“A convincing demonstration of correctness being impossible as long as the mechanism is regarded as a black box, our only hope lies in not regarding the mechanism as a black box.”

— Edsger W. Dijkstra

Dijkstra (1970) " Notes On Structured Programming http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd02xx/EWD249.PDF" (EWD249), Section 3 ("On The Reliability of Mechanisms"), p. 5. <br class="br">1970s

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Edsger W. Dijkstra68

Dutch computer scientist 1930–2002

Robert Gilpin (1930–2018) Political scientist

Source: The Political Economy of International Relations (1987), Chapter Ten, Emergent International Economic Order, p. 393

“Why don't they make the whole plane out of that black box stuff?”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

“The sight of the black box stunned the gathering into a silence more deep than before. Only members of The Vigils and their victims had seen it. In the garish stadium light, the box was revealed as worn and threadbare, a small wooden container that might have been a discarded jewelry box. And yet it was a legend in the school.”

Robert Cormier book The Chocolate War

Source: The Chocolate War (1974), p. 245

“Wack job in the back with a black stocking cap/Jacking off to a hockey mask in a boxing match”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

"Underground".
2000s, Relapse (2009)

“I regard this novel as a work without redeeming social value, unless it can be recycled as a cardboard box.”

Ellen Goodman (1941) American journalist and writer

Attributed

“Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones.”

Shirley Jackson book The Lottery

Source: The Lottery (1948)

“Your chances of getting support in the black community are poor at best. You have a master-servant philosophy with regard to blacks.”

James Eastland (1904–1986) American politician

Aaron Henry to Eastland relative to his chances of reelection. 1978 <br class="br"> James O. Eastland https://mississippiencyclopedia.org/entries/james-oliver-eastland/ <br class="br">About him

“If the black box flight recorder is never damaged during a plane crash, why isn’t the whole airplane made out of that stuff?”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

“It is actually impossible in theory to determine exactly what the hidden mechanism is without opening the box, since there are always many different mechanisms with identical behavior. Quite apart from this, analysis is more difficult than invention in the sense in which, generally, induction takes more time to perform than deduction: in induction one has to search for the way, whereas in deduction one follows a straightforward path.”

Valentino Braitenberg (1926–2011) Italian-Austrian neuroscientist

Source: Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology (1984), p. 20 as cited in: Yll Haxhimusa (2006) The Structurally Optimal Dual Graph Pyramid and Its Application in Image Partitioning. p. 149

“An explanation of a phenomenon is regarded, apparently instinctively, as the most general possible when it is a mechanical explanation. The "mechanism" of the process is the ultimate goal of experiment. Now this mechanism in general lies beyond the range of the senses; either by reason of their limitations, as in the case of the atomic structure of matter, or by the very nature of the supposed mechanism, as in the theory of the ether. The only way to bridge the gap between the machinery of the physical process and the world of sense-impressions is to think out some consequence of that mechanism. This we will call the hypothesis. The hypothesis, resting still on the mechanical basis, is yet beyond the range of direct experimental investigation; but if, by mathematical reasoning, a consequence of the hypothesis can be deduced, this will often lie within the range of experimental inquiry, and thus a test of the soundness of the original mechanical conception may be instituted.”

J. R. Partington (1886–1965) British chemist

Introduction
Higher Mathematics for Chemical Students (1911)

“A convincing demonstration of correctness being impossible as long as the mechanism is regarded as a black box, our only hope lies in not regarding the mechanism as a black box.”

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Edsger W. Dijkstra68

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