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Mechanism Quotes

Browse 770 quotes about Mechanism.

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Mechanism Quotes

“The ability of nonintelligent people to understand the most complicated mechanisms and to use them has always been to me a cause of astonishment: their inability to understand simple questions is even more astonishing. The general acceptance of simple ideas is difficult and rare, and yet it is only when simple, fundamental, ideas have been accepted that further progress becomes possible on a higher level.”

PeopleHas BeensIdeasUseCausesDifficultSimpleAbilityLevelsProgressAcceptanceHigherFundamentalsComplicatedAcceptedMechanismInabilityAstonishingHigher LevelAstonishmentSimple Ideas
Book:A History of Science: Ancient Science Through the Golden Age of Greece
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“By putting the means of production into the hands of the masses but withholding from those same masses any ownership over the product of their work, Web 2.0 provides an incredibly efficient mechanism to harvest the economic value of the free labor provided by the very, very many and concentrate it into the hands of the very, very few.”

MeanHandsValuesEconomicProductsMassLaborProductionsMechanismEfficientOwnershipHarvestWithholdingEconomic ValueWeb 2.0
Author:Nicholas G. Carr
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“Some god or Weltgeist has been making a movie out of us for the past six thousand years, and now we have turned a corner on the movie set of reality and have discovered the boards propping up the two-dimensional monuments of human history. The movement of humanism has reached its limit, and now at that limit it is breaking apart into the opposites of mechanism and mysticism and moving along the circumference of a vast new sphere of posthuman thought.”

YearsHumansHas BeensTwoRealityPastMovingMovementThousandLimitsSixOppositesHarmonyHumanismCornersBoardsMysticismSpheresMechanismThousand YearsHuman HistoryMonumentHuman ThoughtMovie SetsBreaking Apart
Book:Passages about Earth: An Exploration of the New Planetary Culture
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“The exclusion of true esoteric religion has been the business of the State since ancient times. At first this was done via the establishment of the popular idealism of exoteric religious institutions in league with the State. But in modern times the same process is done by the strategic exclusion of conventional religious cultism, mystical idealism, and higher evolutionary Wisdom from the mechanisms of popular culture.”

FirstsHas BeensStatesDoneCultureProcessReligiousModernHigherInstitutionsAncientLeagueEstablishmentMechanismConventionalIdealismMysticalStrategicExclusionPopular CultureEsotericModern TimesAncient Times
Book:Scientific proof of the existence of God will soon be announced by the White House!: prophetic wisdom about the myths and idols of mass culture and popular religious cultism, the new priesthood of scientific and political materialism, and the secrets of enlightenment hidden in the body of man
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“Faculty Psychology is getting to be respectable again after centuries of hanging around with phrenologists and other dubious types. By faculty psychology I mean, roughly, the view that many fundamentally different kinds of psychological mechanisms must be postulated in order to explain the facts of mental life. Faculty psychology takes seriously the apparent heterogeneity of the mental and is impressed by such prima facie differences as between, say, sensation and perception, volition and cognition, learning and remembering, or language and thought.”

KindMeanDifferentFactsRememberOrderLanguageDifferencesViewsPsychologyCenturyTypePerceptionPsychologicalFacultySensationsMechanismDifferent KindsImpressedRespectableCognitionDubiousHanging AroundVolition
Author:Jerry Fodor
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“Suppose that the organism is given the problem of determining the analysis of a stimulus at a certain level of representation - e.g., the problem of determining which sequence of words a given utterance encodes. Since, in the general case, transducer outputs underdetermine perceptual analyses, we can think of the solution of such problems as involving processes of nondemonstrative inference. In particular, we can think of each input system as a computational mechanism which projects and confirms a certain class of hyputheses on the basis of a certain body of data.”

ThinkingProblemBodyCertainGivenProcessLevelsClassCasesParticularProjectsSolutionsBasesDataAnalysisMechanismRepresentationOrganismsSequenceStimulusInvolvingInputUtteranceOutputInference
Author:Jerry Fodor
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“The emergence of a unified cognitive moment relies on the coordination of scattered mosaics of functionally specialized brain regions. Here we review the mechanisms of large-scale integration that counterbalance the distributed anatomical and functional organization of brain activity to enable the emergence of coherent behaviour and cognition. Although the mechanisms involved in large-scale integration are still largely unknown, we argue that the most plausible candidate is the formation of dynamic links mediated by synchrony over multiple frequency bands.”

StillsMomentsBrainInvolvedActivityBandOrganizationArguingScalesRelyCandidatesRegionsLinksReviewsMechanismMultipleBehaviourIntegrationFrequencyFormationCognitionCognitiveEmergenceUnifiedPlausibleLarge ScaleCoordinationMosaics
Author:Francisco Varela
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“As Stephen Jay Gould pointed out in Time, in no other Western country is the teaching of Evolution regarded as controversial. Throughout the world, one way or another, most Christian denominations have managed to reconcile belief in God with belief in the mechanisms of natural selection. A French or German or Scandinavian politician who called for students to entertain as a reasonable deduction from existing evidence the proposition that Earth is at most 10,000 years old would be bundled off to a mental hospital.”

WorldWayYearsCountryWould BeEarthChristianBeliefNaturalAtheismTeachingStudentsEvolutionPoliticianEvidenceWesternPositive AtheismOne WayReasonableHospitalsMechanismPropositionsSelectionControversialReconcileNatural SelectionBelief In GodDeductionsDenominationsScandinaviansChristian DenominationsJay Gould
Author:Katha Pollitt
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“There is no subject more captivating, more worthy of study, than nature. To understand this great mechanism, to discover the forces which are active, and the laws which govern them, is the highest aim of the intellect of man.”

MenLawForceStudySubjectsHighestAimWorthyIntellectActiveMechanismCaptivating
Book:The Inventions, Researches and Writings of Nikola Tesla: With Special Reference to His Work in Polyphase Currents and High Potential Lighting
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“The masks we wear are simply veils that we have chosen to hide behind in order to get our way, or to demonstrate how we are reacting to the powers and forces that seem to influence us from the external world. They are part of our self image, and in some cases the mask is nothing more than a protective device, a defense mechanism.”

WorldWaySelfSeemsOrderForceBehindsCasesInfluenceDefenseChosenMaskDevicesMechanismVeilsProtectiveReactingDefense Mechanisms
Author:John Randolph Price
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“When a republic's most venerable institutions no longer operate as they were intended, it becomes possible for small cabals to usurp power, and, while keeping the forms, corrupt the function of those institutions for their own ends. Looking at things that way, the George W. Bush presidency has been both result and symptom of the decadence of America's constitutional mechanisms.”

WayHas BeensEndsAmericaFormResultsFunctionInstitutionsRepublicMechanismPresidencySymptomsDecadenceCabal
Author:T. D. Allman
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“With respect to duels, indeed, I have my own ideas. Few things in this so surprising world strike me with more surprise. Two little visual spectra of men, hovering with insecure enough cohesion in the midst of the unfathomable, and to dissolve therein, at any rate, very soon, make pause at the distance of twelve paces asunder; whirl around, and simultaneously by the cunningest mechanism, explode one another into dissolution; and, offhand, become air, and non-extant--the little spitfires!”

MenWorldLittlesTwoIdeasEnoughMy OwnAirDistanceSurpriseRateStrikesVisualsMidstPaceMechanismSurprisingTwelvePausesInsecureDissolutionUnfathomableCohesionHoveringDueling
Book:Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh
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“The aging process seems to strike first at the mechanism which warns that we have been talking too much and the listener is growing restless. The signal isn't perfect at any age - drink, for instance, throws it right out of kilter - but it is almost non-existent in old people.”

PeopleFirstsHas BeensSeemsAgeProcessPerfectTalkingToo MuchGrowingDrinkAgingStrikesInstanceMechanismListenersSignalsOld PeopleRestlessAging ProcessTalking Too Much
Author:Barbara Walters
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“Every brand of religion maintains, and is, a permanent mechanism for transmitting ideas and values - whether one regards those values as admirable or ridiculous. Secularist organizations, with their generally looser, nonhierarchical structures, lack the power to hand down and disseminate their heritage in such a systematic way.”

WayIdeasHandsReligionValuesOrganizationRegardDown AndStructureRidiculousBrandsPermanentHeritageMechanismAdmirableSystematic
Author:Susan Jacoby
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“To allow the fear to come on you and then pass through. If you keep cutting the fear off by intervening - let's say, taking a Xanax to try to cure it - you'll never understand what fear is really for. Fear is part of a survival mechanism. The way you conquer fear is to feel it all the way, and then you'll find out that there's nothing there - it's just emotion.”

IfsWayFeelsTryingEmotionCuttingSurvivalCuresConquerMechanismConquering FearInterveningXanax
Author:Nick Nolte
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“By deriving it's just powers from the governed, government becomes primarily a mechanism for defense against bodily harm, theft, and involuntary servitude. It cannot claim the power to redistribute money or property nor to force reluctant citizens to perform acts of charity against their will. Government is created by the people. No individual possesses the power to take another's wealth or to force others to do good, so no government has the the right to do such things either. The creature cannot exceed the creator.”

PeopleGovernmentIndividualForceWealthCitizensCreaturesClaimsPropertyCharityCreatorHarmDefenseMechanismExceedTheftReluctantServitudeInvoluntaryActs Of Charity
Book:The Constitution: A Heavenly Banner
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