Merkle's website http://www.merkle.com/papers/nanohearing1999.html
Context: Developing nanotechnology will be a major project -- just as developing nuclear weapons or lunar rockets were major projects. We must first focus our efforts on developing two things: the tools with which to build the first molecular machines, and the blueprints of what we are to build. This will require the cooperative efforts of researchers across a wide range of disciplines: scanning probe microscopy, supramolecular chemistry, protein engineering, self assembly, robotics, materials science, computational chemistry, self replicating systems, physics, computer science, and more. This work must focus on fundamentally new approaches and methods: incremental or evolutionary improvements will not be sufficient. Government funding is both appropriate and essential for several reasons: the benefits will be pervasive across companies and the economy; few if any companies will have the resources to pursue this alone; and development will take many years to a few decades (beyond the planning horizon of most private organizations).
We know it's possible. We know it's valuable. We should do it.
Source: Value-free science?: Purity and power in modern knowledge, 1991, p. 13
Source: Poverty (1912), p. 16-17
Context: Charles B. Spahr, Walter A. Wyckoff, Mrs. John Van Vorst and Miss Marie Van Vorst, I. K. Friedman and A. M. Simons have given us some idea of the conditions among the poorest class of laborers in various industrial centers over the country. Jacob A. Riis, Ernest Poole, and Mrs. Lillian Betts have given us most sympathetic descriptions of poverty among the people of the tenements. Flynt and others have given us impressionistic stories of tramps, vagrants, and mendicants. They bring before our very eyes, through books and magazines, stories of needless deaths from insanitary conditions, of long hours of work, of low pay, of overcrowded sweatshops, of child labor, of street waifs, of vile tenements, of the hungry and the wretched. All these books and articles are extremely valuable and useful, but if anything is to be done about the matter, we should begin as soon as possible to know the extent of these conditions and the causes which bring such terribly serious misery and wretchedness into the world.
As quoted in Walden (1854) by Henry David Thoreau, Ch. 1
Attributed
Confucius, as quoted in Walden (1854) by Henry David Thoreau, Ch. 1
Misattributed
Lecture 6
Lectures on Education (1855)
Context: The most ignorant are the most conceited. Unless a man knows that there is something more to be known, his inference is, of course, that he knows every thing. Such a man always usurps the throne of universal knowledge, and assumes the right of deciding all possible questions. We all know that a conceited dunce will decide questions extemporaneous which would puzzle a college of philosophers, or a bench of judges. Ignorant and shallow-minded men do not see far enough to see the difficulty. But let a man know that there are things to be known, of which he is ignorant, and it is so much carved out of his domain of universal knowledge. And for all purposes of individual character, as well as of social usefulness, it is quite as important for a man to know the extent of his own ignorance as it is to know any thing else. To know how much there is that we do not know, is one of the most valuable parts of our attainments; for such knowledge becomes both a lesson of humility and a stimulus to exertion.
“God knows that we should not despise anything. We must do our best.”
Chantal, p. 28
La joie (Joy) 1929
“The most difficult thing is to know what we do know, and what we do not know.”
Source: Tertium Organum (1912; 1922), Ch. I
Context: The most difficult thing is to know what we do know, and what we do not know.
Therefore, desiring to know anything, we shall before all else determine WHAT we accept as given, and WHAT as demanding definition and proof; that is, determine WHAT we know already, and WHAT we wish to know.
In relation to the knowledge of the world and of ourselves, the conditions would be ideal could we venture to accept nothing as given, and count all as demanding definition and proof. In other words, it would be best to assume that we know nothing, and make this our point of departure.
But unfortunately such conditions are impossible to create. Knowledge must start from some foundation, something must be recognized as known; otherwise we shall be obliged always to define one unknown by means of another.
“We do not know structures, but we know because of structures.”
Source: The Dramatic Universe: Man and his nature (1966), p. 7
