Philosophers from Ancient to Today
Quotations showing belief in instinctual and relative knowledge
(and other thoughts).
Compiled beginning July 1, 2007
- PYTHAGORAS (b.580BC) Greek
- ANAXAGORAS (b.500BC) Greek
- SOCRATES (b.470BC) Greek
- PLATO (b.424) Greek
- NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI (b.1469) Italian
- ERASMUS (b.1469) Dutch
- MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE (b.1533) French
- RENE DESCARTES (b.1596) French
- BARUCH DE SPINOZA (b.1634) Dutch
- DAVID HUME (b.1711) Scotish
- OLAUDAH EQUIANO (b.1745) Nigerian
- ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER (b.1788) German
- CHARLES DARWIN (b.1809) English
- JOHAN HUIZINGA (b.1872) Dutch
- MARSHALL MCLUHAN (b.1911) Canadian
- THOMAS KUHN (b.1922) American
- MURRAY GELL-MANN (b.1929) American
- NEIL POSTMAN (b.1931) American
- RICHARD DAWKINS (b.1941) English
- RICHARD MILTON (b.1943) English
- STEVEN PINKER (b.1954) Canadian
- JAMES GLEICK (b.1954) American
- LEDA COSMIDES (b.1957) American
- CORDELIA FINE (b.1969?) English?
PYTHAGORAS
Pythagoras "Our life is like the vast throng assembled for the Olympic Games."
(Cicero Tusc. disput V,iii.)
ANAXAGORAS
"Anaxagoras said mind is really the arranger and cause of all things"
Plato, Phaedo 97D
SOCRATES
"He did not discourse about the nature of the physical universe.... ...he pointed out the
foolishness of those who concerned themselves with such questions....
He expressed surprise that it was
not obvious to them that human minds cannot discover these secrets, inasmuch
as those who claim most confidently to pronounce upon them do
not hold the same theories, but disagree
with one another like lunatics."
Xenophon, Memoirs of Socrates 380 (approx) BC
"(Socrates)'...our foreheads have been fringed with eyebrows to prevent damage even
from the sweat of the head. ...Are you in real doubt whether such provident arrangements
are the result of chance or of design? ...And the implanting of the instincts to procreate, and
the implanting in the female parent of the instinct to rear her young, and in the young
so reared an intense desire to live and an intense fear of death' "
Xenophon, Memoirs of Socrates 1.4.7, 380 (approx) BC
" (Socrates telling a story) 'Nothing that is really good and admirable
is granted by the gods to men without some effort
and application."
Xenophon, Memoirs of Socrates 2.1.25, 380 (approx) BC
"(Socrates) '...whom can we find that enjoy greater benefits than children receive
from their parents? Their parents have brought them into existence from non-existence...' "
Xenophon, Memoirs of Socrates 2.2.3, 380 (approx) BC
" (Socrates)'...a man must have a great many other qualities, natural and acquired.'"
Xenophon, Memoirs of Socrates 3.1.8, 380 (approx) BC
" (Socrates) 'You know how athletes sometimes, when they have enjoyed unchallenged
superiority, through sheer lack of enterprise, become no match for their opponents?' "
Xenophon, Memoirs of Socrates 3.5.14, 380 (approx) BC
" (Socrates) '...a shield which is fine for defence is totally unlike a spear which is fine
for throwing hard and fast. ...people are called "fine" and "good" on the same grounds
and with same ends in view...' "
Xenophon, Memoirs of Socrates 3.8.1, 380 (approx) BC
" (Socrates) '...every natural disposition can be developed...."
Xenophon, Memoirs of Socrates 3.9.1, 380 (approx) BC
" (Socrates) '...you are using the term "well proportioned" not absolutely, but in
relation to the wearer...."
Xenophon, Memoirs of Socrates 3.10.12, 380 (approx) BC
" (Socrates) '...even the most delightful dishes seem disagreeable if they are served
before the appetite is ready, and if one is satiated, they actually cause disgust; but
even inferior food seems quite attractive if it is served after hunger has been aroused,' "
Xenophon, Memoirs of Socrates 3.11.12, 380 (approx) BC
" (Socrates) '...Even the act of thinking, which is supposed to require least
assistance from the body, everyone knows that serious mistakes often happen through
physical ill-health.' "
Xenophon, Memoirs of Socrates 3.12.6, 380 (approx) BC
"(Socrates regarding "Know thyself") 'Those who do not
know themselves and are totally deceived about their own
abilities....don't know what they want or what they are doing or what means they are using;
and, through making gross mistakes about all these, they miss the good things
and get into trouble.' "
Xenophon, Memoirs of Socrates 4.2.29, 380 (approx) BC
" (Socrates) 'Then, if these things are sometimes beneficial and sometimes harmful, are
they any more good than bad?'
(Euthydemus)'Not a bit, it seems, according to your argument.' "
Xenophon, Memoirs of Socrates 4.2.33, 380 (approx) BC
"(Socrates) never stopped investigating...the meaning of every single term."
Xenophon, Memoirs of Socrates 4.6.1, 380 (approx) BC
"...he used to proceed by such stages as were generally agreed, because he thought
that this was the infallible method of argument. ...He used to say that Homer
himself attributed to Odysseus the quality of being an infallible speaker, because he could base his
arguments on the accepted beliefs of his hearers.
Xenophon, Memoirs of Socrates 4.6.15, 380 (approx) BC
"In general, he dissuaded them from concerning themselves with the way in which
God regulates the various heavenly bodies, he thought that these facts were not discoverable
by human beings. ....he told his companions to guard against purposeless research; and he
himself helped them in their investigations and explanations only so far as was useful."
Xenophon, Memoirs of Socrates 4.7.8, 380 (approx) BC
"...the boy performed a dance, and Socrates said, 'Did you see how, beautiful as the boy
is, he nevertheless looks even more beautiful in the figures of the dance than when
he is keeping still?'"
Xenophon, The Dinner Party, 2.14 380 (approx) BC
"(Socrates) '...the bloom of youth, as we know, quickly passes its prime, and when this fails,
affection must fade along with it; but so long as the mind is progressing towards
greater wisdom the more lovable it becomes. Then again, involvement with physical
beauty entails a sort of satiety, so that one is bound to lose interest in a
favourite in just the same way as repletion makes one lose interest in food; but
affection for the mind, being pure, is less liable to satiety.' "
Xenophon, The Dinner Party, 8.13 380 (approx) BC
"(Socrates) ' ...enemies too are assets for someone who is capable of deriving benefit from them.' "
Xenophon, The Estate-Manager, 1.14 380 (approx) BC
"(Socrates) '...everyone is naturally inclined to love
the things which they think will profit them' "
Xenophon, The Estate-Manager, 20.30, 380 (approx) BC
"(Socrates) '...everyone has equal knowledge...'"
Xenophon, The Estate-Manager, 20.1 380 (approx) BC
"(Socrates) '...the soul is immortal and often born, having seen what is on earth and what is
in the house of Hades, and everything, there is nothing it has not learnt;
so there is no wonder it can remember about virtue and other things, because it knew
about these before. For since all nature is akin, and the soul has learnt everything
, here is nothing to hinder a man, remembering one thing only - which men call
learning - from himself finding out all else...for seeking and learning is all
remembrance.' "
Plato, Meno, 81B, 380 (approx) BC
"(Socrates) '...both in the time when he is a man and when he isn't there are to be
true opinions in him, which are awakened by questioning and become knowledge....
the truth of things is always in our soul....'"
Plato, Meno, 86B, 380 (approx) BC
" Socrates: '...if we believe that we must try to find
out what is not known, we should be better and braver and less idle than if we believed
that what we do not know it is impossible to find out and that we need not even try.'
"Socrates: 'Since we agree that we must try to find out about
what we do not know....'"
Plato, Meno, 86E, 380 (approx) BC
" Socrates: 'Since we don't know what it is or what it is like, let us make
our hypothesis or ground to stand on, and then consider whether it can be taught or not.'"
Plato, Meno, 87B, 380 (approx) BC
" Socrates: '...good men must be useful'"
Plato, Meno, 97A, 380 (approx) BC
" Socrates: '...since neither knowledge nor true opinion comes to mankind by nature
, being acquired...'"
Plato, Meno, 98D, 380 (approx) BC
" Socrates: '...virtue is seen as coming neither by nature nor by teaching; but by divine
allotment incomprehensibly to those to whom it comes.'"
Plato, Meno, 98D, 380 (approx) BC
" Socrates: '...something divine and spiritual comes to me.... This has been about
me since my boyhood, a voice, which when it comes always turns me away from doing
something I am intending to do, but never urges me on.'"
Plato, Apology, 32A, 380 (approx) BC
" Socrates: '...so long as we have the body with us in our enquiry, and our soul is mixed
up with so great an evil, we shall never attain sufficiently what we desire, and that,
we say, is the truth. ...either knowledge is possible nowhere, or only after death....'"
Plato, Phaedo, 67A, 380 (approx) BC
" Socrates: '...we got it before we were born.... ...I mean everything which we seal
with the name "that which is", the essence."
Plato, Phaedo, 67A, 380 (approx) BC
PLATO
"...man is made God's plaything, and that is the best part of him. Therefore every man and woman should live
accordingly, and play the noblest games and be of another mind from what they are at present... Life
must be lived as play, playing certain games, making sacrifices, singing and dancing, and then a man
will be able to propitiate the gods, and defend himself against his enemies, and win in the contest."
Plato Laws, vii, 803
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI
"...yet everyone, for all this diversity of method, can reach his objective
...two men succeed equally well with different methods."
Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince 1513, p80
"The nobles . . . takes sides with the one whom they expect to win."
Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince 1513 p32
"There are three kinds of intelligence: one kind understands things for itself, the second appreciates what
others can understand, the third understands neither for itself or for others. The first kind
is excellent, the second good and the third kind useless."
Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince 1513, p75
"...so as not to rule out free will, I believe that it is probably true that fortune is the arbiter
of half the things we do, leaving the other half or so to be controlled by ourselves."
Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince 1513, p79
"...because he cannot do otherwise than what is in character or ..."
Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince 1513, p81
ERASMUS
"...the charm of folly, which thoughtful Nature has
taken care to bestow on the newly born so that they can offer
some reward of pleasure to mitigate the hard work of bringing them up
and the win the liking of those who look after them." Erasmus, Praise of Folly (22), 1509
"...the life of man is nothing but a sport of folly...". Erasmus, Praise of Folly (116), 1509
MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE
"(essay title) We reach the same end by discrepant means."
"...assaulted and assayed by both those methods
can be seen to resist one,
without flinching, only to bow to the other.
Michel De Montaigne 1580
If I had not seen it I could hardly have made myself believe that you could find souls so
monstrous that they would commit murder for the sheer fun of it..."
Michel De Montaigne, On cruelty, 1580
"How many have we seen patiently suffering to be roasted or burnt for opinions which,
without understanding or knowledge, they have taken from others!"
Michel De Montaigne, In defence of Seneca and Plutarch
"What a prodigious thing it is that within the drop of semen which brings
forth there are stamped the characteristics not only the bodily form of our forefathers but or their
ways of thinking and their slant of mind. Where can that drop of fluid
lodge such and infinite number of Forms."
Michel De Montaigne, On the resemblance of
children to their fathers. 1580
"The affair cost him hardly anything, but he gets nothing worthwhile out of it either."
Michel De Montaigne, On three kinds of social intercourse, 1580
"But no matter what we may say, the customs and practices of life in society sweep
us along. Most of my doings are governed by example not choice."
Michel De Montaigne, On some
lines of Virgil, 1580
"In my day the pleasure of telling of an affair (a pleasure scarcely
less delightful than having one)...."
Michel De Montaigne, On some
lines of Virgil, 1580
We cannot be said to progress but rather to wander about this way and that. We
follow our own footsteps."
Michel De Montaigne, On Coaches, 1580
Where Nature is concerned nothing is unique or rare: but where our knowledge is
concerned much certainty is, which constitutes a most pitiful foundation
for our scientific laws, offering us a very false idea of everything."
Michel De Montaigne, On Coaches, 1580
"Time and custom condition us to anything strange...."
Michel De Montaigne, On the lame, 1580
"...the world is involved in duels about hundreds of questions where both the for and
against are false."
Michel De Montaigne, On the lame, 1580
"No occupation is more powerful, or more feeble, than entertaining one's
own thoughts..."
Michel De Montaigne, On three kinds of social intercourse, 1580
"...everyone of our actions requires to judged on its own: the surest way in my
opinion would be to refer each of them to its context, without looking farther...."
Michel De Montaigne, On the Inconstancy of Our Actions, 1580
"We are entirely made up of bits and pieces...there is as much difference between us and ourselves
as there is between us and other people...we must probe right down inside and find out
what principles make things move...."
Michel De Montaigne, On the Inconstancy of Our Actions, 1580
"We reach the same end by discrepant means...." (title)
"...assaulted and assayed by both those methods
can be seen to resist one, without flinching, only bow to the other."
Michel De Montaigne, We reach the same end by discrepant means, 1580
"...due to our weakness and those due to our wickedness. In the latter
we deliberately brace ourselves against reason's rules, which are imprinted
by Nature; in the former it seems we can call Nature herself as a defence-witness
for having left us so weak and imperfect...."
Michel De Montaigne, On punishing cowardice, 1580
"One man complains less of death itself than of its cutting short the
course of a fine victory."
"I want Death to find me planting my cabbages."
Michel De Montaigne, To philosophize is to learn how to die, 1580
RENE DESCARTES
"I am [I exist], and possess the idea of a being absolutely perfect, that is, of God....
There remains only the inquiry as to the way in which I received this idea from God; for
I have not drawn it from the senses...it is not even a ... fiction of my mind ... and consequently there
but remains the alternative that is in innate, in the same way as is the idea of myself.
Rene Descartes, Meditations on the First Philosophy, Part 3, 1647
"...God thus internally disposes my thought...."
Rene Descartes, Meditations on the First Philosophy, Part 4, 1647
"...whatever is clearly and distinctly known is true."
Rene Descartes, Meditations on the First Philosophy, Part 5, 1647
"...the true ideas that were born with me, the first and chief of which is the idea of God."
Rene Descartes, Meditations on the First Philosophy, Part 5, 1647
BARUCH DE SPINOZA (b.1634)
Spinoza p136 Durant Ethics III, prop.7, "The endeavor…wherewith a thing endeavors to persist in its being is
nothing else than the actual essence of that thing. ...nor can things do anything than that which
follows necessarily from their determinate nature".
DAVID HUME
"The transition of thought from the cause to the effect proceeds not from reason.
It derives its origin altogether from custom and experience."
David Hume, An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 1748, Section 5 (end)
"It is more conformable to the ordinary wisdom of nature to secure so necessary
an act of the mind {causation] by some instinct or mechanical tendancy which may be infallible in
its operations, may discover itself at the first appearance of life and thought, and may be independent
of all laboured deductions of the understanding. As nature has taught us the use of our limbs ... she
has implanted in us an instinct...."
David Hume, An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 1748, Section 5 (end)
"Animals, therefore, are not guided in these inferences by reasoning; neither are children; neither are the
generality of mankind in their ordinary actions and conclusions; neither are philosophers themselves, who...are governed
by the same maxims. Nature must have provided some other principle, of more ready and more general use and application....
But though animals learn many parts of their knowledge from observation, there are also many parts of it which they
derive from the original hand of nature.... These we denominate "instinct".... ...the experimental
reasoning itself, which we possess in common with the beasts, and on which the whole conduct of life
depends, is nothing but a species of instinct or mechanical power that acts in us unknown to ourselves..."
David Hume, An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section 9 (end), 1748
OLAUDAH EQUIANO
Shocking as this and many other acts of the bloody West India code at first view appear, how is the
iniquity of it heightened when we consider to whom it may be extended. Mr. James Tobin, a zealous
labourer in the vineyard of slavery, gives an account of French Planter, of his acquaintance, in the island
Martinco, who shewed him many a Mulattoes working in the fields like beasts of burden; and he told Mr. Tobin,
these were all the produce of his own loins! And myself have known similar instances.
Pray, reader, are the sons and daughters of the French planter less children by being begotten on black
women? ...is not the slave trade entirely at war with the heart of man?
Olaudah Equiano The Interesting Narrative 1789
AUTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
"...Every person has constant aims and motives in accordance with which he directs his conduct, and he can
always account for his individual actions; but if he were asked why he wills at all, or why he
wills to exist at all, he would have no answer. Rather, the question would seem absurd;
and this response would reflect his awareness that he himself is nothing but will, and that his
willing is self-evident....
Indeed, the absence of any (absolute) goal and of any limits is essential to the will, for it is endless striving....
Every goal attained is the starting point of a new lap in the race....
We consider ourselves fairly fortunate if there is still something to wish for, and to strive after, to keep up the game
whereby desire constantly passes into satisfaction, and satisfaction into new desire...."
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, Book 2, 29, (end) , 1819
"...we, whose purpose here is to practise not aetiology but philosophy (that is, not relative but absolute
knowledge of the real nature of the world)....
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, Book 2, 24, (end) , 1819
"...for the will in itself is absolutely free and entirely self-determining, and for it there is no law."
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, Book 4, 55, 1819
"Through the knowledge which comes later he learns in the course of experience what he
is , i.e. he gets to know his character. ....I...say that he is his own product prior to all
knowledge, and knowledge comes later merely to shed light on it."
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, Book 4, 55, 1819
"...the will dispenses altogether with a final aim and object. It always strives, for
striving is its sole nature, and even the attainment or its goal does not stop the striving."
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, Book 4, 56, 1819
"...he has always merely a relative, rather than an absolute, when and where of his existence;
for his place and duration are finite parts of what is infinite and boundless."
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, Book 4, 57, 1819
"In the end, death must conquer, for we fell into his clutches through birth, and he plays only for a little
while with his prey before he devours it."
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, Book 4, 57, 1819
"...the nature of animals and of man is subject to pain from its origin and in its essence.
If, on the other hand, it lacks objects of desire, because the gratification is immediate
and too easy, a terrible emptiness and ennui come over it...."
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, Book 4, 57, 1819
"Now it is noteworthy that, on the other hand, the suffering and misery
of life may well so increase that death itself, in the
flight from which the whole of life consists, become desirable, and we hasten towards it voluntarily;
and again, on the other hand that soon as want and suffering leave a man in peace, he is so
close to boredom that he needs pleasurable diversion. The striving after existence is what keeps all living things busy and
active. But when existence is assured to them, they do not know what to with it; thus the second thing that
sets them in motion is the effort to be rid of the burden of existence, to make it cease to be felt, 'to kill time'...."
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, Book 4, 57, 1819
"...this need for excitement of the will shows itself especially in the devising and playing of card games in which,
truly, the pitiable aspect of mankind finds expression."
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, Book 4, 57, 1819
"...so we start the dance again from the beginning; for all human life is tossed
backwards and forwards between pain and boredom.
Depressing as this reflection may be...we may draw consolation...."
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, Book 4, 57, 1819
"...the persistent will to life..."
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, Book 4, 58, 1819
"...But perhaps no one at the end of his life, if he gives the matter sober consideration and is, at the same time,
frank, ever wishes to live it over again; he more readily chooses non-existence."
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, Book 4, 59, 1819
"...the miseries of life can so increrase - and this happens every day - that death, which had hitherto
been feared more than anything else, is eagerly grasped."
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, Book 4, 59, 1819
"...the will to life ... cares only for the preservation of the species, and the individual is nothing to it...."
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, Book 4, 61, 1819
"From the first accession of consciousness a person finds that he wills, and the connection between
his knowledge and his will remains, as rule, constant. He seeks first to become
thoroughly acquainted with the objects of his willing, and then with the means of attaining them. Now he
knows what he has to do, and as a rule, he does not strive to acquire other factual information. He moves and
acts; the consciousness that he is to work towards the goal of his willing keeps him alert and active;
his thought is concerned with the choice of means. Such is the life of almost everyone; they desire, they
know what they desire, and they strive after it with sufficient success
to keep them from despair, and sufficient failure
to save them from boredom and its consequences....They press forward with much
earnestness, and indeed with an air of importance, just
as children also pursue their play."
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, Book 4, 60, 1819
CHARLES DARWIN
"As man possesses the same senses as the lower animals,
his fundamental intuitions must be the same. Man has also some few instincts in common, as
that of self-preservation, sexual love, the love of the mother for her new-born offspring,
the desire possessed by the latter to suck, and so forth."
Charles Darwin, Descent of Man, Part III,
JOHAN HUIZINGA
"...play is to be understood here not as a biological phenomenon but as a
cultural phenomenon....
I have made next to no use of any psychological interpretations
of play, however important these may be.....
...the supreme importance to civilization of the play-factor." from 1938 forward.
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"Animals play just like men." p.1
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"...play is more than a mere physiological function or a psychological reflex.
....It is a significant function - that is to say there is some sense to it. In play
there is somthing 'at play' which transcends the immediate needs of life and imparts
meaning to the action. All play means something.
If we call the active principle that makes up the essense of
play, 'instinct', we explain nothing: if we call it 'mind' or 'will' we say too much.
...the very fact that play has a meaning implies a non-materialistic quality in the nature of the thing
itself." p.1
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"All (past play) ...hypothesis have one thing in common: they all start from
the assumption that play must serve something which is not play, that it must have some
kind of biological purpose. ...If any of them were really decisive it ought either to
exclude all the others or comprehend them in a higher unity. ...its profoundly aesthetic
quality. " p.2
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
" ...this intensity, this absorption, this power of maddening, lies the very essence,
the primordial quality of play. (Nature gave us play) "
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens p.3
"...it is precisely this fun-element which characterizes the essence of play. ....since the
reality of play extends beyond the sphere of human life, it cannot have its foundations
in any rational nexus, because that would limit it to mankind.
"Any thinking person can
see at a glance that play is a thing on its own, even if his language possesses no general
concept to express it."
...in acknowledging play you acknowledge mind, for whatever else play is, it is not
matter."
p.3
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"......a world wholly determined by the operation of blind forces, play would be
altogether superfluous. ...an influx of mind breaks down the absolute determinism of the cosmos.
...play is irrational. ....We find play
present everywhere as a well-defined quality of action which is different from 'ordinary'
life. ...We shall not look for the natural impulses and habits conditioning play in general,
but shall consider play in its manifold concrete forms as itself a social construction " p.4
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"...genuine, pure play is one of the main bases of civilization." p.5
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"The more we try to mark off the form we call 'play' from other forms apparently related to it,
the more the absolute independance of the play-concept stands out". p.7
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"Many and close are the links that connect play with beauty." p.7
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"The play-concept must always be distinct from all the other forms of thought in
which we express the structure of mental and social life". p.7
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"It must be objected that this freedom does not exist for the animal and the child; they
must play because their instinct drive them to do it and because it serves to develop
their bodily faculties and their powers of selection.
The term 'instinct', however, introduces an unknown quantity, and to presuppose the utility of
play from the start is to be guilty of petitio principii. Child and animal play
because they enjoy playing, and therein precisely
lies their freedom.
Be that as it may, for the adult and responsible human being play is a
function which he could equally well leave alone. Play is superfluous. The need for it is only
urgent to the extent that the enjoyment of it makes it a need. ...
Here, then, we have the
first main characteristic of play: that it is free, is in fact freedom. A second characteristic
is ... ..that play is not 'ordinary' or 'real' life. " p.8
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
" ...the consciousness of play being 'only a pretend' does not by any means prevent it
from proceeding with the utmost seriousness.....Any game can at any time wholly run away
with the players. .... It (play) thus has its place in a sphere superior to the strictly
biological processes of nutrition, reproduction, and self-preservation." (then argues against
sexual selection alternative ideas) p.9
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"...the purposes it serves are external to the immediate material interests or the individual
satisfaction of biological needs.
Play is distinct form 'ordinary' life both as to locality and duration. This is the third main characteristic
of play: its secludedness, its limitedness. It is 'played out' within certain limits of time and place.
It contains its
own course and meaning.
...Once played, it endures as a new-found creation of the mind, a treasure to be retained by the memory. " p.10
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"Here we come across another, very positive feature of play: it creates order, is order. Into an
imperfect world and into the confusion of life it brings temporary perfection. Play demands order
absolute and supreme. The least deviation from the 'spoils of the game', robs it of its character,
and makes it worthless.
Play casts a spell over us; it is 'enchanting', 'captivating'.
...all want to achieve something difficult, to succeed, to end tension. Play is 'tense', as we say.
...the more play bears the character of competition, the more fervent it will be.
...the element of tension imparts to it a certain ethical value in so far as it means a testing of the player's
prowess; his courage, tenacity, resources, and, last but not least, his spiritual powers --
his 'fairness'; because, despite his
ardent desire to win, he must stick to the rules of the game." p.11
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"All play has its rules.
The rules of the game are absolutely binding and allow no doubt.
...as the rules of the game are transgressed the whole play-world collapses. The game is over.
It is curious to note how much more lenient society is to the cheat than to .11 the spoil-sport. This
is because the spoil-sport shatters the play-world itself.
...the cheat and the hypocrite have always had an easier time of it than the spoil-sports,
here called apostates, heretics,
innovators, prophets, conscientious objectors, etc. " p.12
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"A play-community generally tends to become permanent even after the game is over.
Inside the circle of the game the laws and customs of ordinary life no longer count.
" p.13
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"Summing up the formal characteristics of play, we might call it a free activity
standing quite consciously outside
'ordinary' life as being 'not serious', but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly.
It is an activity connected with no material interest, and no profit can be gained by it. " p.14
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"Forbenius is right to discard the facile hypothesis which contents itself with
hypothecating an innate 'play instinct',. The term 'instinct'
he says, is 'a makeshift, an admission of helplessness before the problem of 'reality'. " p.17
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"The child plays in complete -- we can well say, in sacred -- earnest. But it plays and knows it plays." p.19
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"The player can abandon himself body and soul to the game, and the consciousness of its being 'merely' a game
can be thrust into the background.
At any moment 'ordinary life' may reassert its rights...."p.22
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"...(play involves) the consciousness that it is 'different' from 'ordinary life' .
We ventured to call the catagory 'play' one of the most fundamental in life." part 2 p.1
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"...culture arises in the form of play, that it is played from the very beginning. Even those
activities which aim at the immediate satisfaction of vital needs - hunting, for instance - tend,
in archaic society, to take on the play-form. ... It is through this playing that society expresses
its interpretation of life and the world.
....culture emerges from play. " part 3, p.1
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"...at any moment, even in a highly developed civilization, the play-'instinct' may reassert
itself in full force, drowning the individual and the mass in the intoxication of an immense game.
Part 3, p.2
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"...games of pure chance.... ..are sterile, adding nothing to life or the mind..." Part 3, p.3
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"Like all other forms of play, the contest is largely devoid of purpose. That is to say, the
action begins and ends in itself, and the outcome does not contribute to the life-necessary processes
of the group. The popular Dutch saying to the effect that 'it is not the marbles that matter but
the game', expresses this clearly enough. Objectively speaking, the result of the game is
unimportant and a matter of indifference." Part 3, p.4
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"Contest means play." Part 4, p.2
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"The lawsuit can be regarded [as play] as a game of chance. a contest, or a verbal battle." Part 4, p.3
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"...all fighting that is bound by rules bears the formal characteristics
of play by that very limitation." Part 5, p.1
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"It remained for the theory of 'total war' to banish war's cultural function and extinguish the last
vestige of the play-element." Part 5, p.2
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"A theory designed to explain the origin of plastic art in terms of an innate
'play instinct' (Spieltrieb) was propounded long ago by Schiller.
An almost instinctive, spontaneous need to
decorate things cannot, indeed, be denied; and may conveniently be called a play-function." Part 10, p.9
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"Roman society could not live without games. They were as necessary to its existence as bread...." Part 11, p.6.
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"...we should remember that this precarious balance between seriousness and pretence in an unmistakable
and integral part of culture as such...." Part 11, p.21
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
"When combat has an ethical value it ceases to be play." Part 12, p.16
Johan Huizinga Homo Ludens
MARSHALL MCLUHAN
"A myth is a speeded up following of a process. We live mythically ourselves...."
Marshall McLuhan
"The young do not suffer from a hardening of the categories."
Marshall McLuhan
"We were looking for universal laws and we found them, only four that everything does...."
"The laws of the media are quite simply this. That every medium exaggerates some function....
they obsolesss another function. They retrieve a much older function, and they flip into the opposite form."
Marshall McLuhan
MURRAY GELL-MANN
"…any complex adaptive system has evolved to discover patterns and so a pattern is in a sense its own
reward." The Quark and the Jaguar(1994), Murray Gell-Mann p. 296
THOMAS KUHN
"Under normal conditions the research scientist is not an innovator but a solver of puzzles, and the puzzles
upon which he concentrates are just those which he believes can be both stated and solved within
the existing scientific tradition." Thomas Kuhn, Tension .234
...'paradigms.' These I take to be universally recognized scientific achievements that
for a time provide model problems and solutions to a community of practitioners. Preface, third ed., p.x
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...my most fundamental objective is to urge a change in the perception and evaluation of
familiar data...." p.x
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...the emergence of the crises that may be induced by repeated failure to make
an anomaly conform." p.xi
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...there are circumstances, though I think them rare, under which two paradigms can
coexist peacefully in the later period." p.xi
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"I think they will be wrong, but this essay is not calculated to convince them. To
attempt that would require a far longer and very different sort of book." p.xii
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"The more carefully they study, say, Aristotelian dynamics, phlogistic chemistry, or
caloric thermodynamics, the more certain they feel that those once current views of nature
were, as a whole, neither less scientific nor more the product of human idiosyncrasy than
those current today." p.2
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...the man who is ignorant of these fields but who knows what it is to be scientific
may legitimately reach any one of a number of incompatible conclusions. Among those legitimate
possibilities, the particular conclusions he does arrive at are probably determined by his prior
experience in other fields, by the accidents of his investigation, and by his own individual makeup." p4
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"What differentiated these various schools was not one or another failure of method-they were
all scientific-but what we shall come to call their incommensurable ways of seeing the world and of
practicing science in it. ... An apparently arbitrary element, compounded of personal and historical
accident, is always a formative ingredient...." p4
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"When examining normal science ...we shall want finally to describe that research as a
strenuous and devoted attempt to force nature into conceptual boxes supplied by professional
education. Simultaneously, we shall wonder whether research could proceed without such boxes...." p.5
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...the very nature of normal research ensures that novelty shall not be suppressed for very long." p.5
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...Maxwell's equations were as revolutionary as Einstein's, and they were resisted
accordingly. The invention of other new theories regularly, and appropriately, evokes the same
response from some of the specialists on whose area of special competence they impinge. For
these men the new theory implies a change in the rules governing the prior practice of normal
science. Inevitably, therefore, it reflects upon much scientific work they have already
completed. That is why a new theory, however special its range of application, is seldom or
never just an increment to what is already known." p.7
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...shifted the network of theory through which it deals with the world." p.7
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Competition between segments of the scientific community is the only historical process
that ever actually results in the rejection of one previously accepted theory or in the adoption
of another." p.8
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...many of my generalizations are about sociology or social psychology of scientists:
yet at least a few of my conclusions belong traditionally to logic or epistemology." p.8
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...'the context of discovery' and ' the context of justification'...." p.8
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Their achievement was sufficiently unprecedented to attract an enduring group of
adherents away from competing modes of scientific activity. Simultaneously, it was sufficiently
open-ended to leave all sorts of problems for the redefined group of practitioners to resolve.
Achievements that share these two characteristics I shall henceforth refer to as 'paradigms,' a
term that relates closely to 'normal science." p.10
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...there can be a sort a sort of scientific research without paradigms, or at least without
any so unequivocal and so binding as the ones names above." p.11
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"History suggests that the road to a firm research consensus is extraordinarily arduous.
... In the absence of a paradigm or some candidate for a paradigm, all of the facts that could
possibly pertain to the development of a give science are likely to seem equally relevant. ... Furthermore, in
the absence of a reason for seeking some particular form of recondite information, early fact-gathering is
usually restricted to the wealth of data that lie ready to hand." p.15
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...it produces a morass. One somehow hesitates to call the literature that results scientific.
The Baconian 'histories' of heat, color, wind, mining, and so on, are filled with information.... ...that
will for some time remain too complex to be integrated with theory at all." p16
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"No natural history can be interpreted in the absence of at least some implicit body of
intertwined theoretical and methodological belief.... If that body of belief is not already
implicit...it must be externally supplied...." p.16-17
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"To be accepted as a paradigm, a theory must seem better than its competitors, but it
need not, and in fact never does, explain all the facts with which it can be confronted." p.17-18
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...the confidence they were on the right track encouraged scientists to undertake more precise,
esoteric,and consuming sorts of work. ... Both fact collection and theory articulation became highly
directed activities." p.18
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Francis Bacon's acute methodological dictum: 'Truth emerges more readily from error than
from confusion'." p.18 op cit p.210.
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Their disappearance is caused by their members' conversion to the new paradigm. But there
are always some men who cling to one or another of the older views, and they are simply read out
of the profession, which thereafter ignores their work." p.18-19
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"In dynamics, research became similarly esoteric in the later middle ages, and it recaptured
general intelligibility only briefly during the early seventeenth century when a new paradigm
replaced the one that had guide medieval research." p.20
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Normal science consists in the actualization of that promise, an
actualization achieved by extending the knowledge of those facts that the
paradigm displays as particularly revealing, by increasing the extent of
the match between those facts and the paradigms predictions, and by further
articulation of the paradigm itself.
...mop-up work of this sort....
Mopping-up operations are what engage most scientists throughout their careers.
They constitute what I am here calling normal science. ...the enterprise seems an
attempt to force nature into the preformed and relatively inflexible box that the
paradigm supplies. ...those that will not fit the box will often not be seen at
all. Nor do scientists normally aim to invent new theories, and they are often
intolerant of those invented by others" p.24
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"And normal science possesses a built in mechanism that ensures the relaxation of
the restrictions that bound research whenever the paradigm from which the derive
ceases to function effectively." p.24
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...there are seldom many areas in which a scientific theory, particularly if it
is cast in predominantly mathematical form, can be directly compared with nature." p.26
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"The existence of the paradigm sets the problem to be solved: often the paradigm
theory is implicated directly in the design of the apparatus able to solve
the problem." p.27
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Often a paradigm developed for one set of phenomenon is ambiguous in its
application to other closely related ones."
p.29
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"These are manipulations of theory undertaken, not because the predictions
in which they result are intrinsically valuable, but because they can be
confronted directly with experiment."
p.30
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"To derive those laws, Newton had been forced to neglect all gravitational
attraction except that between individual planets and the sun."
p.32
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...the enthusiasm and devotion that scientists display for the problems of
normal research. ... The man who succeeds proves himself an expert puzzle-solver,
and the challenge of the puzzle is an important part of what usually drives him on.
... Puzzles are, in the entirely standard meaning here employed, that special
catagory of problems that can serve to test ingenuity or skill in solution."
p.36
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...the really pressing problems,e.g., a cure for cancer or the design of a
lasting peace, are often not puzzles at all, largely because they may not have a solution."
p.36-37
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"A paradigm can...even insulate the community from those socially
important problems that are not reducible to the puzzle form...." p.37
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Third Edition
"What then challenges him is the conviction that...he will succeed in solving a
puzzle that no one before has solved or solved so well. ... On most occasions
any particular field of specialization offers nothing else to do, a fact that
makes it no less fascinating to the proper sort of addict."
p.38
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"If it is to classify as a puzzle, a problem must be characterized by more than
an assured solution. There must also be rules that limit both the nature of
acceptable solutions and the steps by which they are to be obtained. "
p.38
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...those scientists who tried to derive the observed motion of the moon from
Newton's laws...failed.... ...one of them discovered how.... Only a change
in the rules of the game could have provided an alternative."
p.39-40
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...instrumental commitments that...provide scientists with rules of the game."
p.41
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Rules, I suggest, derive from paradigms, but paradigms can guide research even in the absence of rules."
p.42
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...the existence of a paradigm need not even imply that any full set of rules exists." p.44
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...the late Ludwig Wittgenstein, though in a very different context. Because that context...." p.44
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"What need we know, Wittgenstein asked, in order that we apply terms like 'chair', or 'leaf', or 'game'
unequivocally and without provoking argument?
That question is very old and has generally been answered by saying that we must know, consciously or
intuitively, what a chair, or leaf, or game is. We must, that is, grasp some set of attributes that all games
and that only games have in common. Wittgenstein, however, concluded that, given the way we use language
and the sort of world to which we apply it, there need be no such set of characteristics.
Though a discussion of some of the attributes shared by a number of games or chairs of leaves often
helps us learn how to employ the corresponding term, there is no set of characteristics that is simultaneously
applicable to all members of the class and to them alone. Instead, confronted with a previously unobserved
activity, we apply the term 'game' because what we are seeing bears a close 'family resemblance' to a number
of the activities that we have previously learned to call by that name. For Wittgenstein, in short
games, and chairs, and leaves are natural families, each constituted by a network of overlapping and
crisscrossed resemblances. The existence of such a network sufficiently accounts for our success in identifying
the corresponding object or activity." p.44-45
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...the severe difficulty of discovering the rules that have guided particular normal-scientific traditions.
That difficultly is very nearly the same as the one the philosopher encounters when he tries to say what all games
have in common." p.46
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...problems assigned to him become more complex and less completely precedented. But they continue to be closely
modeled on previous achievements as are the problems that normally occupy him during his subsequent independent scientific
career. One is at liberty to suppose that somewhere along the way the scientist has intuitively abstracted
rules of the game for himself, but there is little reason to believe it. ...hypothetical rules of the game." p.47
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...granting paradigms a status prior to that of shared rules and assumptions...." p.49
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Presumably both men were talking of the same particle, but they were viewing it through their own research training and
practice." p.50-51
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"That is what fundamental novelties of fact and theory do. Produced inadvertently by a game played under one set of
rules, their assimilation requires the elaboration of another set." p.52
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...X-rays, is a classic case of discovery through accident, a type that occurs more frequently than the impersonal
standards of scientific reporting allow us easily to realize." p.57
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Previously completed work on normal projects would now have to be done again because earlier scientists had failed
to recognize and control a relevant variable." p.59
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Paradigm procedures and applications...paradigm laws and theories...have the same effects.
Inevitably they restrict
the phenomenological field accessible for scientific investigation at any given time." p.60-61
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"'I can't make the suit out, whatever it is. It didn't look like a card that time.... I'm not even sure
now what a spade looks like. My God!' ...we shall occasionally see scientists behaving this way too." p63-64
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"In science, as in the playing card experiment, novelty emerges only with difficulty,
manifested by resistance, against a background provided by expectation. Initially, only
the anticipated and usual are experienced even under circumstances where anomaly is later to be observed."
p.64
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Without the special apparatus that is constructed mainly for anticipated functions, that
results that lead ultimately to novelty could not occur. ... Anomaly appears only against the
background provided by the paradigm."
p.65
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...there was no obvious reasons for taking Aristarchus seriously. Even Copernicus' more
elaborate proposal was neither simpler nor more accurate than Ptolemy's system."
p.75
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Philosophers of science have repeatedly demonstrated that more than one theoretical
construction can always be placed upon a given collection of data. ... ...invention
of alternatives is just what scientists seldom undertake except during the pre-paradigm stage...."
p.76
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
"...once it has achieved the status of a paradigm, a scientific theory is declared
invalid only is an alternate candidate is available to take its place."
p.77
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
"...what we have already seen scientists doing when confronted by anomaly. They
will devise numerous articulations and ad hoc modifications of their theory....
From within a new theory of scientific knowledge, they [anomalies] may seem very much like
tautologies [obvious]....
It has often been observed, for example, that Newton's second
law of motion, though it took centuries of difficult factual and theoretical research to
achieve, behaves for those committed to Newton's theory very much like a purely logical
statement that no amount of observation could refute."
p.78
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
"To reject one paradigm without simultaneously substituting another is to reject science itself."
p.79
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
"...no paradigm that provides a basis for scientific research ever completely resolves all
its problems. The very few that have ever seemed to do so (e.g. , geometric optics) have
shortly ceased to yield research problems at all and have instead become tools for engineering."
p.79
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
"There are always some discrepancies. Even the most stubborn ones usually respond at last to normal practice." p.81
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"The scientist who pauses to examine every anomaly he notes will seldom get significant work done.
We therefore have to ask what it is that makes an anomaly seem worth concerted scrutiny, and to that question
there is probably no fully general answer." p.82
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...since no experiment can be conceived without some sort of theory, the scientists in crisis will
constantly try to generate speculative theories...." p.87
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Scientists have not generally needed or wanted to be philosophers. Indeed, normal science usually
holds creative philosophy at arm's length, and probably for good reasons." p.88
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Nor it is an accident that in both these periods the so-called thought experiment should have
played so critical a role in the progress of research. As I have shown elsewhere, the analytical thought experimentation
that bulks so large in the writings of Galileo, Einstein, Bohr, and others is perfectly
calculated to expose the old paradigm to existing knowledge in ways that isolate the root of the crisis with
a clarity unattainable in the laboratory." p.88
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...these are men who, being little committed by prior practice to traditional rules of normal science,
are particularly likely to see that those rules no longer define a playable game and to conceive
another set that can replace them." p.90
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"We are about to discover that a similar circularity is characteristic of scientific theories." p.90
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"When paradigms enter, as they must, into a debate about paradigm choice, their
role is necessarily circular. Each group uses its own paradigm to argue in that paradigm's defense.
The resulting circularity does not, of course, make the arguments wrong or even ineffectual.
...Yet, whatever its force, the status of the circular argument is only that
of persuasion. It cannot be made logically or
even probabilistically compelling for those who refuse to step into the circle." p.94
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Normal research, which is cumulative, owes its success to the ability of
scientists regularly to select problems
that can be solved with conceptual and instrumental techniques close to those already in existence. (That is
why an excessive concern with useful problems, regardless of their relation to existing knowledge
and technique, can so easily inhibit scientific development.)" p.96
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
""
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Though an out-of-date theory can always be viewed as a special case of its up-to-date
successor, it must be transformed for the purpose." p.102-103
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"As the p.90 problems change, so, often, does the standard that distinguishes a real scientific solution from mere
metaphysical speculation, word game, or mathematical play. The normal-science tradition that emerges
from scientific revolution is not only incompatible but often actually incommensurable with that which has
gone before." p.103
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"What occurred was neither a decline nor a raising of standards, but simply a change demanded
by the adoption of a new paradigm. furthermore that change has since been reversed and could be again." p.108
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...since nature is too complex and varied to be explored at random...." p.109
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...during revolutions scientists see new and different things when looking with familiar instruments in
places they have looked before." p.111
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...gestalt experiments illustrate only the nature of perceptual transformations. ...
...work of the Hanover Institute. An experimental subject who puts on goggles fitted with inverting lenses
initially sees the entire world upside down. ... But as the subject has begun to learn to deal with his new world, his
entire visual field flips over, usually after an intervening period in which vision is simply confused." p.112
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"What a man sees depends both upon what he looks at and also upon what his previous visual-conceptual
experience has taught him to see." p.113
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...is not one that resembles interpretation. How could it do so in the absence of fixed data for the scientist
to interpret?" p.122
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Science does not deal in all possible laboratory manipulations. ...scientists with different paradigms engage in
different concrete laboratory manipulations." p.126
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"The duck-rabbit shows that two men with the same retinal impressions can see different things; the inverting lenses
show that two men with different retinal impressions can see the same thing." p.126-127
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"In short, they [textbooks] have to be rewritten in the aftermath of each new scientific revolution, and,
once rewritten, they inevitably disguise not only the role but the very existence of the revolutions that
produced them." p.137
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"More historical detail...could only give artificial status to human idiosyncrasy, error, and confusion. Why
dignify what science's best and most persistent efforts have made it possible to discard?" p.138
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Those theories, of course, do 'fit the facts', but only by transforming previously accessible information into facts
that, for the preceding paradigm, had not existed at all. And that means that theories too do not
evolve piecemeal to fit facts that were there all the time." p.141
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Like time, energy, force, or particle, the concept of an element is the sort of textbook ingredient that is often not
invented or discovered at all. ... It follows that concepts like that of an element can scarcely be
invented independent of context. Furthermore, given the context, they rarely require invention because
they are already at hand." p.142
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Any new interpretation of nature, whether a discovery or a theory, emerges first in the mind
of one or a few individuals. It is they
who first learn to see science and the world differently.... ...usually, in addition, they are men so young or
so new the crisis-ridden field that practice has committed them less deeply...." p.144
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"These trial attempts, whether by the chess player or by the scientist, are trial only of themselves, not
the rules of the game." p144-145
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"few philosophers of science still seek absolute criteria for the verification of scientific theories." p.145
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Verification is like natural selection; it picks out the most viable among the actual alternatives in
a particular historical situation. Whether that choice is the best that could have been made if still other
alternatives had been made available or if the data had been of another sort is not a question that can
be usefully asked." p.146
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...[re Popper]anomalous experiences may not be identified with falsifying ones. Indeed, I doubt
that the latter exist. ... If any and every failure to fit were ground for theory rejection, all theories
ought to be rejected at all times." p.146
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Communication across the revolutionary divide is inevitably partial." p.149
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...we have been calling a paradigm shift. ... Like the gestalt switch, it must occur all at once (though
not necessarily in an instant) or not at all." p.150
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Copernicanism made few converts for almost a century after Copernicus' death. Newton's...for more
than half a century...." p.150
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Though a generation is sometimes required to effect the change, scientific communities have again and again been
converted to new paradigms." p.152
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Though some scientists, particularly older and more experienced ones, may resist indefinitely, most of them can be
reached in one way or another. Conversions will occur a few at a time until, after
the last holdouts have died...." p.152
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...the question of the nature of scientific argument has no single or uniform answer. Individual scientists
embrace a new paradigm for all sorts of reasons and usually for several at once." p.152
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Because scientists are reasonable men, one or another argument will ultimately persuade many of them." p.158
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"To a very great extent the term 'science' is reserved for fields that do progress in obvious ways."
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"...whether of scientists or of non-scientists, the result of successful creative work is progress. How could
it be possibly be anything else?" p.162
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"One of the strongest, if still unwritten, rules of scientific life is the prohibition of appeals to
heads of state or to the populace at large in matters scientific. ... The groups members...must be seen as the
sole possessors of the rules of the game...." p.168
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition
"Nothing important to my argument depends, however, on crisis' being an absolute prerequisite to revolutions;
they need only be the usual prelude...." p.181
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition - Postscript
"...definitions, being tautologies...." p.183
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition - Postscript
"...the resort to shared values rather than to shared rules governing individual choice may be the community's way
of distributing risk and assuring the long-term success of its enterprise. "
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition - Postscript
"Scientists solve puzzles by modeling them on previous puzzle-solutions...." p.189
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition - Postscript
"...members...learn to see the same things when confronted with the same stimuli...by
being shown examples of situations that their predecessors in the group have already learned to see as like
each other and as different from other sorts of situations." p.193-194
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition - Postscript
"These are all deliberative processes, and in them we do seek and deploy criteria and rules.
...
An appropriately programmed perceptual mechanism has survival value. ...
In many environments a group that could not tell wolves from dogs could not endure." p.195
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition - Postscript
"...the superiority
of one theory to another is something that cannot be proved in the debate". p.198
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition - Postscript
"...such reasons function as values...." p.199
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition - Postscript
"There is no neutral algorithm for theory-choice" p.200
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition - Postscript
"Like any other value, puzzle-solving ability proves equivocal in application." p.205
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition - Postscript
"Later scientific theories are better than earlier ones for solving puzzles in often
quite different environments to which they are applied. This is not a relativist's position, and it displays
the sense in which I am a convinced believer in scientific progress." p.206
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition - Postscript
"There is, i think, no theory-independent way to reconstruct phrases like 'really there'; the notion of a match between
the ontology of a theory and its 'real' counterpart in nature now seems to me illusive in principle." p.206
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition - Postscript
"'Is' and 'ought' are by no means always so separate as they have seemed." p.207
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition - Postscript
"A number...read its main thesis as applicable to many other fields as well. I see what they mean and would not
like to discourage their attempts to extend the position...." p.208
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition - Postscript
"...whatever progress itself may be." p.209
Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Third Edition - Postscript
NEIL POSTMAN
"...once a technology is admitted, it plays out it's hand; it does what it is designed to do."
Technopoly p.7
"The old words...do not have the same meanings...technology imperiously
commandeers our most important terminology. It redefines 'freedom', 'truth'...."
Technopoly p.8
"...the benefits and deficits of a new technology are not distibuted equally.
There are, as it were, winners and losers."
Technopoly p.9
"...the changes wrought by technology are subtle if not downright mysterious, one might even
say wildly unpredictable." Technopoly p.12
"To a man with a camera, everything looks like an image"
Technopoly p.14
"Unforseen consequences stand in the way of all those who think they see
clearly the direction in which a new technology will take us . Not even those
who invent a technology can be assumed to be reliable prophets...."
Technopoly p.15
"New technologies alter the structure of our interests; the things we
think about. They alter the character of our symbols; the things
we think with. They alter the nature of community; the arena in which
thoughts develope." Technopoly
p.20
"...technologies create the ways in which people percieve reality... "
Technopoly
p.21
"...a theology or metaphysics provides order and meaning to existence...." Technopoly p.26
"...no taxonomy ever neatly fits the realities of the situation...." Technopoly p.28
"Their (Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo) search for the mathematical laws of nature
was, fundamentally, a religious quest." Technopoly p.34
"...(Technopoly is) what cannot be measured either does not exist or is
of no value...." Technopoly p.51
"...telegraphy created the idea of context-free information -- that is, the idea that the value
of information need not be tied to any function it might serve in social and political
decision making and action." Technopoly p.67
"Information had become a form of garbage...." Technopoly p.69
"It is a world in which the idea of human progress...has been replaced
by the idea of technological progress." Technopoly p.70
"When the supply of information is no longer controllable, a general breakdown
in psychic tranquillity and social purpose occurs."
Technopoly p.72
"...any educational system...must have a theory about its purpose and meaning,
must have the means to give clear expression to its theory, and must do so, to a large extent,
by excluding information."
Technopoly p.75
"That is the function of theories -- to oversimplify...."
Technopoly p.77
RICHARD DAWKINS
"Design is not the only alternative to chance. Natural selection is the better alternative. Indeed,
design is not a real alternative at all because it raises an even bigger problem than it solves: who
is the designer? Chance and design both fail as mutual solutions to the problem of statistical
improbability, because one of them is the problem, and the other regresses to it. Natural selection
is a real solution. It is the only workable solution that has ever been suggested.
...natural selection is a cumulative process, which breaks down the problem of improbability up into small
pieces." p.121
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"Half a wing is indeed not as good as a whole wing, but it is certainly better than no wing at all.
Half a wing could save your life by easing your fall from a tree of a certain height." p.123
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"...the origin of life was (or could have been) a unique event which had to happen only once. The adaptive
fit of species to their separate environments, on the other hand, is million fold, and ongoing." p.139
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"We can safely predict that, if we wait another ten million years, a whole new set of species will be
as well adapted to their ways of life as today's species are to theirs." p.140
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"...natural selection and its power to tame improbability. J. Anderson Thomson, from his perspective as
an evolutionary psychiatrist, points me to an additional reason [for the general blindness
of people to the fact that
god is unexplained], the psychological bias that we all have towards
personifying inanimate objects as agents." p.143
the
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"...Darwinian selection habitually targets and eliminates waste. Nature is a misery accountant, grudging the pennies,
watching the clock, punishing the smallest extravagance. ...If a wild animal habitually
performs some useless activity, natural selection will favour rival individuals who devote
the time and energy, instead, to surviving and reproducing." p.163
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"But uncertainty as to details doesn't -- nor should it -- stop Darwinians from presuming, with
great confidence....
Richard Lewontin: 'That is the one point which I think all evolutionists are agreed upon,
that it is virtually impossible
to do a better job that an organism is doing in its own environment.'...." p.164
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"By benefit, the Darwinian normally means some enhancement to the survival of the individuals's genes." p.165
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"...religious behavior may be misfiring, an unfortunate by-product of an underlying psychological
propesity which in other circumstances is, or once was, useful.[a trust module]" p.174
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"Natural selection builds child brains with a tendancy to believe whatever their parents and tribal elders tell them.
... An automatic consequence is that the truster has no way of distinguishing good advice from bad." p.176
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"Religion can be seen as a by-product of the misfiring of several of these modules, for
example the modules for forming theories of other minds, for forming coalitions, and for
discriminating in favour of in-group members and against strangers." p.179
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"The general theory of religion as an accidental by-product --
a misfiring of something useful -- is the one I wish to advocate." p.188
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"Biologists acknowledge that a gene may spread through a population not because it is good gene
but simply because it is a lucky one. We call this genetic drift." p.189
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"And how do they compete? Not by direct molecule-to-molecule combat but by proxy. The proxies are their
'phenotypic traits' -- things like leg length or fur colour.... As generations go by, genes increase
or decrease in frequency in the gene pool by virtue of their phonotypic proxies." p.192
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"We could investigate the phenomenon [of memes] more systematically by the following experiement:
a varient of the game of Chinese Whispers. ...
I haven't done the experiment yet (I'd like to), but I have a strong prediction of what the result
will be." p.194
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"My original purpose in advocating memes, indeed, was to counter the impression that the gene
was the only Darwinian game in town -- an impression that The Selfish Gene was otherwise at
risk of conveying." p.196
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"Genes, then, co-operate in cartels to build bodies. ... What really happens is that the other genes
of the gene pool constitute a major part of the environment in which the gene is selected versus its
alleles." p.197
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"One vowel shifted first, for reasons unknown -- perhaps some fashionable imitation of an admired or powerful
individual, as is alleged to be the origin of the Spanish lisp." p.198
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"Some religious ideas, like some genes, might survive because of absolute merit. These
memes would survive in any memes pool, regardless of the other memes that surround them." p.199
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"...[art, religion, etc.] Some of the above listed probably have absolute survival value
and would flourish in any memeplex." p.200
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"In the early stages of a religions of a religion's evolution, before it becomes organized, simple memes survive
by virtue of their universal appeal to human psychology." [by-product overlap] p.201
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"It is striking that similar cargo cults sprang up independently on islands that were widely separated....
...[it] suggests some unifying features of human psychology in general." p.203
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"The logic of Darwinism concludes that the unit in the hierarchy of life which survives and passes through the filter of natural
selection will tend to be selfish. The units that survive in the world will be the ones that succeeded
in surviving at the expense of their rivals at their own level in the hierarchy. That, precisely, is what selfish means in
this context. ... It the gene that, in the form of information, either survives for many generations or does not." p.215
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"A gene that programs individual organisms to favour their genetic kin is statistically likely to benefit
copies of itself. Such a gene's fequency can increase in the gene pool to the point where kin altruism becomes the
norm." p.216
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"Mathematical theory allows two broad classes of stable solution to 'games' of this kind." p.217
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"Selection does not favour the evolution of a cognitive awareness of what is good for your genes. ...
What natural selection favours is rules of thumb...." p.220
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"The 'mistake' or 'by-product' idea, which I am espousing,
works like this. Natural selection, in ancestral times
when we lived in small stable bands like baboons, programmed
into our brains altruistic urges, alongside sexual urges...
...We can no more help ourselves feeling pity when we see a weeping unfortunate (who is unrelated and unable
to reciprocate) that we can help ourselves feeling lust for a member of the opposite sex (who may be infertile
or otherwise unable to reproduce). Both are misfirings, Darwinian mistakes: blessed, precious mistakes." p.221
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"...install rules of thumb in the brain. Those rules still influence us today, even where circumstances make them
inappropriate to their original functions.
Such rules of thumb influence us still, not in a Calvinistically deterministic way but filtered
through the civilizing influences of literature and custom, law and tradition -- and, of course, religion." p.222
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"...the intuition that most of us share is that an innocent bystander should not suddenly be dragged
into a bad situation and used for the sake of others without his consent." p.224
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"Good old Joshua didn't rest until 'they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman,
young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with edge of his sword. (Joshua 6:21).
...
The Bible may be an arresting and poetic work of fiction, but it is not the sort of book you should
give your children to form their morals." p.247
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"If God wanted to forgive our sins, why not just forgive them, without having himself tortured and executed
in payment...." p.253
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"For me...our morals, whether we are religious or not, come from another source; and that other source, whatever
it is, is available to all of us...." p.255
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"It was religion that made the difference between children condemning genocide and condoning it." p.257
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"[Zeitgeist - spirit of the times] Where, then, have these concerted
and steady changes in social consciousness come from?
The onus is not on me to answer. ... If forced to advance a theory, I would approach it along the following lines.
We need to explain why the changing moral Zeitgeist is so widely synchronized across large numbers of people;
and we need to explain its relatively consistent direction.
...
One way to put it would be in terms of the changing meme frequencies in the meme pool, but
I shall not pursue that." p.270
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"Some of us lag behind the advancing wave of the changing moral Zeitgeist and
some of us are slightly ahead. ... There are local and temporary setbacks.... But over the longer
time scale, the progressive trend is unmistakable and it will continue." p.270-271
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"We believe in evolution because the evidence supports it, and we would abandon it overnight if new evidence arose
to disprove it." p.283
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"...I know what it would take to change my mind, and I would gladly do so if the necessary evidence were forthcoming."
p.283
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"'Evil', as is very clear from the quotation, doesn't mean doing things that have bad consequence for people, It means
private thoughts and actions that are not to 'the Christian majority's private liking." p.290
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"...the fact of evolution. ...many anti-abortionists...don't understand that evolution is a fact!" p.300
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"To a consequentialist like me...." p.301
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
"A better way to say this is that there are no natural borderlines in evolution. ...evolutionary continuity shows that
there is no absolute distinction." p.301
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006
RICHARD MILTON
"There are, for instance, more than 3,000 species of
frogs, all of which look superficially the same. But there is a
greater variation of DNA between them than there is between the
bat and the blue whale.
Richard Milton Scientific Censorship and Evolution, spiked commissioned article for "Times Higher Education Supplement" March 1995 issue, not published.
"While human DNA is
contained in 23 pairs of chromosomes, the humble goldfish has
more than twice as many, at 47. The even humbler garden snail --
not much more than a glob of slime in a shell -- has 27
chromosomes. Some species of rose bush have 56 chromosomes.
So the simple fact is that DNA analysis does not confirm neo-
Darwinist theory."
Richard Milton Scientific Censorship and Evolution, spiked commissioned article for "Times Higher Education Supplement" March 1995 issue, not published.
"The problem is: how can biologists (or anyone else) tell what
characteristics constitute the animal or plant's 'fitness' to
survive? How can you tell which are the fit animals and plants?
The answer is that the only way to define the fit is by means of
a post-hoc rationalisation -- the fit must be "those who
survived". While the only way to characterise uniquely those who
survive is as "the fit". The central proposition of the
Darwinian argument turns out to be an empty tautology."
Richard Milton Scientific Censorship and Evolution, spiked commissioned article for "Times Higher Education Supplement" March 1995 issue, not published.
"C.H. Waddington, professor of biology at Edinburgh University
wrote; "Natural selection, which was at first considered as
though it were a hypothesis that was in need of experimental or
observational confirmation, turns out on closer inspection to be
a tautology, a statement of an inevitable although previously
unrecognised relation. It states that the fittest individuals in
a population (defined as those who leave the most offspring) will
leave most offspring."
Richard Milton Scientific Censorship and Evolution, spiked commissioned article for "Times Higher Education Supplement" March 1995 issue, not published.
Simpson's reformulation means all this must be dropped: it is not
the characteristics that directly matter -- it is the animals'
capacity to reproduce themselves. The race is not to the swift,
after all, but merely to the prolific. So how can neo-Darwinism
explain the enormous diversity of characteristics?"
Richard Milton Scientific Censorship and Evolution, spiked commissioned article for "Times Higher Education Supplement" March 1995 issue, not published.
"...but other puzzling and extraordinary findings have come to light
in recent decades, suggesting that evolution is not blind but
rather is in some unknown way directed.
The experiments of
Cairns at Harvard and Hall at Rochester University suggest that
microorganisms can mutate in a way that is beneficial."
Richard Milton Scientific Censorship and Evolution, spiked commissioned article for "Times Higher Education Supplement" March 1995 issue, not published.
"On at least seventeen occasions between the years 1690 and 1781, a number of astronomers,
including some of Europe's most influential observers, had seen a 'star' in positions
that we now know to have been that of Uranus. One astronomer had even observed the
object for four nights in a row in 1769 but without noticing the motion that would
have disclosed it as a planet not a star.
...
...Herschel thus put a question mark against the nature of the object
the first person to do so. When he observed it further, Herschel saw
that the object had a real motion with respect to the Earth. He therefore
concluded that he was looking at a comet!
Several months were spent trying to fit the new 'comet' to a suitable
cometary orbit, until Lexell suggested that the orbit was probably planetary.
Once the suggestion had been made, it was at once seen to be obvious.
As Kuhn put it, 'A celestial body that had been observed off and on for
almost a century was seen differently after 1781 because, like an
anomalous playing card, it could no longer be fitted to the perceptual
categories (star or comet) provided by the paradigm that had
previously prevailed.'
Kuhn points out that the discovery of Uranus did more for astronomy than merely add another planet to
the solar system. It prepared astronomers to perceive other such objects....
Richard Milton, Alternative Science Chapter 8, Calling a Spade a Spade .
Rather than being an interpreter, the scientist who embraces a new
paradigm is like a man wearing inverting lenses. Confronting the same
constellation of objects as before and knowing that he does so, he nevertheless
finds them transformed through and through in many of their details.'
The research work reviewed briefly here seems to me to point to a single
unequivocal conclusion: that the human mind plays an active role in the
process of perception. The mind is no mere passive mirror reflecting external
events. It does not merely represent data in the way that a computer monitor
does on a 'dot for dot' basis. Instead it contributes something to the
sensory information presented to it. The something that it contributes
comes from our existing experience, and the nature and meaning of our
existing experience includes the consensus view that we strive to reach
to reduce cognitive dissonance to a minimum. Put at its simplest, what we
perceive when we make our observations depends at least in part on what
we already believe is there.
Richard Milton, Alternative Science Chapter 8, Calling a Spade a Spade . (conclusion)
"Lyons went on to report that the suppression had been engineered by Harlow Shapley of Harvard,
although Shapley later denied this to Newsweek. Other scientists were not so shy about admitting
their part. Paul Herget said, 'I am one of those who participated in this campaign against
Macmillan', while Michigan astronomer Dean McLaughlin wrote, 'Worlds in Collision has just
changed hands . . . I am frank to state that this change was the result of pressure that
scientists and scholars brought to bear on the Macmillan Company.'
Even after the change of
publisher, ripples of the affair continued to be felt. James Putnam,
the editor who had been twenty-five years with Macmillan and who had bought Velikovsky's book,
was summarily dismissed. And Macmillan sent a representative to placate the powerful American
Association for the Advancement of Science at its annual meeting in Cleveland in December.
Charles Skelley, for Macmillan, duly appeared before a committee specially appointed to
study means for 'evaluating new theories before publication' - in other words, scientific censorship.
...
Within little more than a decade of publication, all of Velikovsky's key predictions
were confirmed by experiment.
...
Considering that the main thrust of science's attack on Velikovsky was a personal
attack on his integrity, the behaviour
of some of his most vociferous critics in the scientific community makes interesting reading.
In August 1963, Harper's Magazine, which had carried the original announcement of Velikovsky's
theories, now did a retrospective piece pointing out how all his main predictions had been borne out.
...
It is equally interesting to see how the Harvard astronomer dealt with the fact that most of Velikovsky's
predictions had been confirmed. On the radio emissions from Jupiter, he wrote that, since most
scientists do not accept Velikovsky's theory then it follows that 'any seeming verification of
Velikovsky's prediction is pure chance'.
"Davies then conceived the following plan. He would publish the paper but he arranged with his friend Bernard
Dixon, editor of the weekly magazine New Scientist, to publish simultaneously an article hostile to Uri Geller.
Then he commissioned Christopher Evans to write the editorial comment in Nature, which would both be
derogatory of the Stanford research and would point readers to the hostile article by Dr Joe Hanlon in
New Scientist. And this is the plan that Davies and Dixon put into operation."
Richard Milton, Alternative Science Chapter 10, Guardians of the Gate
"What a book like Forbidden Archaeology shows, in my view, is that if even a half (or even a tenth)
of the objections raised by its authors are valid scientific objections, then Darwinism is a theory
that is in deep, irremediable trouble.
...
Neither I nor anyone else expects Brass to come up with "a new theory on human evolution," and
Brass knows this perfectly well. "
September 9, 2001, Review by Richard Milton of The Antiquity of Man: Artefactual, fossil and gene records explored
by Michael Brass
If Darwinian processes of gradual evolutionary change had taken place the rocks
of the Earth's crust would contain fossil evidence of such processes. The rocks should
contain sequences of fossils from adjacent strata showing indisputable signs of gradual progressive change.
But this is not what is shown in the sequence of the rocks. Nowhere in the world has
anyone met this simple evidential criterion with a straightforward fossil sequence from
successive strata. Yet there are so many billions of fossils available from so many thousands
of strata, that the failure to meet this modest demand is inexplicable if evolution has taken
place in the way Darwin and his followers have envisaged. It ought to be relatively easy to
assemble not merely a handful but hundreds of species arranged in lineal descent. Schoolchildren
should be able to do this on an afternoon's nature study trip to the local quarry: but even the
world's foremost paleontologists have failed to do so with the whole Earth to choose from and the
resources of the world's greatest universities at their disposal.
Richard Milton, Chapter 10. The Record of the Rocks
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
Almost certainly this was because as an animal breeder he knew from first hand experience that no
plant or animal breeder has ever succeeded in producing a new species by selective breeding.
Primarily this is because of what Harvard's Ernst Mayr called "genetic homeostasis" -- the
barrier beyond which selective breeding will not pass because of the onset of sterility or
exhaustion of genetic variability.
Richard Milton, Chapter 12. Green Mice and Blue Genes
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
NeoDarwinism fails to explain satisfactorily a whole range of extraordinary natural observations -- starting
with the thick skin on the soles of our feet, which is a genetic inheritance. Fish secrete 'mirror scales'
to camouflage themselves against predators, but their skin has to be exactly seven millionths of a
centimeter thick or it will not work. Can such precision be the result of undirected, spontaneous mutation?
(Over and over)
Richard Milton, Chapter 22. On Being Thick Skinned
SHATTERING THE MYTHS OF DARWINISM
NOVA PBS, The Lord of the Ants, May 20, 2008, Narrator: "Undeterred by these attacks, Ed Wilson
continued to develop his
ideas on human sociobiology in another provocative book, On Human Nature.
Today, most scientists acknowledge
genes play some role in human behavior, but exactly how genes and the
environment interact is still unknown."
"Once you understand the dimensions of the problem, and the philosophical constraints
within which it must be solved, Darwinism is practically true by definition - regardless
of the evidence."
Phillip E. Johnson, (October, 1995),
Daniel Dennett's Dangerous Ideareview of Darwin's Dangerous Idea, by Daniel Dennett
A child, however, who had no important job and could only see things as his eyes
showed them to him, went up to the carriage.
"The Emperor is naked," he said.
"Fool!" his father reprimanded, running after him. "Don't talk nonsense!"
He grabbed his child and took him away. But the boy's remark, which had been
heard by the bystanders, was repeated over and over again until everyone cried:
"The boy is right! The Emperor is naked! It's true!"
The Emperor realized that the people were right but could not admit to that. He though
it better to continue the procession under the illusion that anyone who couldn't see
his clothes was either stupid or incompetent. And he stood stiffly on his carriage,
while behind him a page held his imaginary mantle.
The Emperor's New Clothes
by Hans Christian Anderson
STEVEN PINKER
"An intelligent system, then, cannot be stuffed with trillions of facts. It must be equipped with a smaller list
of core truths and a set of rules to deduce their implications. But The rules of common sense, like
the categories of common sense, are frustratingly hard to set down. Even the most straightforward ones
fail to capture our everyday reasoning." p.14
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...self-preservation, that universal biological imperative.... ...has to be programmed in". p.15
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"The mind is a system of organs of computation, designed by natural selection to solve the kinds of problems
our ancestors faced in their foraging way of life. ...The mind is organized into modules, or mental organs,
each with a specialized design that makes it an expert in one arena of interaction with the
world. ...The various problems
for our ancestors were subtasks of one big problem for their genes, maximizing the number of copies that
made it to the next generation." p.21
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...not...everything we think, feel, and do is biologically adaptive." p.23
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...the ultimate goal of natural selection is to propagate genes, but that does not mean
that the ultimate goal of people is to propagate genes." p. 24
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"A jack of all trades is master of none, and that is just as true for our mental organs as for our physical
organs." p.28 "A...remarkable feat is controlling the hand. ...Galen pointed
out the remarkable engineering behind the human hand.
It is a single tool that manipulates objects of an astonishing range of
sizes, shapes, and weights....'Man Handles them all,'
Galen noted, 'as well as if his hands had been made for the sake of each one alone.' " p.12
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"The brian has given up any pretense of being a general problem solver." p.29
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Our...mental modules need their own cheat-sheets to solve their unsolvable problems." p.29
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Family feelings are designed to help our genes replicated themselves...." p.30
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Only an angel could be a general problem solver; we mortals have
to make fallible guesses from fragmentary information. Each of
our mental modules solves its unsolvable problems by a leap of
faith about how the world works, by making assumptions that are
indispensable but indefensible -- the only defense being that the
assumptions worked well enough in the world of our ancestors"
p.30
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Modules are defined by the special things they do with the information available to them, not necessarily by the
kinds of information they have available." p.31
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Each of the major engineering problems solved by the mind is unsolvable without built-in assumption
about the laws that hold in that arena of interaction with the world." p.31
"I predict that no one will ever build a humanlike robot--and I mean a really humanlike robot--unless they pack it
with computational systems tailored to different problems." p.32
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...learning...is made possible by innate machines designed to do the learning." p.33
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"There have been no discoveries of a gene for civility, language, memory, motor control, intelligence, or other complete
mental systems, and there probably won't ever be." p.34"
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"There is no reason that reverse engineering guided by evolutionary theory should not bring
insight about the rest of the mind" p.35
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...not...all behavior is adaptive in Darwin's sense." (Re: suicide, celibacy, adoption and contraception).41
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...there is no need to strain for adaptive explanations for everything we do." p.42
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...neither adultery nor any other behavior can be in our genes." (desires can be in our genes) p.42
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...the gene's eye view predominates in evolutionary biology and has been a stunning success.
...It is as indispensible to researchers in animal behavior as Newton's Law are to mechanical engineers." p.43
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"People don't selfishly spread their genes; genes selfishly spread themselves.
They do it by the way they build our brains. By making us enjoy life....
Our goals are sub goals of the ultimate goal of the
genes, replicating themselves. " p.44
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"A universal structure to the mind is not only possible but likely to be true." p.49
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Differnces among people...are of minor interest when we ask how the mind works." p.49
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...the theory of a module-packed mind...
...A richly structured mind allows for complicated negotiations inside the head...." p.51
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...I do know that happiness and virtue have nothing to do with what natural selection designed us
to accomplish in the ancestral environment. ...Well into my procreating years I am voluntarily childless...ignoring
the solemn imperative to spread my genes. By Darwinian standards I am a horrible mistake, a pathetic loser,
.... But I am happy to be that way, and if my genes don't like it, they can go jump in the lake." p.52
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...I believe that science and ethics are two self-contained systems played out among the same entities in the
world, just as poker and bridge are different games played with the same fifty-two card
deck. The science game treats
people as material objects, and its rules are the physical processes that cause behavior
through natural selection and neurophysiology. The ethics game treats people as equivalent, sentient,
rational, free-willed agents, and its rules are the calculus that assigns moral value to behavior through
the behavior's inherent nature or its consequences.
Free will is an idealization of human beings that makes the ethics games playable. ... As long as
there is no outright coercion or gross malfunction of reasoning, the world is close enough to idealization of
free will that moral theory can meaningfully be applied to it." p.55
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...some categories are products of a complex mind designed to mesh with what is in nature." p.57
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Our mental life is a noisy parliament of competing factions. ...
I believe that a psychology of many computational
faculties engineered by natural selection is our best hope for a grasp on how the mind works that does
justice to its complexity." p.58
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"In fact,
without a specification of a creatures goals, the very idea of intelligence
is meaningless." p.61
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Intelligence, then, is the ability to attain goals in the face of obstacles by means of decisions
based on rational (truth-obeying) rules. .. We have desires and we pursue them
using beliefs...." p.62
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...humans are the only devices in the universe that respond to danger, praise, English, and beauty." p.63
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...intuitve psychology is still the most useful and complete science of behavior there is." p.63
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"To the extent that thought consists of applying any set of well-specified rules, a machine
can be built that, in some sense, thinks." p.68
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...the popular misconception that we think in our mother tongue.
.... (a spoken language can) achieve brevity by leaving out any information that the listener can mentally
fill in from the context. In contrast, the "language of thought" in which knowledge is couched can
leave nothing to the imagination, because it is the imagination" p.70
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"A better explanation is that computation has finally demystified mentalistic terms.
Beliefs are inscriptions in memory, desires are goal inscriptions, thinking
is computation, perceptions are inscriptions triggered by sensors, trying
is executing operations triggered by a goal." p.78
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...a representation is a set of symbols corresponding to aspects of the world...." P.79
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Sally must be modular: one part of her assesses danger, another decides whether to flee, yet
another figures out how to flee." p.88
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"(There are no truly synonymous sentences)" p.88
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"In The Language Instinct I explained how these representations
determine what goes into a sentence and how people
communicate and play with language." p.90
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Why so many kinds of representations? Wouldn't it be simpler to have an Esperanto of the mind? In fact,
it would be hellishly complicated. The modular organization of mental software, with its
packaging of knowledge into separate formats, is a nice example of how evolution and engineering
converge on similar solutions" p.90
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Presumably the distinct formats of representation used by the human mind -- images, phonological
loops, hierarchical trees, mentalese -- evolved because they allow simple programs ( that is, stupid
demons or homunculi) to compute useful things from them." p.91
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Real-life humans do better, perhaps because we are fitted with auto-associators that use a preponderance
of mutually consistent pieces of information to override one unusual piece. "Pritn"
would activate the more familiar pattern "print"...." p.105
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...five feats of everyday thinking. ... One feat is entertaining the concept of the individual. ...
" p.114
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"The concept of the [other as an] individual is the fundamental particle of our faculties of social reasoning." p.116
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"The spouse of one identical twin feels no romantic attraction toward the other twin." p.117
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"When nature presents us with objects that perfectly fill a bank of pigeonholes, its telling us that the objects
must be built out of smaller components....
Thoughts are assembled out of concepts; they are not stored whole." p.120
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"To be sure, many common-sense concepts really are fuzzy at their edges and have no clear definitions." p.126
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...people can also create systems of rules -- intuitive theories -- that define categories in terms
of the rules that apply to them." p.127
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"The alternative I am pushing is that humans can mentally symbolize kinds of objects,
and those symbols can be refereed
to in a number of rule systems we carry around in our heads." p.128
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Gould has denied consciousness to all nonhuman animals." p.133
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"verbal humor sets readers up with one meaning of an ambiguous word and surprises them with another." p.134
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Life is a series of deadlines.
...
Only information relevant to the problem at hand should be allowed in." p.138
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"...portions of this information can fall under the spotlight of attention, get rotated into
and out short term memory, and feed our deliberative cognition. ...sensations and thoughts come with an emotional
flavoring...." p.139
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"Behavior is a game of inches." p.140
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS
"We not only register events but register them as pleasurable or painful.
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW THE MIND WORKS p.143
"And evolutionarily speaking, there is seldom any mystery in why we seek the goals we seek....
The things that become objects of desire are the kind of things that led, on average, to enhanced odds
of survival and reproduction in the environment in which we evolved...." p.143
Steven Pinker, 1997, HOW T