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Specialization Quotes

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Specialization Quotes

“Because by definition they lack any sense of mutuality or wholeness, our specializations subsist on conflict with one another. The rule is never to cooperate, but rather to follow one's own interest as far as possible. Checks and balances are all applied externally, by opposition, never by self-restraint. Labor, management, the military, the government, etc., never forbear until their excesses arouse enough opposition to force them to do so.”

SelfEnoughGovernmentForceInterestMilitaryBalanceConflictLaborManagementEnvironmentalDefinitionsChecksOppositionEtcExcessSustainabilityWholenessRestraintSpecializationSelf Restraint
Author:Wendell Berry
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“Extrapolated, technology wants what life wants: Increasing efficiency Increasing opportunity Increasing emergence Increasing complexity Increasing diversity Increasing specialization Increasing ubiquity Increasing freedom Increasing mutualism Increasing beauty Increasing sentience Increasing structure Increasing evolvability”

WantOpportunityTechnologyDiversityStructureComplexityEfficiencyEmergenceSpecializationUbiquity
Book:What Technology Wants
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“The daily grinding of evolution, as accelerated by technology, churns out more and more complex organisms, with higher rates of energy use, and with increasing specialization. Minds are the ideal way to express complexity, energy density, increasing specialization, expanding diversity -- all in one system. Mindedness is what evolution produces. Mindedness is what technology wants, too.”

WayWantMindUseEnergyTechnologyProduceEvolutionHigherDiversityIdealsComplexesRateComplexityOrganismsExpandingDensitySpecializationEnergy Use
Author:Kevin Kelly
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“I love to exercise my creativity in many ways but as each year of specialization goes by I feel further and further from my other creative selves. I used to be able to see myself doing many things and sometimes I still long for a job that involves less pressure and grappling with people but, as you say, I am one of the lucky ones so I try to just focus on feeling lucky and carry on!”

PeopleWayFeelsTryingYearsLongStillsSelfSometimesFeelingsAbleJobsUsedCreativityCreativeFocusExerciseLuckyPressureUsed To BeSpecializationGrappling
Author:Ani DiFranco
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“The average student emerges at the end of the Ph.D. program, already middle-aged, overspecialized, poorly prepared for the world outside, and almost unemployable except in a narrow area of specialization. Large numbers of students for whom the program is inappropriate are trapped in it, because the Ph.D. has become a union card required for entry into the scientific job market.”

WorldEndsJobsNumbersMiddleStudentsAreasProgramUnionsPreparedAverageCardsTrappedEntryLarge NumbersInappropriateMiddle AgedSpecialization
Author:Freeman Dyson
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“We are in an age that assumes the narrowing trends of specialization to be logical, natural, and desirable. Consequently, society expects all earnestly responsible communication to be crisply brief.... In the meantime, humanity has been deprived of comprehensive understanding.”

Has BeensAgeHumanityUnderstandingNaturalCommunicationResponsibleAssumingLogicalTrendsDesirableDeprivedComprehensiveSpecialization
Book:Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking
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“The history of clothing practices provides guidance for fashioning a new ethic that emphasizes quality over quantity, longevity over novelty, and versatility over specialization. With such an ethic, consumers would demand a shift toward more timeless design, away from fast-moving trends. Clothes could become more versatile in terms of what they can be used for, their ability to fit differently shaped bodies and to be altered.”

BodyMovingUsedTermAbilityQualityPracticeDesignFitDemandClothesEthicsConsumersGuidanceTrendsClothingsQuantityLongevityTimelessNoveltyAlteredSpecializationVersatileVersatility
Author:Juliet B. Schor
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“The welfare state destroys the market mechanisms - lessens free choice and willing exchange. Simultaneously creating unnatural specializations, it must, granted statism's premise, resort to welfarism; that is, it must assume the responsibility for the people's welfare: their employment, their old age, their income, and the like. As this is done, man loses his wholeness; he is dispossessed of responsibility for self, the very essence of his manhood. The more dependent he becomes, the less dependable!”

PeopleMenSelfStatesDoneAgeChoicesLosesResponsibilityWillingCreatingEssenceAssumingIncomeOld AgeEmploymentGrantedWelfareDependentMechanismWholenessManhoodResortsPremisesUnnaturalWelfare StateSpecializationDependableFree Choice
Author:Leonard Read
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“All the accoutrements that distinguish us from animal existence were put in place when we had a different kind of mind than we have now. We didn't have a mind that favored role specialization, and male dominance, and anxiety over female sexual activity related to feelings of male ownership. That all came later.”

MindKindDifferentFeelingsAnimalExistenceRolesActivityAnxietyFemaleMalesRelatedDifferent KindsOwnershipDominanceSpecializationMale Dominance
Author:Terence McKenna
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“Images detached from every aspect of life merge into a common stream, and the former unity of life is lost forever. Apprehended in a partial way, reality unfolds in a new generality as a pseudo-world apart, solely as an object of contemplation. The tendency toward the specialization of images-of-the-world finds its highest expression in the world of the autonomous image, where deceit deceives itself. The spectacle in its generality is a concrete inversion of life, and, as such the autonomous movement of non-life.”

WorldWayRealityLife IsLostCommonForeverMovementObjectsExpressionHighestAspectUnityTendenciesFormerContemplationStreamsDeceitConcreteDeceivingDetachedPseudoAutonomousAspects Of LifeGeneralitiesSpecializationWorlds ApartInversions
Book:The Society of the Spectacle
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“I think at a place like Harvard, our experience, I was involved with, at various stages, in trying to implement a new general education curriculum, our experience was that Harvard's all about specialization, that's not just true of the professori, it's also true of a lot of the undergraduates, too, and they come, they kind of know what they want to do, they select it because they have a strong aptitude for something in particular.”

ThinkingKnowsWantTryingKindStrongStageParticularInvolvedVariousSelectHarvardCurriculumAptitudeSpecializationGeneral Education
Author:Louis Menand
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“We are lucky in the United States to have our liberal arts system. In most countries, if you go to university, you have to decide for all English literature or no literature, all philosophy or no philosophy. But we have a system that is one part general education and one part specialization. If your parents say you've got to major in computer science, you can do that. But you can also take general education courses in the humanities, and usually you have to.”

IfsArtCountryStatesPhilosophyHumanityCoursesLiteratureParentCan DoUnitedUnited StatesLuckyComputerMajorsUniversityComputer ScienceEnglish LiteratureSpecializationLiberal ArtsGeneral Education
Author:Martha C. Nussbaum
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“All research in the cultural sciences in an age of specialization, once it is oriented towards a given subject matter through particular settings of problems and has established its methodological principles, will consider the analysis of the data as an end in itself.”

EndsMatterProblemAgeGivenPrinciplesSubjectsParticularResearchSettingSettingsDataAnalysisSubject MatterSpecialization
Book:On the Methodology of the Social Sciences
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“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

LifeGivingShouldWritingHumansProblemMotivationalAbleScienceOrderDiesCultureFightingHuman BeingsKnowledgeLearningPlansAdviceDyingDesignBuildingWallBalanceComfortComputerProgramAccountsManagementAtheistSolveBonesShipsCooksMealsInsectsEquationsBadassInvasionSonnetButchersDiapersHogManureSpecializationTastyStranger In A Strange LandRenaissance Man
Author:Robert A. Heinlein
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“There are divisions between a culinary chef and a dessert chef, also called a pastry chef. There are specializations within the pastry chef field. Some pastry chefs specialize in baking breads, while others are master cake designers. Each field requires an exceptional level of creativity and attention to detail.”

LevelsAttentionCreativityFieldsMastersDetailsBreadDesignerCulinaryDivisionCakeChefExceptionalBakingDessertPastriesSpecializationAttention To DetailPastry ChefBaking Bread
Author:Ron Ben-Israel
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“The fact that modern physics, the manifestation of an extreme specialization of the rational mind, is now making contact with mysticism, the essence of religion and manifestation of an extreme specialization of the intuitive mind, shows very beautifully the unity and complementary nature of the rational and intuitive modes of consciousness; of the yang and the yin.”

MindFactsShowsConsciousnessModernEssenceUnityInstinctExtremesIntuitionPhysicsRationalContactManifestationMysticismIntuitiveVery BeautifulHunchesSpecializationComplementaryYangModern Physics
Author:Fritjof Capra
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“To eliminate the discrepancy between men's plans and the results achieved, a new approach is necessary. Morphological thinking suggests that this new approach cannot be realized through increased teaching of specialized knowledge. This morphological analysis suggests that the essential fact has been overlooked that every human is potentially a genius. Education and dissemination of knowledge must assume a form which allows each student to absorb whatever develops his own genius, lest he become frustrated. The same outlook applies to the genius of the peoples as a whole.”

ThinkingMenHumansHas BeensWholeFactsFormScienceResultsEducationKnowledgePlansTeachingStudentsGeniusEssentialsAchievementApproachAssumingAnalysisFrustratedOutlookOverlookedLogical ThinkingSpecializationDiscrepanciesNew ApproachDisseminationDiscrepancies Between
Author:Fritz Zwicky
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“Technological society leads to increasing numbers of people who cannot adapt to the inhuman rhythm of modern life with its emphasis on specialization. A class of people is growing up who are unexploitable because they are not worth employing even for the minimum wage. Technological progress makes whole categories of people useless without making it possible to support them with the wealth produced by the progress.”

PeopleWholeWealthNumbersClassSupportGrowing UpGrowingProgressModernCapitalismRhythmUselessCategoriesMinimumTechnologicalEmphasisModern LifeMinimum WageInhumanEmployingSpecializationTechnological Progress
Author:Jacques Ellul
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“The words graphic designer, architect, or industrial designer stick in my throat, giving me a sense of limitation, of specialisation within the specialty, of a relationship to society and form itself that is unsatisfactory and incomplete. This inadequate set of terms to describe an active life reveals only partially the still undefined nature of the designer.”

LifeGivingStillsFormTermNatureRelationshipSocietySpecialDesignIndustryLimitsSticksActiveArchitectureSensesLimitationDesignerThroatArchitectRevealingGraphicDescribingInadequateIncompleteGraphic DesignSpecialtyUnsatisfiedSpecializationGraphic DesignerActive LifeIncompletenessUndefinedWordingCreative Industries
Author:Alvin Lustig
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“The greatest cost of the specialization of technological life - and out of which all other damages are birthed - is arguably our separation from the practical and enriching sense of ourselves as embodied beings. When we are alienated from the wisdom of the body, our lives become theoretical and abstract, and we are distanced from the direct, felt sense of living.”

LifeBodyFeltOur LivesCostDirectSeparationPracticalsLive LifeAbstractDamageTechnologicalTheoreticalEnrichingSpecialization
Author:Richard Strozzi-Heckler
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“Imprisoning philosophy within the professionalizations and specializations of an institutionalized curriculum, after the manner of our contemporary European and North American culture, is arguably a good deal more effective in neutralizing its effects than either religious censorship or political terror”

PhilosophyPoliticalCultureReligiousDealsEffectsTerrorContemporaryCensorshipAmerican CultureCurriculumSpecialization
Book:Edith Stein: A Philosophical Prologue, 1913-1922
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