Book 4; Universal Love III
Mozi
“In scientific thought we adopt the simplest theory which will explain all the facts under consideration and enable us to predict new facts of the same kind. The catch in this criterion lies in the word "simplest." It is really an aesthetic canon such as we find implicit in our criticisms of poetry or painting. The layman finds such a law as {\mathrm{\partial }x \over \mathrm{\partial } t} = \Kappa { \, \mathrm{\partial}^2x \over \mathrm{\partial }y^2} much less simple than "it oozes," of which it is the mathematical statement. The physicist reverses this judgment, and his statement is certainly the more fruitful of the two, so far as prediction is concerned. It is, however, a statement about something very unfamiliar to the plainman, namely, the rate of change of a rate of change.”
Possible Worlds and Other Papers (1927), p. 227
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J. B. S. Haldane 32
Geneticist and evolutionary biologist 1892–1964Related quotes

Sādhanā : The Realisation of Life http://www.spiritualbee.com/spiritual-book-by-tagore/ (1916)

[2008, http://www.edge.org/q2008/q08_5.html#baez, Should I be thinking about quantum gravity? (essay at the World Question Center), edge.org]
Introduction, Collected Works of Ken Wilber, vol. VIII (2000) http://wilber.shambhala.com/html/books/cowokev8_intro.cfm/
Context: The real intent of my writing is not to say, you must think in this way. The real intent is: here are some of the many important facets of this extraordinary Kosmos; have you thought about including them in your own worldview? My work is an attempt to make room in the Kosmos for all of the dimensions, levels, domains, waves, memes, modes, individuals, cultures, and so on ad infinitum. I have one major rule: Everybody is right. More specifically, everybody — including me — has some important pieces of truth, and all of those pieces need to be honored, cherished, and included in a more gracious, spacious, and compassionate embrace. To Freudians I say, Have you looked at Buddhism? To Buddhists I say, Have you studied Freud? To liberals I say, Have you thought about how important some conservative ideas are? To conservatives I say, Can you perhaps include a more liberal perspective? And so on, and so on, and so on... At no point I have ever said: Freud is wrong, Buddha is wrong, liberals are wrong, conservatives are wrong. I have only suggested that they are true but partial. My critical writings have never attacked the central beliefs of any discipline, only the claims that the particular discipline has the only truth — and on those grounds I have often been harsh. But every approach, I honestly believe, is essentially true but partial, true but partial, true but partial.
And on my own tombstone, I dearly hope that someday they will write: He was true but partial...

"The Letter and the Spirit", in the journal Music and Letters, vol. 1 (1920) p. 88.
as cited in Abstract Expressionism, Creators and Critics, ed. Clifford Ross, Abrahams Publishers, New York 1990, p. 111
1960s, Interview with David Sylvester', (1960)

Vorlesungen über Dynamik http://archive.org/details/cgjjacobisvorle00lottgoog [Lectures on Dynamics] (1842/3; publ. 1884).