#theory

If we do discover a complete theory, it should be in time understandable in broad principle by everyone. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people be able to take part in the discussion of why we and the universe exist. ↗

— Stephen Hawking

#broad #complete #discover #discussion #everyone

Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play. ↗

— Immanuel Kant

#blind #intellectual #mere #play #theory

The greatest mathematicians, as Archimedes, Newton, and Gauss, always united theory and applications in equal measure. ↗

— Felix Klein

#applications #archimedes #equal #equal measure #greatest

Statistics: the mathematical theory of ignorance. ↗

— Morris Kline

#mathematical #statistics #theory

The theory of relativity worked out by Mr. Einstein, which is in the domain of natural science, I believe can also be applied to the political field. Both democracy and human rights are relative concepts - and not absolute and general. ↗

— Jiang Zemin

#also #applied #believe #both #concepts

Since Einstein developed his theory of relativity, and Rutherford and Bohr revolutionised physics, our picture of the world has radically changed. ↗

— A. N. Wilson

#developed #einstein #his #our #physics

But if all maximizing models are really arguing is that “people will always seek to maximize something,” then they obviously can’t predict anything, which means employing them can hardly be said to make anthropology more scientific. All they really add to analysis is a set of assumptions about human nature. The assumption, most of all, that no one ever does anything primarily out of concern for others; that whatever one does, one is only trying to get something out of it for oneself. In common English, there is a word for this attitude. It’s called “cynicism.” Most of us try to avoid people who take it too much to heart. In economics, apparently, they call it “science. ↗

— David Graeber

#pomo #rational-choice-theory #utilitarianism #attitude

GOD. Sometimes I think there might be a god out there, and that every once in a while he tunes in to see what we're up to, and have a good laugh at how we like to dress him up in various costume. Robes, thorny crowns, yarmulkes and curls, saris and butt-hugging yoga pants. Male, female, a genderless reincarnation factory; a Mother Earth or a withholding Father Christmas. I would think it would amuse the hell out of him. That we're all idolaters, worshiping figments of our own creation who bear no resemblance to him. Maybe he's sitting in some alternate dimension somewhere, saying, 'Shit, I didn't even create the world! I was just cooking my dinner, not paying attention to the heat, and suddenly here was this big band and a few hours later, a bunch of dinosaurs... ↗

— Suzanne Morrison

#funny #god #funny

that man is a reality, mankind an abstraction; that men cannot be treated as units in operations of political arithmetic because they behave like the symbols for zero and the infinite, which dislocate all mathematical operations; that the end justifies the means only within very narrow limits; that ethics is not a function of social utility, and charity not a petty bourgeois sentiment but the gravitational force which keeps civilization in its orbit. ↗

— Arthur Koestler

#men

THE rich possess ample means to realize any theory they may chuse to adopt in the education of their children, regardless of the cost; but it is not so with him whose Subsistence is derived from industry. ↗

— Joseph Lancaster

#ample #any #children #cost #derived