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Theory Quotes

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Theory Quotes

“There are two ways of forming an opinion. One is the scientific method; the other, the scholastic. To the scientific mind, experimental proof is all-important, and theory is merely a convenience in description, to be junked when it no longer fits. To the academic mind, authority is everything, and facts are junked when they do not fit theory.”

Way Mind Two Important Facts Opinion Theory Fit Authority Method Proof Description Academic Convenience Two Ways Scientific Method Scholastics

Author:Robert A. Heinlein

“Schizophrenia --its nature, etiology, and the kind of therapy to use for it--remains one of the most puzzling of the mental illnesses. The theory of schizophrenia presented here is based on communications analysis, and specifically on the Theory of Logical Types. From this theory and from observations of schizophrenic patients is derived a description, and the necessary conditions for, a situation called the "double bind"--a situation in which no matter what a person does, he "can't win." It is hypothesized that a person caught in the double bind may develop schizophrenic symptoms”

Source: Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology

“Adam Smith's image of competition in the marketplace was intended as an adjunct to his detailed description of human motivation in The Theory of Moral Sentiments , in which the pursuit of profit is tempered at every juncture by sympathy and benevolence, and by the posture of the "impartial spectator" which is forced on us by our moral nature.”

Humans Motivation Moral Theory Competition Profit Pursuit Description Sentiments Adam Spectators Marketplace Benevolence Posture Juncture

Author:Ted Malloch

“Thus the theory of description matters most. It is the theory of the word for those For whom the word is the making of the world, The buzzing world and lisping firmament.”

World Matter Theory Description Firmament

Book:The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens

Source: The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens

“To call a posit a posit is not to patronize it. A posit can be unavoidable except at the cost of other no less artificial expedients. Everything to which we concede existence is a posit from the standpoint of a description of the theory-building process, and simultaneously real from the standpoint of the theory that is being built.”

Real Process Existence Building Theory Cost Built Description Artificial Standpoint

Book:Word and Object

Source: Word and Object

“Freudian psychoanalytical theory is a mythology that answers pretty well to Levi-Strauss's descriptions. It brings some kind of order into incoherence; it, too, hangs together, makes sense, leaves no loose ends, and is never (but never) at a loss for explanation. In a state of bewilderment it may therefore bring comfort and relief.... give its subject a new and deeper understanding of his own condition and of the nature of his relationship to his fellow men. A mythical structure will be built up around him which makes sense and is believable-in, regardless of whether or not it is true.”

“Often, when I want to read something that is satisfying to me as theology, what I actually read is string theory, or something like that - popularizations, inevitably, of scientific cosmologies - because their description of the scale of things and the intrinsic, astonishing character of reality coincides very beautifully with the most ambitious theology. It is thinking at that scale, and it is thinking that is invested with meaning in a humanly evocative form. That's theology.”

Thinking Want Character Reality Form Theory Scales Theology Description Strings Satisfying Ambitious Astonishing Cosmology Very Beautiful String Theory

Author:Marilynne Robinson

“The mathematical framework of quantum theory has passed countless successful tests and is now universally accepted as a consistent and accurate description of all atomic phenomena.”

Successful Theory Tests Accepted Mathematical Consistent Description Accurate Quantum Framework Quantum Theory

Author:Erwin Schrodinger