#ambiguity

There is no greater impediment to the advancement of knowledge than the ambiguity of words. ↗

— Thomas Reid

#ambiguity #greater #impediment #knowledge #than

Stories start in all sorts of places. Where they begin often tells the reader of what to expect as they progress. Castles often lead to dragons, country estates to deeds of deepest love (or of hate), and ambiguously presented settings usually lead to equally as ambiguous characters and plot, leaving a reader with an ambiguous feeling of disappointment. That's one of the worst kinds. ↗

— Rebecca McKinsey

#castles #characters #disappointment #dragons #hate

Before you can ask 'Is Darwinian theory correct or not?', You have to ask the preliminary question 'Is it clear enough so that it could be correct?'. That's a very different question. One of my prevailing doctrines about Darwinian theory is 'Man, that thing is just a mess. It's like looking into a room full of smoke.' Nothing in the theory is precisely, clearly, carefully defined or delineated. It lacks all of the rigor one expects from mathematical physics, and mathematical physics lacks all the rigor one expects from mathematics. So we're talking about a gradual descent down the level of intelligibility until we reach evolutionary biology. ↗

— David Berlinski

#biology #clarity #darwinism #evolution #macro-evolution

He prizes ambiguity; he loves to keep you guessing. ↗

— Lionel Shriver

#guessing #love

These films however, have ambiguity built into them, because it's too easy in film to make a strident work of propaganda or advertising, which are really the same thing anyway, meaning the message is unmistakable. ↗

— Godfrey Reggio

#ambiguity #anyway #because #built #easy

I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity. ↗

— Gilda Radner

#life #stories #uncertainty #unpredictability #change

The greater the ambiguity, the greater the pleasure. ↗

— Milan Kundera

#pleasure

To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness. ↗

— Ursula K. Le Guin

#certainty #humility #knowledge #policy #humility

I'm a participant in the doctrine of constructive ambiguity. ↗

— Vernon A. Walters

#constructive #doctrine #i #participant

The Butcher Boy is a very great novel indeed and a very important Irish novel. The ambiguity of that is, he's writing a book about an appalling situation and he does it in a hilarious way. ↗

— Stephen Rea

#ambiguity #appalling #book #boy #butcher