“The progress of science requires more than new data; it needs novel frameworks and contexts. And where do these fundamentally new views of the world arise? They are not simply discovered by pure observation; they require new modes of thought. And where can we find them, if old modes do not even include the right metaphors? The nature of true genius must lie in the elusive capacity to construct these new modes from apparent darkness. The basic chanciness and unpredictability of science must also reside in the inherent difficulty of such a task.”
"False Premise, Good Science", p. 138
The Flamingo's Smile (1985)
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Stephen Jay Gould274
American evolutionary biologist 1941–2002Related quotes
Guy Consolmagno (1952) American Jesuit, Catholic Priest, research astronomer and planetary scientist at the Vatican Observatory.
[Consolmagno, Guy, Mueller, Paul, https://www.google.com/books?id=lf5vDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA16, 9780804136952, Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial?: And Other Questions from the Astronomers' In-Box at the Vatican Observatory, 16, 2014, Image]
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist
"One culture and the new sensibility", p. 296
Against Interpretation and Other Essays (1966)
Context: Art today is a new kind of instrument, an instrument for modifying consciousness and organizing new modes of sensibility. And the means for practicing art have been radically extended.... Painters no longer feel themselves confined to canvas and paint, but employ hair, photographs, wax, sand, bicycle tires, their own toothbrushes and socks. Musicians have reached beyond the sounds of the traditional instruments to use tampered instruments and (usually on tape) synthetic sounds and industrial noises.
Alexander Bogdanov (1873–1928) Physician, philosopher, writer
Variant: Tektology must clarify the modes of organization that are perceived to exist in nature and human activity; then it must generalize and systematize these modes; further it must explain them, that is, propose abstract schemes of their tendencies and laws; finally, based on these schemes, determine the direction of organizational methods and their role in the universal process. This general plan is similar to the plan of any natural science; but the objective of tektology is basically different. Tektology deals with organizational experiences not of this or that specialized field, but of all these fields together. In other words, tektology embraces the subject matter of all the other sciences and of all the human experience giving rise to these sciences, but only from the aspect of method, that is, it is interested only in the modes of organization of this subject matter.
Source: Essays in tektology, 1980, p. iii
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity
http://umich.edu/~scps/html/01chap/html/summary.htm
Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and Religion (1999)
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) Welsh politician
Hansard, House of Commons, 5th series, vol. 562, cols. 1404-5.
Speech in the House of Commons, 19 December 1956.
1950s
Stephen Jay Gould book Wonderful Life
you don't see electrons, gravity, or black holes either
Source: Wonderful Life (1989), p. 279
Stephen Jay Gould book The Flamingo's Smile
"For Want of a Metaphor", p. 151
The Flamingo's Smile (1985)