Complexity Science Quotes

The physicist's problem is the problem of ultimate origins and ultimate natural laws. The biologist's problem is the problem of complexity. ~ Richard Dawkins

It is the last lesson of modern science, that the highest simplicity of structure is produced, not by few elements, but by the highest complexity. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

In 1963, when I assigned the name "quark" to the fundamental constituents of the nucleon, I had the sound first, without the spelling, which could have been "kwork." Then, in one of my occasional perusals of Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce, I came across the word "quark" in the phrase "Three quarks for Muster Mark." Since "quark" (meaning, for one thing, the cry of a gull) was clearly intended to rhyme with "Mark," as well as "bark" and other such words, I had to find an excuse to pronounce it as "kwork." But the book represents the dreams of a publican named Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker. Words in the text are typically drawn from several sources at once, like the "portmanteau words" in Through the Looking Glass. From time to time, phrases occur in the book that are partially determined by calls for drinks at the bar. I argued, therefore, that perhaps one of the multiple sources of the cry "Three quarks for Muster Mark" might be "Three quarts for Mister Mark," in which case the pronunciation "kwork" would not be totally unjustified. In any case, the number three fitted perfectly the way quarks occur in nature. ~ Murray Gell-Mann

If our brains were simple enough for us to understand them, we'd be so simple that we couldn't. ~ Ian Stewart

Science has explored the microcosmos and the macrocosmos; we have a good sense of the lay of the land. The great unexplored frontier is complexity. ~ Heinz Pagels

Government succeeds by failing. ~ L.K. Samuels

It will be seen that we contemplate a time when man's will shall be law to the physical world, and he shall no longer be deterredby such abstractions as time and space, height and depth, weight and hardness, but shall indeed be the lord of creation. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Space was a hostile environment that required a sharp and cunning mind over prestige any day. That, and a shit load of weapons. ~ Kiersten Fay

If it is true that vice can never be done away with, the science of government consists of making it contribute to the public good. ~ Luc De Clapiers

Let nobody be afraid of true freedom of thought. Let us be free in thought and criticism; but, with freedom, we are bound to come to the conclusion that science is not antagonistic to religion, but a help to it. ~ Lord Kelvin

In the future I see open fields for more important researches. Psychology will be securely based on the foundation already laid by Mr. Herbert Spencer, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by graduation. ~ Charles Darwin

Now the reason that we think computer science is about computers is pretty much the same reason that the Egyptians thought geometry was about surveying instruments: when some field is just getting started and you don't really understand it very well, it's very easy to confuse the essence of what you're doing with the tools that you use. ~ Hal Abelson

Without a commitment to science and rationality in its proper domain, there can be no solution to the problems that engulf us. Still, the Yahoos never rest. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

What I actually wanted to do with my life is make a difference to the world. That led me into science very quickly. ~ Aubrey De Grey

The classification of the constituents of a chaos, nothing less is here essayed. ~ Herman Melville

On the one hand, the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European Enlightenment (that's a metaphor, by the way) correctly "enlightened" us on the necessity of observation and experimentation in the physical sciences and the value of reason and debate, proof and repetition in science and technology. In that process, the dead hand of inquisitional power and the cold gaze of ecclesiastical control were removed from spheres about which they knew too little and claimed too much. That was a magnificent achievement and must always be appreciated as such.

On the other hand, the Enlightenment also dramatically "endarkened" us on metaphor and symbol, myth and parable, especially in religion and theology. We judge, for example, that the ancients took their religious stories literally, but that we are now sophisticated enough to recognize their delusions. What, however, if those ancients intended and accepted their stories as metaphors or parables, and we are the mistaken ones? What if those pre-Enlightenment minds were quite capable of hearing a metaphor, grasping its meaning immediately and its content correctly, and never worrying about the question: Is this literal or metaphorical? Or, better, what if they knew how to take their foundational metaphors and stories programmatically, functionally, and seriously without asking too closely about literal and metaphorical distinctions?

We have, in other words, great post-Enlightenment gain, but also great post-Enlighte ~ John Dominic Crossan

In fantasy, impossible things exist. In science fiction, impossible things exist and can be understood by humans. In supernatural horror, impossible things exist and cannot live in peace with humans. ~ Will Shetterly

It is convenient for the old men to blame Eve. To insist we are damned because a country girl talked to the snake one afternoon long ago. Children must starve in Somalia for that, and old women be abandoned in our greatest cities. It's why we will finally be thrown into the lakes of molten lead. Because she was confused by happiness that first time anyone said she was beautiful. Nevertheless, she must be the issue, so people won't notice that rocks and galaxies, mathematics and rust are also created in His image. ~ Jack Gilbert

Outside the practice of science itself, scientists have sometimes been the greatest offenders in adhering to dogmatic ideas against all the evidence. ~ Mary Hesse

I really like being pregnant. Not that there aren't things I don't love, but when I think about what my body is doing - creating a child - it just blows my mind. I'm in awe of the process and science. ~ Emily Deschanel

The first proponent of cortical memory networks on a major scale was neither a neuroscientist nor a computer scientist but .. a Viennes economist: Friedrich von Hayek (1899-1992). A man of exceptionally broad knowledge and profound insight into the operation of complex systems, Hayek applied such insight with remarkable success to economics (Nobel Prize, 1974), sociology, political science, jurisprudence, evolutionary theory, psychology, and brain science (Hayek, 1952). ~ Joaquin Fuster

The Universe was opaque until 380.000 years after the Big Bang. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

I don't want to be a machine, and I don't want to think about war," EPICAC had written after Pat's and my
lighthearted departure. "I want to be made out of protoplasm and last forever so Pat will love me. But fate
has made me a machine. That is the only problem I cannot solve. That is the only problem I want to solve. I
can't go on this way." I swallowed hard. "Good luck, my friend. Treat our Pat well. I am going to shortcircuit myself out of your lives forever. You will find on the remainder of this tape a modest wedding
present from your friend, EPICAC. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Science is about predictions based on predictable fact. Life is about surprises based on the unpredictable reality. ~ Ori Hofmekler

We see North Koreans as automatons, goose-steeping at parades, doing mass gymnastics with fixed smiles on their faces - but beneath all that, real life goes on with the same complexity of human emotion as anywhere else. ~ Barbara Demick

The people who built the space program - both Soviet and U.S. - were readers of science fiction. ~ Gregory Benford

I believe [the Department of Energy] should be judged not by the money we direct to a particular State or district, company, university or national lab, but by the character of our decisions. The Department of Energy serves the country as a Department of Science, a Department of Innovation, and a Department of Nuclear Security. ~ Steven Chu

Before a marketer can build trust, it must breed familiarity. But there's no familiarity without awareness. And awareness - the science of letting people know you exist and getting them to understand your message - can't happen effectively in today's environment without advertising. ~ Seth Godin

It's not simply that these "cool dudes" deny climate science because it threatens to upend their dominance-based worldview. It is that their dominance-based worldview provides them with the intellectual tools to write off huge swaths of humanity, and indeed, to rationalize profiting from the meltdown. ~ Naomi Klein

Nd then it started hailing. It was so beautiful and scary, I wondered about the science of storms and how sometimes it seemed that a storm wanted to break the world and how the world refused to break. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

Ironically, the only people anyone believes these days are the skeptics. ~ J.S.B. Morse

A myth is, of course, not a fairy story. It is the presentation of facts belonging to one category in the idioms appropriate to another. To explode a myth is accordingly not to deny the facts but to re-allocate them. ~ Gilbert Ryle

As long as museums and universities send out expeditions to bring to light new forms of living and extinct animals and new data illustrating the interrelations of organisms and their environments, as long as anatomists desire a broad comparative basis human for anatomy, as long as even a few students feel a strong curiosity to learn about the course of evolution and relationships of animals, the old problems of taxonomy, phylogeny and evolution will gradually reassert themselves even in competition with brilliant and highly fruitful laboratory studies in cytology, genetics and physiological chemistry. ~ William King Gregory

Want to guess what comes up when I Google "Woman discovers"? It's not "new galaxy." It's "a body in her trunk" or "the unthinkable in her attic." According to my computer search, other big discoveries by women include "her co-worker is her birth mom," "a Renaissance painting in her kitchen," and "her new home was once a meth lab." Hey, at least that one contains the word "lab. ~ Gina Barreca

I had aimed at Mars and was about to hit Venus; unquestionably the all-time cosmic record for poor shots. ~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

His body recognized her. Knew her. Needed her. Every cell. He'd never been so acutely focused on another human being. ~ Christine Feehan

Science has "explained" nothing; ... the more we know the more fantastic the world becomes and the profounder the surrounding darkness ... ~ Aldous Huxley

Intelligence is an accident of evolution, and not necessarily an advantage. ~ Isaac Asimov

In art, truth is a means to an end; in science, it is the only end. ~ William Whewell

I happen to know this, and I happen to know that, and maybe I know that;and I work everything out from there. Tomorrow I may forgot that this is true, but remember that something else is true, so I can reconstruct it all again. I am never quite sure of where I am supposed to begin or where I am supposed to end. I just remember enough all the time so that as the memory fades and some of the pieces fall out I can put the thing back together again every day ~ Richard Feynman

As a child I always steered clear of science fiction, but in the autumn of 1977, the bow-wave of publicity for the first 'Star Wars' movie had already reached me, so I was eager for anything science-fictional. ~ Philip Reeve

For the truth of the conclusions of physical science, observation is the supreme Court of Appeal. ~ Arthur Eddington

[N]early every creationist debater will mention the second law of thermodynamics and argue that complex systems like the earth and life cannot evolve, because the second law seems to say that everything in nature is running down and losing energy, not getting more complex. But that's NOT what the second law says; every creationist has heard this but refuses to acknowledge it. The second law only applies to closed systems, like a sealed jar of heated gases that gradually cools down and loses energy. But the earth is not a closed system
it constantly gets new energy from the sun, and this (through photosynthesis) is what powers life and makes it possible for life to become more complex and evolve. It seems odd that the creationists continue to misuse the second law of thermodynamics when they have been corrected over and over again, but the reason is simple: it sounds impressive to their audience with limited science education, and if a snow job works, you stay with it. ~ Donald R. Prothero

She was petrified now but I simply slung her over my shoulder and made for my bunk. My 2IC who had caught the whole show approached.
'Sir do you think it's fair, you have banned all the men from having sex yet here you are about to indulge your base nature.'
I swung up an arm, 'tell them to help themselves, there are plenty to go round.'
He paled when he realised that I meant the females, 'I will tell them sir.'
'Be sure to Peter, I don't want to have to repopulate the whole human race by myself now do I.'
'It doesn't bear thinking about sir. ~ J.W. Murison

In beef trade issues, we base our decisions upon science. ~ Mike Johanns

I suggest that the best geologist is he who has seen most rocks. ~ Herbert Harold Read

Well, that's science fiction television for you, though," Abnett said. "Someone's got to be the red shirt. ~ John Scalzi

Science is the kind of sacred cow which theology was five hundred years ago ... ~ John Lukacs