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.
“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: 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.
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Robert Nozick 32
American political philosopher 1938–2002Related quotes
Source: Attributed from posthumous publications, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954), Ch. 29, June 10, 1943.
Source: Talking Science: Language, Learning, and Values. 1990, p. 99
Kunnumpuram, K. (2009) Towards the Fullness of Life: Reflections on the Daily Living of the Faith. Mumbai: St Pauls
On the Church
Cited in: Peter Coad (1992) " Object-oriented patterns http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/courses/cse503/04sp/readings/designpattern.pdf." Communications of the ACM 35.9. p. 152
The Timeless Way of Building (1979)
Pattern Integrity 505.201 http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergetics/s05/p0400.html#505
1970s, Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking (1975), "Synergy" onwards
“There is only the pattern; the pattern is all the universe, creator and created.”
“Old Hundredth” p. 162 (originally published in New Worlds Science Fiction #100, November 1960)
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)
Context: When the first flint, the first shell, was shaped into a weapon, that action shaped man. As he molded and complicated his tools, so they molded and complicated him. He became the first scientific animal. And at last, via information theory and great computers, he gained knowledge of all his parts. He formed the Laws of Integration, which reveal all beings as part of a pattern and show them their part in the pattern. There is only the pattern; the pattern is all the universe, creator and created.
“Axiom: Novel must have either one living character or a perfect pattern: fails otherwise.”
Source: Commonplace Book (1985), p. 6