#theory

One day [Rabbi Spear] talked about his theory of happiness. He proposed that human feelings respond only to contrast and change, not to constancy, just as eyesight responds to contrasts of light and dark and to movement. The rabbi speculated that if emotions are similar to eyesight and other senses, then perhaps emotions were developed by nature as a survival mechanism. ↗

— Alan Lightman

#change

Against the urgency of people dying in the streets, what in God's name is the point of cultural studies?...At that point, I think anybody who is into cultural studies seriously as an intellectual practice, must feel, on their pulse, its ephemerality, its insubstantiality, how little it registers, how little we've been able to change anything or get anybody to do anything. If you don't feel that as one tension in the work that you are doing, theory has let you off the hook. ↗

— Stuart Hall

#cultural-studies #intellectualism #theory #change

The fact that some religious fanatics might support a theory doesn't invalidate it, anymore than the concurrence of UFO abduction cults invalidates the notion of extra-terrestrial life. ↗

— James P. Hogan

#intelligent-design #scientific-theories #scientific-theory #design

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. ↗

— Arthur Conan Doyle

#deduction #information #mistake #theories #theory

Before going back to college, i knew i didn't want to be an intellectual, spending my life in books and libraries without knowing what the hell is going on in the streets. Theory without practice is just as incomplete as practice without theory. The two have to go together. ↗

— Assata Shakur

#learning #practice #revolutionary #theory #education

A clever schoolboy's reaction to his reading is most naturally expressed by parody or imitation. ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#education #literary-theory #reading #education

Imagination and the pure delight in stories drive out fear. ↗

— William Paton Ker

#literary-theory #imagination

If my nightmare is a culture inhabited by posthumans who regard their bodies as fashion accessories rather than the ground of being, my dream is a version of the posthuman that embraces the possibilities of information technologies without being seduced by fantasies of unlimited power and disembodied immortality, that recognizes and celebrates finitude as a condition of human being, and that understands human life is embedded in a material world of great complexity, one on which we depend for our continued survival. ↗

— N. Katherine Hayles

#science #theory #dreams

Ideology follows the money." "Governments don't protect people, people protect governments." "To accept the legitimacy of the state is to embrace the necessity for war. ↗

— Lawrence Samuels

#complexity-science #economics #human-action #politics #money

Perfection: a collection of a variety of pieces that, when viewed and felt individually, are difficult and confusing; but when brought together as one, create a perfect picture. Symphony, harmony, serenity. ↗

— C. JoyBell C.

#harmony #perfection #perfection-and-confusion #serenity #symphony