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Theory Quotes

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Theory Quotes

“The principal axiom in their theory was: Everything can be proved, and everything can be disproved; and in the process, one must profit as much from the folly of others, and from his own superiority, as he can.”

Process Theory Profit Folly Principal Superiority Axioms

Author:Moses Mendelssohn

“Literary theory has become a parody of science, generating its own arcane jargon. In the process, tragically, it discourages love of literature for its own sake.”

Literature Process Theory Sake Discouraging Parody Jargon Arcane Literary Theory

Author:Nancy Pearcey

“Though he avoided outright endorsement of the view, fifth-century Church Father Saint Augustine was clearly familiar with the theory of the spherical earth: "They [those who believe that "there are men on the other side of the earth"] fail to observe that even if the world is held to be global or rounded in shape, or if some process of reasoning should prove this to be the case, it would still not necessarily follow that the land on the opposite side is not covered by masses of water."”

“The mere fact that so many who espouse such far-right views and beliefs still exist in this society is incarnate proof that Darwin's theories apply solely to biological processes and not to processes of the spirit.”

Stills Facts Spirit Politics Belief Process Views Theory Mere Proof This Society

Author:Derek R. Audette

“No matter how we may single out a complex from nature...its theoretical treatment will never prove to be ultimately conclusive... I believe that this process of deepening of theory has no limits.”

Believe May Matter I Believe Process Theory Prove Limits Complexes Treatment Skepticism Theoretical

Author:Albert Einstein

“The theory of punctuated equilibrium, proposed by Niles Eldredge and myself, is not, as so often misunderstood, a radical claim for truly sudden change, but a recognition that ordinary processes of speciation, properly conceived as glacially slow by the standard of our own life-span, do not resolve into geological time as long sequences of insensibly graded intermediates (the traditional, or gradualistic, view), but as geologically "sudden" origins at single bedding planes.”

“The usefulness of the models in constructing a testable theory of the process is severely limited by the quickly increasing number of parameters which must be estimated in order to compare the predictions of the models with empirical results.”

Order Process Results Numbers Theory Models Compare Predictions Usefulness Parameters

Book:Prisoner's Dilemma: A Study in Conflict and Cooperation

Source: Prisoner's Dilemma: A Study in Conflict and Cooperation

“The effects of heat are subject to constant laws which cannot be discovered without the aid of mathematical analysis. The object of the theory is to demonstrate these laws; it reduces all physical researches on the propagation of heat, to problems of the integral calculus, whose elements are given by experiment. No subject has more extensive relations with the progress of industry and the natural sciences; for the action of heat is always present, it influences the processes of the arts, and occurs in all the phenomena of the universe.”

“I can't stand theory because it is imposed by the intellectual. And the intellectual is, by definition, not a creative person. The intellectual is a person who talks about the creative process, but often doesn't understand it.”

Persons I Can Process Creative Theory Intellectual Definitions Creative Process Creative Person

Author:Mary Pratt

“At any one time there is a natural tendency among physicists to believe that we already know the essential ingredients of a comprehensive theory . But each time a new frontier of observation is broached we inevitably discover new phenomena which force us to modify substantially our previous conceptions. I believe this process to be unending, that the delights and challenges of unexpected discovery will continue always.”

“It is wiser, I believe, to arrive at theory by way of evidence rather than the other way around.... It is more rewarding, in any case, to assemble the facts first and, in the process of arranging them in narrative form, to discover a theory or a historical generalization emerging of its own accord.”

Way Firsts Believe Facts Form I Believe Process Cases Atheism Theory Evidence Historical Positive Atheism Narrative Wiser Accord Emerging Generalization Arranging

Book:Practicing History: Selected Essays

Source: Practicing History: Selected Essays

“All films are learning processes. I am still trying to work out how you make a movie. I didn't study at film school or any of those things. I didn't bother with film theory.”

Trying Stills School Film Process Study Theory Work Out Bother Learning Process Film School

Author:Terry Gilliam

“My view of university training is to unsettle the minds of young men, to widen their horizons, to inflame their intellects. It is not a hardening, or settling process. Education is not to teach men facts, theories, or laws; it is not to reform them, or amuse them, or to make them expert technicians in any field; it is to teach them to think, to think straight if possible; but to think always for themselves.”

Ifs Thinking Men Mind Facts Law Young Process Views Teach Fields Theory Training University Intellect Reform Settling Young Man Experts Horizon Technicians

Author:Robert M

“However we select from nature a complex [of phenomena] using the criterion of simplicity, in no case will its theoretical treatment turn out to be forever appropriate (sufficient).... I do not doubt that the day will come when [general relativity], too, will have to yield to another one, for reasons which at present we do not yet surmise. I believe that this process of deepening theory has no limits.”

“What we call creation science makes no reference to the Bible. It says there are two possible explanations for the origin of the universe and living things: theistic, supernatural creation by an intelligent being, or nontheistic, mechanistic evolutionary theory that posits no goal and no purpose in the evolutionary process. We just happen to be here.”

Two Happens Purpose Universe Process Goal Creation Theory Intelligent Scary Explanation Living Things Creation Science

Author:Duane Gish

“The two most far-reaching critical theories at the beginning of the latest phase of industrial society were those of Marx and Freud. Marx showed the moving powers and the conflicts in the social-historical process. Freud aimed at the critical uncovering of the inner conflicts. Both worked for the liberation of man, even though Marx's concept was more comprehensive and less time-bound than Freud's.”

Men Two Moving Social Process Theory Conflict Concepts Historical Bounds Critical Liberation Reaching Phases Comprehensive Inner Conflict Uncovering Critical Theory

Book:The art of being

Source: The art of being

“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

“The physical universe that you see is all in your mind. When you turn your mind off, or become unconscious, the physical universe, for you, disappears. Then, when you awaken your consciousness, the universe reappears magically. Quite simple really - no thoughts on your part, no physical world. As Walt Whitman succinctly stated: "The whole theory of the universe is directed unerringly to one single individual - namely to You." Without your mind to process it, the universe simply disappears into nothingness.”

World Mind Whole Turns Universe Individual Process Simple Consciousness Theory Disappear Unconscious Nothingness Walt

Author:Wayne Dyer

“In view of the importance of philanthropy in our society, it is surprising that so little attention has been given to it by economic or social theorists. In economic theory, especially, the subject is almost completely ignored. This is not, I think, because economists regard mankind as basically selfish or even because economic man is supposed to act only in his self-interest; it is rather because economics has essentially grown up around the phenomenon of exchange and its theoretical structure rests heavily on this process.”

“Psychology should be the chief basic science upon which the practices of education depend. It should have supplied education with the information it needs concerning the processes of understanding, learning, and thinking, among other things. One of the difficulties has been that such theory as has been developed has been based primarily upon studies of behavior of rats and pigeons. As someone has said, some of the theory thus developed has been an insult even to the rat.”

Thinking Needs Should Has Beens Said Process Understanding Practice Study Psychology Information Theory Depends Behavior Should Have Difficulty Chiefs Insult Rats Pigeons

Author:J. P. Guilford

“Widely dispersed knowledge concerning the important role of basic cooperative processes among living beings may lead to the acceptance of cooperation as a guiding principle both in social theory and as a basis for human behavior. Such a development when it occurs will alter the course of human history.”

“That education is not an affair of "telling" and being told, but an active and constructive process, is a principle almost as generally violated in practice as conceded in theory. Is not this deplorable situation due to the fact that the doctrine is itself merely told? It is preached; it is lectured; it is written about.”

Facts Process Situation Principles Practice Teacher Written Teaching Theory Affair Active Dues Doctrine Constructive Conceded

Book:Democracy and Education: Top American Authors

Source: Democracy and Education: Top American Authors

“Knowledge is not a series of self-consistent theories that converges toward an ideal view; it is rather an ever increasing ocean of mutually incompatible (and perhaps even incommensurable) alternatives, each single theory, each fairy tale, each myth that is part of the collection forcing the others into greater articulation and all of them contributing, via this process of competition, to the development of our consciousness.”

Source: Against method: outline of an anarchistic theory of knowledge

“Ruskin's much-derided moral theory of art was part of an attempt to show that this human activity, which we value so highly, engaged the whole of human personality. His insistence on the sanctity of nature was part of an attempt to develop Goethe's intuition that form cannot be put together in the mind by an additive process, but is to be deduced from the laws of growth in living organisms, and their resistance to the elements.”

Source: Selected Writings

“As soon as science has emerged from its initial stages, theoretical advances are no longer achieved merely by a process of arrangement. Guided by empirical data, the investigator rather develops a system of thought which, in general, is built up logically from a small number of fundamental assumptions, the so-called axioms. We call such a system of thought a theory. The theory finds the justification for its existence in the fact that it correlates a large number of single observations, and it is just here that the 'truth' of the theory lies.”

“The shell game that we play ... is technically called 'renormalization'. But no matter how clever the word, it is still what I would call a dippy process! Having to resort to such hocus-pocus has prevented us from proving that the theory of quantum electrodynamics is mathematically self-consistent. It's surprising that the theory still hasn't been proved self-consistent one way or the other by now; I suspect that renormalization is not mathematically legitimate.”

Way Stills Self Matter Play Games Process Theory Prove Clever One Way Consistent Suspects Surprising Quantum Shells Resorts Hocus Pocus

Book:QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter

Source: QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter

“If a psychological Maxwell devises a general theory of mind, he may make it possible for a psychological Einstein to follow with a theory that the mental and the physical are really the same. But this could happen only at the end of a process which began with the recognition that the mental is something completely different from the physical world as we have come to know it through a certain highly successful form of detached objective understanding. Only if the uniqueness of the mental is recognized will concepts and theories be devised especially for the purpose of understanding it.”

Ifs Knows World Mind May Different Ends Happens Form Purpose Certain Process Understanding Successful Theory Concepts Objectives Psychological Recognition Uniqueness Detached Maxwell

Book:The View From Nowhere

Source: The View From Nowhere

“Precisely constructed models for linguistic structure can play an important role, both negative and positive, in the process of discovery itself. By pushing a precise but inadequate formulation to an unacceptable conclusion, we can often expose the exact source of this inadequacy and, consequently, gain a deep understanding of the linguistic data. More positively, a formalized theory may automatically provide solutions for many problems other than those for which it was explicitly designed.”

Source: Syntactic Structures

“I went to London to do the stuff. I was like "What am I going to do? What's going to happen?" But then once you start working, you forget all that and you start enjoying what you're doing. Once you enjoy the process, you know that people are going to do the same thing. If you don't enjoy it and just do it like a job, then it's going to be feel that way. That's my theory of doing a movie.”

People Ifs Knows Way Feels Happens Jobs Stuff Process Enjoy Forget Theory London Just Do It

Author:A. R. Rahman

“I venture to give an alternative method of regarding the processes occurring in the electric field, which I have often found useful and which is, from a mathematical point of view, equivalent to Maxwell's Theory.”

Giving Found Process Views Fields Theory Method Point Of View Alternatives Mathematical Electric Venture Maxwell

Book:Notes on Recent Researches in Electricity and Magnetism: Intended as a Sequel to Professor Clerk-Maxwell's Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism

Source: Notes on Recent Researches in Electricity and Magnetism: Intended as a Sequel to Professor Clerk-Maxwell's Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism

“Even if individual researchers are prone to falling in love with their own theories, the broader process of peer review and institutionalized skepticism are designed to ensure that, eventually, the best ideas prevail.”

Ifs Ideas Fall Individual Process Theory Falling In Love Reviews Skepticism Peers Researchers Peer Review

Author:Chris Mooney

“One of the big parts of my decision-making process is knowing that when you're signing up for something, you're signing up for multiple seasons, should it be successful, and in theory, you want it to be successful, but you also want to be doing something that you're enjoying.”

Want Should Bigs Process Enjoy Decision Knowing Successful Theory Seasons Being Successful Decision Making Multiple Signing Decision Making Process Signing Up

Author:Tom Ellis

“Some of my colleagues are surprised by how little personal interaction I've had with "my" authors, but I don't translate to go fishing for friends. Part of me suspects that they wouldn't like me, or that I wouldn't like them, which would inevitably get in the way of the mission. None of the theory built around translation matters to me anyway: much of the process, I find, is intuitive.”

Way Littles Matter Process Theory Built Missions Like Me Fishing Suspects Interaction Translate Colleagues Intuitive Translations

Author:Andre Naffis-Sahely

“Science is the process of crash testing ideas: you ram the idea head-on into a brick wall at 60mph, and knowledge is gained by examining the pieces. If the theory is solid, the pieces are from the wall. Then we build a bigger wall.”

Ifs Ideas Process Pieces Theory Wall Bigger Crash Testing Bricks Examining Rams Brick Wall

Author:Jon Huntsman, Jr.

“Only the defeat of the proletariat in Germany in 1923 gave the decisive push to the creation of Stalin's theory of national socialism: the downward curve of the revolution gave rise to Stalinism, not to the theory of the permanent revolution, which was first formulated by me in 1905. This theory is not bound to a definite calendar of revolutionary events; it only reveals the world-wide interdependence of the revolutionary process.”

World Firsts Process Events Creation Theory Revolution Bounds Defeat Wide Socialism Permanent Revolutionary Germany Definite Curves Calendars Interdependence Proletariat Stalinism

Author:Leon Trotsky

“Group selection and individual selection are just two of the selection processes that have played important roles in evolution. There also is selection within individual organisms (intragenomic conflict), and selection among multi-species communities (an idea that now is getting attention in work on the human microbiome). All four of these levels of selection find a place in multi-level selection theory.”

Humans Two Important Ideas Individual Process Community Levels Attention Roles Four Groups Theory Evolution Conflict Species Organisms Selection

Author:Elliott Sober

“The rabid opposition to group selection has now considerably subsided. In the process, the conceptual structure of evolutionary theory has become clearer, as have the relationships that connect different theoretical approaches.”

Different Process Groups Theory Approach Structure Opposition Selection Theoretical

Author:Elliott Sober

“My theory for nonfiction is that nobody can be free of some kind of conceptions about whatever story they're writing. But if you can find a way to build those into the story, then the story becomes a process of deconstructing and heightening and sometimes changing those notions and that makes dramatic tension. The initial statement of your position, and then letting reality act on you to change it, is pretty good storytelling.”

Ifs Way Writing Kind Sometimes Stories Reality Process Position Theory Notion Statements Storytelling Dramatic Tension Conception Nonfiction Initials Good Storytelling

Author:George Saunders