“Perhaps randomness is not merely an adequate description for complex causes that we cannot specify. Perhaps the world really works this way, and many events are uncaused in any conventional sense of the word. Perhaps our gut feeling that it cannot be so reflects only our hopes and prejudices, our desperate striving to make sense of a complex and confusing world, and not the ways of nature.” WorldWayFeelingsCausesEventsPrejudiceComplexesStriveMake SenseDesperateGutsDescriptionConventionalConfusingAdequateRandomnessGut Feelings Author:Stephen Jay Gould
“Unlike the position that exists in the physical sciences, in economics and other disciplines that deal with essentially complex phenomena, the aspects of the events to be accounted for about which we can get quantitative data are necessarily limited and may not include the important ones.” MayImportantDealsEventsPositionDisciplineAspectEconomicsComplexesDataPhenomenonPhysical Science Author:Friedrich August von Hayek
“The Da Vinci Code may well be the only novel ever written that begins with the word 'renowned'... I think what enabled the first word to tip me off that I was about to spend a number of hours in the company of one of the worst prose stylists in the history of literature was this. Putting curriculum vitae details into complex modifiers on proper names or definite descriptions is what you do in journalistic stories about deaths; you just don't do it in describing an event in a narrative... Why did I keep reading? Because London Heathrow is a long way from San Francisco International.” ThinkingWayFirstsWellsMayLongBookStoriesReadingLiteratureNamesLanguageHoursNumbersCompanyNovelWrittenWorstEventsComplexesInternationalDetailsLondonNarrativeCodeProseDescriptionDefiniteLong WaySan FranciscoDescribingCurriculumStylistJournalisticRenownedDa Vinci Code Author:Geoffrey K. Pullum
“A letter is not a dialogue or even an omniscient exposition. It is a fabric of surfaces, a mask, a form as well suited to affectations as to the affections. The letter is, by its natural shape, self-justifying; it is one's own evidence, deposition, a self-serving testimony. In a letter the writer holds all the cards, controls everything about himself and about those assertions he wishes to make concerning events or the worth of others. For completely self-centered characters, the letter form is a complex and rewarding activity.” WellsSelfCharacterFormWishNaturalEventsActivityShapesEvidenceLettersComplexesAffectionSurfaceDialogueCardsMaskServingFabricTestimonySelf CenteredAssertionSelf ServingOmniscient Book:Seduction and Betrayal: Women and Literature Source: Seduction and Betrayal: Women and Literature
“Leadership is the name that people use to make sense out of complex events and the outcomes of events they otherwise would not be able to explain. In other words, people attribute leadership to certain individuals who are called leaders because people want to believe that leaders cause things to happen rather than have to explain causality by understanding complex social forces or analyzing the dynamic interaction among people, events, and environment.” PeopleWantBelieveUseHappensAbleCertainNamesIndividualForceSocialCausesUnderstandingLeadershipLeaderEnvironmentEventsComplexesMake SenseOutcomesAttributesInteractionAnalyzingCausality Author:Joseph C. Rost
“There are a whole other range of sciences that must deal with the narrative reconstruction of the inordinately complex events of history that can occur but once in their detailed glory. And for those kinds of sciences, be it cosmology, or evolutionary biology, or geology, or palaeontology, the experimental methods, simplification, quantification, prediction and repetition of the experimental sciences don't always work. You have to go with the narrative, the descriptive methods of what? Of historians.” KindWholeDealsEventsGloryMethodComplexesNarrativeRangeBiologyHistorianRepetitionPredictionsCosmologyGeologyReconstructionSimplificationEvolutionary BiologyExperimental Science Author:Richard Lewontin
“Many of us like to think of financial economics as a science, but complex events like the financial crisis suggest that this conceit may be more wishful thinking than reality.” ThinkingMayRealityEventsEconomicsCrisisComplexesFinancialConceitWishful ThinkingFinancial CrisisEconomic Crisis Author:Andrew Lo
“At first the, only subconsciously apprehended, approaching confluences of complex events make themselves known intuitively within the intellectual weather. Then comes a gradually awakening consciousness of the presence of new families of differentiating-out challenging concepts of every day prominence. It is with these randomly patterning families of separate concepts that evolution is about to deal integratively. As a now specific unitary problem it may be disposed of effectively when and if that unified problem becomes "adequately stated" and thereby comprehensibly solvable.” IfsFirstsMayProblemChallengesDealsConsciousnessKnownEventsEvolutionIntellectualConceptsComplexesAwakeningWeatherUnifiedProminenceConfluenceNew Family Author:R. Buckminster Fuller
“Much more than an entertaining set of exaggerated facts, fiction is a metaphoric method of describing, dramatizing and condensing historical events, personal actions, psychological states and the symbolic knowledge encoded within the collective unconscious; things, events and conditions that are otherwise too diffuse and/or complex to be completely digested or appreciated by the prevailing culture.” StatesFactsActionCultureFictionConditionsEventsMethodHistoricalComplexesPsychologicalUnconsciousCollectivesEntertainingAppreciatedSymbolicDescribingExaggeratedPrevailingCollective UnconsciousHistorical EventsMetaphoric Author:Tom Robbins
“But look at Avatar (2009), one of the most globally viewed pieces of entertainment to have ever been made - the central emotional event of the whole movie was a tree being cut down. And the entire movie, essentially, is saying, "If we let the military industrial complex trash the place that we're living in, we will have committed an epic crime."” IfsLooksMadeWholePiecesCuttingTreeMilitaryEventsCrimeEmotionalDown AndComplexesCommittedEntertainmentEpicTrashMilitary Industrial Complex Author:Edward Norton
“Listen, in dreams and especially in nightmares, from indigestion or anything, a man sees sometimes such artistic visions, such complex and real actuality, such events, even a whole world of events, woven into such a plot, with such unexpected details from the most exalted matters to the last button on a cuff, as I swear Leo Tolstoy has never invented.” MenWorldRealSometimesMatterWholeDreamLastsVisionEventsComplexesDetailsWhole WorldArtisticUnexpectedNightmarePlotSwearButtonsWovenExaltedActualityIndigestionCuffsArtistic Vision Book:The Brothers Karamazov Source: The Brothers Karamazov
“"History repeats itself" and "History never repeats itself" are about equally true ... We never know enough about the infinitely complex circumstances of any past event to prophesy the future by analogy.” KnowsEnoughPastEventsCircumstancesComplexesRepeatsAnalogiesRepeating HistoryHistory Repeats ItselfPast Events Author:G. M. Trevelyan
“We never know enough about the infinitely complex circumstances of any past event to prophesy the future by analogy.” KnowsEnoughPastEventsCircumstancesComplexesAnalogiesPast Events Author:G. M. Trevelyan