes Quotes

“... our "Physick" and "Anatomy" have embraced such infinite varieties of being, have laid open such new worlds in time and space, have grappled, not unsuccessfully, with such complex problems, that the eyes of Vesalius and of Harvey might be dazzled by the sight of the tree that has grown out of their grain of mustard seed.”

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Book:Huxley's Autobiography and Selected Essays from Lay Sermons
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“Now, in the development of our knowledge of the workings of Nature out of the tremendously complex assemblage of phenomena presented to the scientific inquirer, mathematics plays in some respects a very limited, in others a very important part. As regards the limitations, it is merely necessary to refer to the sciences connected with living matter, and to the ologies generally, to see that the facts and their connections are too indistinctly known to render mathematical analysis practicable, to say nothing of the complexity.”

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Author:Oliver Heaviside
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“The open society, the unrestricted access to knowledge, the unplanned and uninhibited association of men for its furtherance-these are what may make a vast, complex, ever growing, ever changing, ever more specialized and expert technological world, nevertheless a world of human community.”

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Book:Atom and Void: Essays on Science and Community
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“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.”

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Book:Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium
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“Thus science strips off, one after the other, the more or less gross materialisations by which we endeavour to form an objective image of the soul, till men of science, speculating, in their non-scientific intervals, like other men on what science may possibly lead to, have prophesied that we shall soon have to confess that the soul is nothing else than a function of certain complex material systems.”

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Book:The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell
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“We divorced ourselves from the materials of the earth, the rock, the wood, the iron ore; we looked to new materials which were cooked in vats, long complex derivatives of urine which we called plastic. They had no odor of the living, ... their touch was alien to nature. ... [They proliferated] like the matastases of cancer cells.”

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Book:The idol and the octopus: political writings, on the Kennedy and Johnson administrations
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“The method of science depends on our attempts to describe the world with simple theories: theories that are complex may become untestable, even if they happen to be true. Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification-the art of discerning what we may with advantage omit.”

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Book:The Open Universe: An Argument for Indeterminism From the Postscript to The Logic of Scientific Discovery
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“Combining in our survey then, the whole range of deposits from the most recent to the most ancient group, how striking a succession do they present:- so various yet so uniform-so vast yet so connected. In thus tracing back to the most remote periods in the physical history of our continents, one system of operations, as the means by which many complex formations have been successively produced, the mind becomes impressed with the singleness of nature's laws; and in this respect, at least, geology is hardly inferior in simplicity to astronomy.”

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Book:The silurian system, founded on geological researches in the counties of Salop, Hereford etc
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“I wish that one 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.”

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Author:Alfred Binet
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“Mind is elusive, you cannot hold it in your hand. You cannot force it into a test-tube. The only way to know it is to know it from within, from your witnessing self. The more you become aware, the more you can watch your mind - its subtle functioning. The functioning is tremendously complex and beautiful. Mind is the most complex phenomenon on the earth, the most subtle flowering of consciousness. If you want to really understand what the mind is, then you will have to detach yourself from your mind, and you will have to learn how to be just a witness. That's what meditation is all about.”

IfsKnowsWayWantMindSelfHandsEarthBeautifulForceConsciousnessWatchesMeditationTestsComplexesWitnessSubtlePhenomenonElusiveTubesFloweringBeautiful Mind
Author:Rajneesh
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“I suspect the reason is that most people [...] have a residue of feeling that Darwinian evolution isn't quite big enough to explain everything about life. All I can say as a biologist is that the feeling disappears progressively the more you read about and study what is known about life and evolution. I want to add one thing more. The more you understand the significance of evolution, the more you are pushed away from the agnostic position and towards atheism. Complex, statistically improbable things are by their nature more difficult to explain than simple, statistically probable things.”

PeopleWantI CanReasonEnoughFeelingsBigsDifficultSimpleKnownStudyOne ThingAtheismPositionEvolutionAddComplexesPositive AtheismDisappearSignificanceSuspectsAgnosticImprobableBiologistPushed Away
Author:Richard Dawkins
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“Seen in retrospect, evolution as a whole doubtless had a general direction, from simple to complex, from dependence on to relative independence of the environment, to greater and greater autonomy of individuals, greater and greater development of sense organs and nervous systems conveying and processing information about the state of the organism's surroundings, and finally greater and greater consciousness. You can call this direction progress or by some other name.”

StatesWholeNamesIndividualSimpleConsciousnessEnvironmentGreaterProgressInformationDevelopmentEvolutionIndependenceComplexesNervousRelativeOrgansOrganismsDependenceAutonomySurroundingsNervous SystemRetrospectProcessingConveying
Author:Theodosius Dobzhansky
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“Evolutionary biologists have been able to pretend to know how complex biological systems originated only because they treated them as black boxes. Now that biochemists have opened the black boxes and seen what is inside, they know the Darwinian theory is just a story, not a scientific explanation.”

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Book:Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds
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“Buddha says: Life should be simple, not complex. Life should be based on needs, not on desires. Needs are perfectly okay: you need food, you need clothes, you need a shelter, you need love, you need relationship. Perfectly good, nothing wrong in it. Needs can be fulfilled; desires are basically unfulfillable. Desires create complexity. They create complexity because they can never be fulfilled. You go on and on working hard for them, and they remain unfulfilled, and you remain empty.”

NeedsShouldHardDesireSimpleLove YouGoes OnClothesEmptyOkayComplexesComplexityShelterFulfilledNeed LovePerfectly Good
Author:Rajneesh
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“The greatest wisdom is in simplicity. Love, respect, tolerance, sharing, gratitude, forgiveness. It's not complex or elaborate. The real knowledge is free. It's encoded in your DNA. All you need is within you. Great teachers have said that from the beginning. Find your heart, and you will find your way.”

WayNeedsHeartSaidRealTeacherGratitudeComplexesSimplicityToleranceWithin YouDnaGreat TeacherLove RespectReal KnowledgeGreatest Wisdom
Author:Carlos Barrios
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“As we begin the 21st century, the Hubble space telescope is providing us with information about as yet uncharted regions of the universe and the promise that we may learn something about the origin of the cosmos. This same spirit of adventure is also being directed to the most complex structure that exists in the universe - the human brain.”

HumansMaySpiritUniverseSpaceBrainCenturyInformationAdventurePromiseStructureComplexesCosmosRegionsProviding21st CenturyHuman BrainTelescopesUnchartedSpirit Of AdventureHubbleHubble Space Telescope
Author:Floyd E. Bloom
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“With its hundred billion nerve cells, with their hundred trillion interconnections, the human brain is the most complex phenomenon in the known universe - always, of course, excepting the interaction of some six billion such brains and their owners within the socio-technological culture of our planetary ecosystem!”

HumansCultureUniverseCoursesBrainKnownSixHundredComplexesBillionsCellsOwnersPhenomenonNervesInteractionTechnologicalEcosystemsHuman BrainInterconnection
Author:Steven Rose
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“Pentagon's readiness and modernization problems are not due to budget cuts. The are the result of habitual modes of conduct evolved during the Cold War and a desire by the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex (MICC) to protect its comfortable life style in a world that is changing rapidly.”

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Author:Franklin C. Spinney
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“Realizing how often ingenious speculation in the complex biological world has led nowhere and how often the real advances in biology as well as in chemistry, physics and astronomy have kept within the bounds of mechanistic interpretation, we geneticists should rejoice, even with our noses on the grindstone (which means both eyes on the objectives), that we have at command an additional means of testing whatever original ideas pop into our heads.”

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Author:Thomas Hunt Morgan
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“We know by now that if we make technology the predestined force in our lives, man will walk to the measure of its demands. We know how leveling that influence can be, how easy it is to computerize man and make him a servile thing in a vast industrial complex. . . . This means we must subject the machine - technology - to control and cease despoiling the earth and filling people with goodies merely to make money.”

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Book:POINTS OF REBELLION
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“We are (most of us) embedded in an exceedingly complex network of social relationships, many of which are vital to our well-being. Every day we confront issues relating to the needs and wants of others and must continually make accommodations. And in addressing these conflicting interests, the operative norm is - or should be - fairness, a balancing of the interests and needs of other parties, other 'stakeholders.'”

WantNeedsShouldWellsHumanitySocialInterestPartyIssuesComplexesWell BeingFairnessNormEmbeddedAccommodationsNeeds And WantsNeeds Of OthersStakeholderSocial Relationships
Author:Peter Corning
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“Perhaps we humans are cosmic dwarfs; perhaps we are molecular giants. But there is no denying our mid-scale complexity. We humans live neither at the range of the infinitely small, nor at that of the infinitely large, but we might well live at the range of the infinitely complex. We live at the range of the most caring; we ourselves might embody the most capacity for caring.”

HumansWellsMightHumanityCapacityComplexesCaringScalesRangeGiantsComplexityCosmicDwarfs
Author:Holmes Rolston III
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“As soon as we touch the complex processes that go on in a living thing, be it plant or animal, we are at once forced to use the methods of this science [chemistry]. No longer will the microscope, the kymograph, the scalpel avail for the complete solution of the problem. For the further analysis of these phenomena which are in flux and flow, the investigator must associate himself with those who have labored in fields where molecules and atoms, rather than multicellular tissues or even unicellular organisms, are the units of study.”

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Book:Experimental and chemical studies of the blood: with an appeal for more extended chemical training for the biological and medical investigator
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“The advances of biology during the past 20 years have been breathtaking, particularly in cracking the mystery of heredity. Nevertheless, the greatest and most difficult problems still lie ahead. The discoveries of the 1970's about the chemical roots of memory in nerve cells or the basis of learning, about the complex behavior of man and animals, the nature of growth, development, disease and aging will be at least as fundamental and spectacular as those of the recent past.”

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Author:H. Bentley Glass
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“My main thesis will be that in the study of the intermediate processes of metabolism we have to deal not with complex substances which elude ordinary chemical methods, but with the simple substances undergoing comprehensible reactions... I intend also to emphasise the fact that it is not alone with the separation and identification of products from the animal that our present studies deal; but with their reactions in the body; with the dynamic side of biochemical phenomena.”

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Author:Frederick Gowland Hopkins
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“The three of us have worked on the development of the small and totally harmless fruit fly, Drosophila. This animal has been extremely cooperative in our hands - and has revealed to us some of its innermost secrets and tricks for developing from a single celled egg to a complex living being of great beauty and harmony. ... None of us expected that our work would be so successful or that our findings would ever have relevance to medicine.”

Has BeensHandsWould BeThreeAnimalSecretSuccessfulDevelopmentFindingsHarmonyMedicineComplexesFruitExpectedTricksDevelopingEggsRelevanceGeneticsCooperativesFruit Flies
Author:Christiane Nusslein-Volhard
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“In its most primitive form, life is, therefore, no longer bound to the cell, the cell which possesses structure and which can be compared to a complex wheel-work, such as a watch which ceases to exist if it is stamped down in a mortar. No, in its primitive form life is like fire, like a flame borne by the living substance;-like a flame which appears in endless diversity and yet has specificity within it;-which can adopt the form of the organic world, of the lank grass-leaf and of the stem of the tree.”

IfsWorldLifeFormScienceLife IsWatchesFireTreeDiversityStructureComplexesBoundsEndlessCeaseCellsSubstanceGrassFlamesWheelsPrimitiveStemLeafsLife Is LikeTree Of LifeMortarSpecificity
Author:Martinus Beijerinck
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“The investigation of causal relations between economic phenomena presents many problems of peculiar difficulty, and offers many opportunities for fallacious conclusions. Since the statistician can seldom or never make experiments for himself, he has to accept the data of daily experience, and discuss as best he can the relations of a whole group of changes; he cannot, like the physicist, narrow down the issue to the effect of one variation at a time. The problems of statistics are in this sense far more complex than the problems of physics.”

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Author:Udny Yule
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“Nature seems to take advantage of the simple mathematical representations of the symmetry laws. When one pauses to consider the elegance and the beautiful perfection of the mathematical reasoning involved and contrast it with the complex and far-reaching physical consequences, a deep sense of respect for the power of the symmetry laws never fails to develop.”

SeemsBeautifulLawScienceNatureNaturalSimpleFailingInvolvedConsequenceAdvantagePerfectionComplexesMathematicalReasoningReachingContrastRepresentationPausesEleganceSymmetry
Book:Selected Papers of Chen Ning Yang II: With Commentaries
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“It is probably no exaggeration to suppose that in order to improve such an organ as the eye at all, it must be improved in ten different ways at once. And the improbability of any complex organ being produced and brought to perfection in any such way is an improbability of the same kind and degree as that of producing a poem or a mathematical demonstration by throwing letters at random on a table.”

WayKindDifferentEyeScienceOrderTenDegreesPerfectionLettersMathematicsTablesComplexesMathematicalDifferent WaysThrowingOrgansDemonstrationExaggerationImprobability
Author:Joseph Murray
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“No matter how vast your knowledge or how modest, it is your own mind that has to acquire it. It is only with your own knowledge that you can deal. It is only your own knowledge that you can claim to possess or ask others to consider. Your mind is your only judge of truth - and if others dissent from your verdict, reality is the court of final appeal. Nothing but a man's mind can perform that complex, delicate, crucial process of identification which is thinking. Nothing can direct the process but his own judgment. Nothing can direct his judgment but his moral integrity.”

IfsThinkingMenMindMatterRealityAsksProcessDealsMoralJudgingIntegrityJudgmentDirectClaimsCourtComplexesFinalsAppealsAcquireCrucialDelicateModestyModestDissentIdentificationVerdictMoral Integrity
Book:Ayn Rand Reader
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