
Source: Life, Sex, and Ideas: The Good Life Without God (2002), Chapter 4, “Symbols” (p. 19)
Source: Life, Sex, and Ideas: The Good Life Without God (2002), Chapter 4, “Symbols” (p. 19)
Source: Life, Sex, and Ideas: The Good Life Without God (2002), Chapter 4, “Symbols” (p. 19)
Science and the Unseen World (1929)
Context: If to-day you ask a physicist what he has finally made out the æther or the electron to be, the answer will not be a description in terms of billiard balls or fly-wheels or anything concrete; he will point instead to a number of symbols and a set of mathematical equations which they satisfy. What do the symbols stand for? The mysterious reply is given that physics is indifferent to that; it has no means of probing beneath the symbolism. To understand the phenomena of the physical world it is necessary to know the equations which the symbols obey but not the nature of that which is being symbolised.... this newer outlook has modified the challenge from the material to the spiritual world.<!--III, p.30
“Having power is not nearly as important as what you choose to do with it.”
“Symbols are to the mind what tools are to the hand--an extended application of its powers.”
Dion Fortune, The Mystical Qabalah
Perrow (1968), "Organizational goals," in: International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. New York: The Macmillan Co. p. 305
1960s
"On the Physiological Causes of Harmony" (1857), p. 81
Popular Lectures on Scientific Subjects (1881)
Context: As you are aware, no perceptions obtained by the senses are merely sensations impressed on our nervous systems. A peculiar intellectual activity is required to pass from a nervous sensation to the conception of an external object, which the sensation has aroused. The sensations of our nerves of sense are mere symbols indicating certain external objects, and it is usually only after considerable practice that we acquire the power of drawing correct conclusions from our sensations respecting the corresponding objects.
“Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well.”