
"The Singularity," The New Humanists: Science at the Edge (2003)
Source: Attributed from posthumous publications, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954), Ch. 29, June 10, 1943.
"The Singularity," The New Humanists: Science at the Edge (2003)
Source: 1980s, Laws of Media: The New Science (with Eric McLuhan) (1988), p. 81
“Faced with information overload, we have no alternative but pattern-recognition.”
Source: 1960s, Counterblast (1969), p. 132
Source: Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), Ch. 10 : A Framework for Utopia; Design Devices and Filter Devices, p. 316
Context: Some communities will be abandoned, others will struggle along, others will split, others will flourish, gain members, and be duplicated elsewhere. Each community must win and hold the voluntary adherence of its members. No pattern is imposed on everyone, and the result will be one pattern if and only if everyone voluntarily chooses to live in accordance with that pattern of community.
Source: The Walking Drum (1984), Ch. 31
Context: How much could I tell them? How much dared I tell them? What was the point at which acceptance would begin to yield to doubt? For the mind must be prepared for knowledge as one prepares a field for planting, and a discovery made too soon is no better than a discovery not made at all. Had I been a Christian, I would undoubtedly have been considered a heretic, for what the world has always needed is more heretics and less authority. There can be no order or progress without discipline, but authority can be quite different. Authority, in this world in which I moved, implied belief in and acceptance of a dogma, and dogma is invariably wrong, as knowledge is always in a state of transition. The radical ideas of today are often the conservative policies of tomorrow, and dogma is left protesting by the wayside. Each generation has a group that wishes to impose a static pattern on events, a static pattern that would hold society forever immobile in a position favorable to the group in question. <!--
Much of the conflict in the minds and arguments of those about me was due to a basic conflict between religious doctrines based primarily upon faith, and Greek philosophy, which was an attempt to interpret experience by reason. Or so it seemed to me, a man with much to learn.
Cited in: Christoph Schmitz (2007) Self-Organized Collaborative Knowledge Management. p.9
The science of self-organization and adaptivity (2001)
Source: Messages from the Masters: Tapping into the Power of Love