Quotes about studying (2782 quotes, page 13)

“Mr. Wilson does not write as one who believes in a particular religion but rather as an intellectual who is being forced more and more into accepting religion as the only solution to the problem of the Outsider. In other words, the anxiety and uneasiness, the sheer horror of being oneself in the modern world is not to be cured by reason or even of study of philosophies which set out to explain them, like Existentialism; the unpleasant symptoms have to be lived through, leading to the worst, in order that the final, mystical experience may be attained. The Outsider has it within him to become a saint. Yet, though Mr. Wilson is drawn to religion, and all his arrows point that way, he never departs from his standards of intellectual analysis.”

Cyril Connolly (1903–1974) British author

'Loser Take All', Sunday Times, p. 5 (27 May 1956)

World , Religion , Way , Problem

“[Neoinstitutional Economics…] theory has made an indispensable contribution in recent times to advances of understanding in this area. But it seems to me that in the economics of institutions theory is now outstripping empirical research to an excessive extent. No doubt the same could be said of other fields in economics, but there is a particular point about this one. Theoretical modelling may or may not be more difficult in this field than in others, but empirical work is confronted by a special difficulty. Because economic institutions are complex, they do not lend themselves easily to quantitative measurement. Even in the respects in which they do, the data very often are not routinely collected by national statistical offices. As a result, the statistical approach which has become the bread and butter of applied economics is not straightforwardly applicable. Examples of it do exist, the literature on the economics of slavery being perhaps the most fully developed - not surprisingly because slavery is an institution that is sharply defined. But to a large extent the empirical literature has consisted of case-studies which are interesting but not necessarily representative, together with a certain amount on legal court cases, which are almost certainly not representative. Is this the best we can do? There is a challenge here on the empirical side to economists to see what is the best way forward.”

R. C. O. Matthews (1927–2010) British economist

Way , Literature , Understanding , Time

“Until recently, ecologists were content to describe how nature “looks” (sometimes by means of fantastic terms!) and to speculate on what she might have looked like in the past or may look like in the future. Now, an equal emphasis is being placed on what nature ‘does’, and rightly so, because the changing face of nature can never be understood unless her metabolism is also studied. This change in approach brings the small organisms into perspective with the large, and encourages the use of experimental methods to supplement the analytic. It is evident that so long as a purely descriptive viewpoint is maintained, there is very little in common between such structurally diverse organisms as sperma-tophytes, vertebrates and bacteria. In real life, however, all these are intimately linked functionally in ecological systems, according to well-defined laws. Thus the only kind of general ecology is that which I call a ‘functional ecology’, and this kind is of the greatest interest to all students of the subject, regardless of present or future specialisations.”

Eugene P. Odum (1913–2002) mathematician, ecologist, natural philosopher, and systems ecologist

Eugene Odum (1957) Fundamentals of Ecology. p. ix, cited in: Edward Goldsmith (1970-73/2013) Towards a Unified Science http://www.edwardgoldsmith.org/598/

Life , Law , Nature , Change

“I always saw a close kinship between the needs of "pure" mathematics and a certain hero of Greek mythology, Antaeus. The son of Earth, he had to touch the ground every so often in order to reestablish contact with his Mother; otherwise his strength waned. To strangle him, Hercules simply held him off the ground. Back to mathematics. Separation from any down-to-earth input could safely be complete for long periods — but not forever. In particular, the mathematical study of Brownian motion deserved a fresh contact with reality.”

Benoît Mandelbrot (1924–2010) Polish-born, French and American mathematician

A Theory of Roughness (2004)

Mathematics , Reality

“I was in my forties and teaching magazine writing for the Journalism Department at the University of New Mexico. I was hired on a fluke. The professor who was scheduled to teach the course became ill, so the chair of the department, my personal friend Tony Hillerman, asked me to fill in for a semester. Tony knew I’d never been to college and didn’t care; he just knew I’d written successfully for magazines for years. The original professor never returned, and someone else replaced Tony as Chair and automatically kept me on. I discovered I loved teaching writing and started to get worried that my deep dark secret, (no college!) might be discovered, so I began taking courses under my married name, Lois Arquette, hoping I could get a degree before someone “outed” me. In the course of that endeavor, I took a juvenile literature class where they were studying “Lois Duncan books.””

Lois Duncan (1934–2016) American young-adult and children's writer

My fellow students were excitedly writing A-plus papers about how many of my books were based on Greek myths. I had never even read those myths!
On teaching and attending college, interview https://web-beta.archive.org/web/20111119202009/https://abbottgran.wordpress.com/2011/04/17/the-deep-bottom-drawer-an-interview-with-lois-duncan/ with Megan Abbott (2011)
2003–2016

Love , Secret , Books , Hope

“An important object of the Journal should be the publication of papers dealing with attempts at statistical verification of the laws of economic theory, and further the publication of papers dealing with the purely abstract problems of quantitative economics, such as problems in the quantitative definition of the fundamental concepts of economics and problems in the theory of economic equilibrium.
The term equilibrium theory is here interpreted as including both the classical equilibrium theory proceeding on the lines of Walras, Pareto, and Marshall, and the more general equilibrium theory which is now beginning to grow out of the classical equilibrium theory, partly through the influence of the modern study of economic statistics. Taken in this broad sense the equilibrium problems include virtually all those fundamental problems of production, circulation, distribution and consumption, which can be made the object of a quantitative study. More precisely: The equilibrium theory in the sense here used is a body of doctrines that treats all these problems from a certain point of view, which is contrasted on one side with the verbal treatment of economic problems and on the other side with the purely empirical-statistical approach to economic problems”

Ragnar Frisch (1895–1973) Norwegian economist

Frisch (1927). as quoted in: Bjerkholt, Olav, and Duo Qin. A Dynamic Approach to Economic Theory: The Yale Lectures of Ragnar Frisch. Routledge, 2010: About "Oekonometrika"
1920

Law , Problem , Sense

“Two views on the scope of technology have pervaded (and shaped) studies of technology, reflecting the different claims to generalizability that researchers have intended with their work. The one set of studies has focused on technology as "hardware," that is, the equipment, machines, and instruments that humans use in productive activities, whether industrial or informational devices.”

Wanda Orlikowski American computer scientist

Source: "The duality of technology" 1992, p. 399

“Attention must be given to the study of the given operations. Their study with due allowance made for the existing means of warfare will make it possible to reach a number of useful theoretical conclusions for conducting operations in the initial phase of a war.”

Matvei Zakharov (1898–1972) Soviet military commander

Quoted in "Timely Lessons of History: The Manchurian Model for Soviet Strategy" - Page 4 - by John Despres, Lilita Dzirkals, Barton Whaley - History - 1976

War

“It is the thesis of this book that society can only be understood through a study of the messages and the communication facilities which belong to it; and that in the future development of these messages and communication facilities, messages between man and machines, between machines and man, and between machine and machine, are destined to play an ever-increasing part”

Norbert Wiener book The Human Use of Human Beings

Source: The Human Use of Human Beings (1950), p. 16

Books , Communication , Future , Parting

“Where do babies come from? Don't bother asking adults. They lie like pigs. However, diligent independent research and hours of playground consultation have yielded fruitful, if tentative, results. There are several theories. Near as we can figure out, it has something to do with acting ridiculous in the dark. We believe it is similar to dogs when they act peculiar and ride each other. This is called "making love". Careful study of popular song lyrics, advertising catch-lines, TV sitcoms, movies, and T-Shirt inscriptions offers us significant clues as to its nature. Apparently it makes grown-ups insipid and insane. Some graffiti was once observed that said "sex is good."”

Matt Groening (1954) American cartoonist

All available evidence, however, points to the contrary.
Bongo in Childhood Is Hell (1988)

Love , Lie , Making love , Dogs

“Merely reading the Bible is no use at all without we study it thoroughly, and hunt it through, as it were, for some great truth.”

Dwight L. Moody (1837–1899) American evangelist and publisher

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 40. (from "How to Study the Bible").

Truth , Reading

“According to a frequently cited definition, economics is the study of “best use of scarce resources.” The definition is incomplete. “Second best” use of resources, and outright wasteful uses, have equal claim to attention. They are the other side of the coin.”

Tjalling Koopmans (1910–1985) Dutch American economist

Source: Concepts of Optimality and Their Uses, 1975, p. 239: Lead sentence

“Most merciful and gracious God, who hast preserved me unto this hour, I most humbly acknowledge Thee as the guide and companion of my youth. Thou hast protected me through the dangers of infancy and childhood, and in my youth Thou didst bless me with the full enjoyment, the happy intimacy, of the best of fathers. Be as gracious and merciful then as Thou hast hitherto been, now that I am about to enter a new stage of existence. Teach me, I beseech Thee, to strengthen in my soul the cultivation of Thy truth, the recollection of the uncertainty of life, the greatness of the objects for which I was created. Revive those delightful religious impressions which in early days I felt more strongly than now; and as Thou hast been pleased lately to permit me to look to a way of life to which formerly I dared not to do, let the leisure I shall enjoy enlarge my warmth of heart towards Thee. Make every branch of study which I may pursue strengthen my confidence in Thy ever-ruling providence, that, undeceived by views of false philosophy, I may ever in singleness of heart elevate my mind from Thy works unto Thy divine essence. Keep from me a vain and overbearing spirit; let me- ever have a thorough sense of my own ignorance and weakness; and keep me through all the trials and troubles of a transitory state in body and soul unto everlasting life, for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen.”

James David Forbes (1809–1868) Scottish physicist and glaciologist

"Completing my Twenty-first Year" (1839), a prayer written by Forbes on April 20th, 1830. Life and letters of James David Forbes p. 450.

Life , God , Truth , Youth

“I studied the swell of her enormous breasts and I said: "Baby you're so far ahead it's beautiful"”

Vivian Stanshall (1943–1995) English musician, artist and author

Big Shot
Others
Source: http://lyrics.wikia.com/wiki/The_Bonzo_Dog_Doo-Dah_Band:Big_Shot

Beauty , Baby

“The most important characteristic of documentary classification is that it is concerned with subjects, not just entities of taxonomic classification. What is the nature of the specific subjects - the themes on which books, parts of books, articles or parts of articles are written? A study of book titles alone would suggest that literary subjects have simple names like 'War, Religion', 'Boats', 'Musica; pitch', 'Colour', 'Acridines', 'Wild flowers', and so on. But the study of articles on the documentation level reveals that such titles are simple in appearance only. Such a literary subject is in reality a complex aggregate of specific subjects, eahc which is the main theme discussed from one particular aspect.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

Source: Classification and indexing in science (1958), Chapter 1: The need for classification, p. 8; Partly cited in Nigerian Library and Information Science Review (1987). Vol 5-8. p. 44.

War , Books , Religion , Flowers

“The dogma of individual differences. This is one of the basic dogmas of American education. It runs something like this: all men are different; therefore, all men require a different education; therefore, anybody who suggests that education should be in any respect the same has ignored the fact that all men are different; therefore, nobody should suggest that everybody should read some of the same books; some people should read some books, some should read others. This dogma has gained such a hold … that you will often now hear a college president boast that his college has no curriculum. Each student has a course of study framed, or "tailored" … to meet his own individual needs and interests.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) philosopher and university president

Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)

Men , People , Books , Education

“What seems certain is that Pythagoras developed the idea of mathematical logic… He realized that numbers exist independently of the tangible world and therefore their study was untainted by inaccuracies of perception. This meant he could discover truths which were independent of opinion of prejudice and which were more absolute then any previous knowledge.”

Simon Singh (1964) British author

Fermat's Last Theorem (1997)

Truth , World , Mathematics , Idea

“Affirmative action, rightly understood, would justify a wide variety of outreach programs for those whose lives have been stultified by poverty, broken families, bad schools, and neighborhoods filled with drugs, crime and gangs. One can heartily commend a program for tutoring young blacks, or young whites, who had never had a genuine teacher in a real classroom. One cannot, however, commend a program of raising the grades of young blacks, but not young whites, without having raised their skills. And what possible justification can there be there for giving scholarship assistance to the child of a black middle-class family, while denying it to a poor white? Can one imagine a more crass disregard for the genuine meaning of the Equal Protection Clause? The priests of this new religion of 'affirmative action' are not without material interests. Hundreds of millions of corporate dollars are spent annually on 'sensitivity training'. Within the universities, centers for black, brown and women's (i. e., feminist) studies are being established, with vast amount of patronage bestowed upon them. Traditional courses in Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Shakespeare and the Bible continue to appear in the catalogs, but they are increasingly taught by 'deconstructionists', who have no interest in the texts, but only in subjective reactions to the texts.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

1990s, The Party of Lincoln vs. The Party of Bureaucrats (1996)

Women , School , Family , Religion

“Full-time participant observation over an extended period of time tends to be an age-graded phenomenon. Such studies are most likely to be done by young people, in our student years. When we are established professionals, with teaching or other professional responsibilities, we are unlikely to have the time and the motivation to make such a full commitment.”

William Foote Whyte (1914–2000) American sociologist

Source: Learning from the Field, 1984, p. 63

People , Age , Motivation , Time

“And since the proportions of the human voice and the gesticulations of the human body are regulated by the same modulation as that by which sound and the motion of other bodies are, musical thought is subalternated not only to the harmony of human voice and gesticulation, but also of instruments and of those whose delectation consist in motion or sound and with these the harmony of the celestial and non-celestial. And since the concordance of times and the composition and harmony of the lower world and of all things composed of four elements come from celestial motions, and, moreover, since it is necessary to find the harmony of causes in their effects, the study of music also extends to knowing the proportions of times and the constitution of the elements of the lower world, and even the composition of all the elements.”

Robert Grosseteste (1175–1253) English bishop and philosopher

As quoted by Tanner, Bower, McLeish, and Gaspar in Ch. 1. "Unity and Symmetry in the De Luce of Robert Grosseteste," Robert Grosseteste and the pursuit of Religious and Scientific Learning in the Middle Ages (2016) ed., Jack P. Cunningham, Mark Hocknull, p. 17.
De artibus liberalibus (c. 1222-1237)

World , Music , Time

“1945
As the Allies rummages through documents in the wreckage of defeated Germany, evidence of the influence of the “Protocols” was found by American Intelligence.
Allied soldier: Hey, Sarge whatcha got there?
Sarge: Wow!! Joseph Goebbels’ private diaries! Look at this…volume 13…here’s a translation.
I have devoted exhaustive study to the Protocols of Zion. In the past objection was always made that they were not suited to present day propaganda. In reading them now I find that we can use them very well. The Protocols of Zion are as modern today as they were when published the first time! At noon I mentioned this to the Fuhrer. He believed the protocols to be absolutely genuine!”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), p.110

Intelligence , Time , Reading , Past

“In the original discovery of a proposition of practical utility, by deduction from general principles and from experimental data, a complex algebraical investigation is often not merely useful, but indispensable; but in expounding such a proposition as a part of practical science, and applying it to practical purposes, simplicity is of the importance:—and… the more thoroughly a scientific man has studied higher mathematics, the more fully does he become aware of this truth—and… the better qualified does he become to free the exposition and application of principles from mathematical intricacy.”

William John Macquorn Rankine (1820–1872) civil engineer

p, 125
"On the Harmony of Theory and Practice in Mechanics" (Jan. 3, 1856)

Truth , Mathematics , Science , Parting

“Since 1914…I wait for the natural to return; for newspapers to report news with care for accuracy and grammar; for schools to teach and for pupils to study; for faces to be sane and intelligent, and even humorous; for American artists and poets and writers to be exuberant and optimistic…it is all gone with the music of Vienna and the gaiety of San Francisco. But I still see everything against that background, and really I see nothing funny anywhere. The Beatnik beard and the mini skirt and the topless waitress, they ARE funny, I know they are funny but they only make me tired, I don't laugh.”

Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) American journalist

letter to Roger MacBride (March 5, 1968).
reflecting her impressions of the world of 1968, at the age of 81.

School , Music , Intelligence , Nature

“Oh holy asinity! holy ignorance!
Holy foolishness and pious devotion!
You who alone do more to advance and make souls good
Than human ingenuity and study…”

Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) Italian philosopher, mathematician and astronomer

Cabal of the Cheval Pegasus (1585)

Soul

“While science and technology play critical roles in sustaining modern civilization, they are not part of our culture in the sense that they are not commonly studied or well comprehended. Neither the potential nor the limitations of science are understood so that what can be achieved and what is beyond reach are not comprehended. The line between science and magic becomes blurred so that public judgments on technical issues can be erratic or badly flawed. It frequently appears that some people will believe almost anything. Thus judgments can be manipulated or warped by unscrupulous groups. Distortions or outright falsehoods can come to be accepted as fact.”

Henry Way Kendall (1926–1999) American physicist

Variant: [Henry Way Kendall, A distant light: scientists and public policy, Springer, 2000, 0387988335, 4]

People , Sense , Appearance , Science

“It seems to me that the technique of gaming does at least two things, both of which are extremely important. One is that it tends to make a reality out of the potential and also the intentions nominally ascribed to the enemy. I have had the privilege of studying over the years a number of so-called "strategic studies," and I have often been amazed at the degree to which they are permeated by what one can only call "wishful thinking." There will often be on the first page a list of stated assumptions or postulates which will say something like the following: "(1) The enemy is very intelligent; (2) He has the initiative." When you turn the pages, however, the enemy has ceased to be intelligent, and he has also ceased to have initiative. War gaming does not let you get away with that.”

Bernard Brodie (1910–1978) American nuclear strategist

Strategy as an Art and a Science http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/theorists/brodie1.htm,1959

War , Game , Intelligence , Thinking

“I must confess my distaste for any proposal to use public funds for the support of selected, and thereby, privileged, industrialists, the more particularly if this is to be based on bureaucratic views of what is good and what is bad by way of industrial development, but I have been studying the report referred to with some interest.”

John James Cowperthwaite (1915–2006) British colonial administrator

October 9, 1970, page 116.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

Way , Support

“Sraffa’s criticisms of the concept of capital also amount – at least in principle –to a deadly blow to the foundations of the so-called ‘neo-classical synthesis’. Combining Keynes’ thesis on the possibility of fighting unemployment by adopting adequate fiscal and monetary policies with the marginalist tradition of simultaneous determination of equilibrium quantities and prices as a method to study any economic problem, this approach has in the last few decades come to constitute the dominant doctrine in textbooks the whole world over. It is only thanks to increasing specialisation in the various fields of economics, often invoked as the inevitable response to otherwise insoluble difficulties, that the theoreticians of general equilibrium are able to construct their models without considering the problem of relations with the real world that economists are supposed to be interpreting, and that the macroeconomists can pretend that their ‘one commodity models’ constitute an acceptable tool for analysis. For those who believe that the true task facing economists, hard as it may be, is to seek to interpret the world they live in, Sraffa’s ‘cultural revolution’ still marks out a path for research that may not (as yet) have yielded all it was hoped to, but is certainly worth pursuing.”

Alessandro Roncaglia (1947) Italian economist

Source: Piero Sraffa: His life, thought and cultural heritage (2000), Ch. 1. Piero Sraffa

World , Hope , Problem , Fight

“This morning I received a letter from de Bellio. He writes that he does not believe scientific research into the nature of color and light can help the artist, neither can anatomy nor the laws of optics. He wants to discuss these questions with me and find out my views. Now everything depends on how this knowledge is to be used. But surely it is clear that we could not pursue our studies of light with much assurance if we did not have as a guide the discoveries of Chevreul and other scientists. I would not have distinguished between local color and light if science had not given us the hint; the same holds true for complementary colors, contrasting colors, etc. 'Yes', he will tell me: 'but these have always been taken into account, look at Monet' It is at this point that the question becomes serious!”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

Quote of Camille Pissarro, in a letter, Eragny, 23 February 1887, to his son Lucien; in Camille Pissarro - Letters to His Son Lucien ed. John Rewald, with assistance of Lucien Pissarro; from the unpublished French letters; transl. Lionel Abel; Pantheon Books Inc. New York, second edition, 1943, p. 99
1880's

Law , Color , Question , Nature

“The first step to be taken, is to study carefully the fundamental phenomenon above described, and to examine all the various circumstances under which it presents itself.”

Jean-Baptiste Biot (1774–1862) French scientist

advice for studying the phenomena of electrical repulsion and attraction by [Jean-Baptiste Biot, translated by John Farrar, Elements of electricity, magnetism, and electro-magnetism, Hilliard and Metcalf, 1826, http://books.google.com/books?id=XPM4AAAAMAAJ&printsec=titlepage#PPA2,M1, 2]

“Instinct and study; love and hate;
Audacity — reverence. These must mate,
And fuse with Jacob’s mystic heart,
To wrestle with the angel — Art.”

Herman Melville (1818–1891) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet

Timoleon http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1018&context=libraryscience, Art (1891)

Love , Hate , Art , Angels

“When I was nine years old, I stumbled upon a book that contained photos of preborn children who had been killed in the 1st trimester by suction abortion. Even at that age, I could plainly see that abortion involves killing a child and does tremendous violence to its mother. As I grew older, I began to research abortion's impact on our nation, and its effects on the mother -- injuries, infertility, life-long depression and guilt, and even the likelihood for that guilt to manifest itself in physical or emotional abuse of later children. I also studied the lives of those who fought human rights abuses, from slavery to the Nazi extermination of the Jews to the civil rights movement, and activists and advocates like Martin Luther King, Jr., St Teresa of Calcutta, William Wilberforce, and Sophie Scholl.”

Lila Rose (1988) American anti-abortion activist

Life , Children , Books , Age

“I have watched the French Emperor narrowly, and have studied his character and conduct. You may rely upon it that, at the bottom of his heart, there rankles a deep and inextinguishable desire to humble and punish England, and to avenge, if he can, the many humiliations — political, naval and military — which, since the beginning of this century, England has by herself and her allies inflicted upon France. He has sufficiently organised his military means; he is now stealthily but steadily organising his naval means; and when all is ready, the overture will be played, the curtain will draw up, and we shall have a very disagreeable melodrama.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Letter to the Duke of Somerset (23 June 1861), quoted in Lord Dalling, Life of Palmerston: Volume II, p. 391.
1860s

Heart , Drawing

“The most significant feature of our histories, however, is the religious zeal felt or exhibited by the swordsmen of Islam before and after the “infidels” who resisted “were sent to hell”, the Brahmans massacred or molested or expelled, idols desecrated, temples demolished, and mosques raised in their stead. The prophet of Islam appears in a dream and bids a sultãn to start on the “holy expedition”, leaving no doubt that the “victory of religion” was assured. Amîr Khusrû was very eloquent about the transformation that was taking place. When the hordes of Alãu’d-Dîn Khaljî sacked the temple of Somnath, he exulted, “The sword of Islãm purified the land as the Sun purifies the earth.” His enthusiasm broke all bounds when the same hordes swept over South India: “The tongue of the sword of the Khalifa of the time, which is the tongue of the flame of Islãm, has imparted light to the entire darkness of Hindustãn by the illumination of its guidance… and several capitals of the gods of the Hindus in which Satanism had prevailed since the time of Jinns, have been demolished. All these impurities of infidelity have been cleansed by the Sultãn’s destruction of idol-temples, beginning with his first expedition to Deogîr, so that the flames of the fight of the law illumine all these unholy countries… God be praised!” One wonders whether the poet of Islam is being honoured or slandered when he is presented in our own times as the pioneer of Secularism. Or, perhaps, Secularism in India has a meaning deeper than that we find in the dictionaries or dissertations on political science. We may not be much mistaken if, seeing its studied exercise in blackening everything Hindu and whitewashing everything Islamic, we suspect that this Secularism is nothing more than the good old doctrine of Islam in disguise.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume II (1993)

God , Religion , Law , Dreams

“The coordination of information technology management presents a challenge to firms with dispersed IT practices. Decentralization may bring flexibility and fast response to changing business needs, as well as other benefits, but decentralization also makes systems integration difficult, presents a barrier to standardization, and acts as a disincentive toward achieving economies of scale. As a result, there is a need to balance the decentralization of IT management to business units with some centralized planning for technology, data, and human resources.
Here we explore three major mechanisms for facilitating inter-unit coordination of IT management: structural design approaches, functional coordination modes, and computer-based communication systems. We define these various mechanisms and their interrelationships, and we discuss the relative costs and benefits associated with alternative coordination approaches.
To illustrate the cost-benefit tradeoffs of coordination approaches, we present a case study in which computer-based communication systems were used to support team-based coordination of IT management across dispersed business units. Our analysis reveals possibilities for future approaches to IT coordination in large, dispersed organizations.”

Gerardine DeSanctis (1954–2005) American organizational theorist

Gerardine DeSanctis and Brad M. Jackson (1994) "Coordination of information technology management: Team-based structures and computer-based communication systems." Journal of Management Information Systems Vol 10 (4). p. 85-110. Abstract

Communication , Business , Support , Change

“During the past three decades numerous empirical studies of economic behavior have been carried out and their theoretical foundation has been clarified. There was a rapid development and articulation of data, theory, and methodology. A new discipline of behavioral economics was emerging [which] consists of the empirical investigations of the behavior of businessmen and consumers in one country in one time. Generalizations about economic behavior emerge gradually by comparing behavior observed under different circumstances.”

George Katona (1901–1981) American psychologist

George Katona, and James N. Morgan (1980). Essays on behavioral economics. Univ of Michigan Survey Research. p. 3

Behavior , Time , Past , Country

“Physics is becoming the study of organization. In this way … it will converge with biology and psychology.”

Wolfgang Köhler (1887–1967) German-American psychologist and phenomenologist

Source: Gestalt Psychology. 1930, p. 30

Way

“To study the phenomenon of disease without books is to sail an uncharted sea, while to study books without patients is not to go to sea at all.”

William Osler (1849–1919) Canadian pathologist, physician, educator, bibliophile, historian, author, cofounder of Johns Hopkins Hospi…

"Books and Men" in Boston Medical and Surgical Journal (1901).

Books , Disease , Sea

“Mr. Richard Arkwright, after many years study, brought his spinning machinery to bear about 1768: he was a native of Lancashire; but fearing the same fate as Hargrave, went to Nottingham, and obtained a patent, dated 3 July 1769, for a machinery for making web or yarn of cotton, flax, or wool. He afterwards found it necessary to apply the same principles to the preparation, and took another patent, dated 16 December 1775, for certain machines for preparing silk, cotton, flax and wool for spinning. During five years after the date of his first patent, Mr. Arkwright and his partners expended 12,000 l in machinery and buildings before any profit was made. The last invention was a very important addition to the first; and by combining them, excellent yarn, or twist, was at last produced; but there was still much difficulty in establishing a trade; for the cotton manufacturers would not have the new yarn at any price, and the proprietors were obliged to weave the yarn, into stockings, and into calicoes; but the latter was restricted by the Excise, which rendered relief by an Act of Parliament necessary.”

Richard Arkwright (1732–1792) textile entrepreneur; developer of the cotton mill

The case, 1782

Fate , Fear

“When it came to the tiger, I found that animating the movements of a large feline animal posed some difficulties, as it required precise and miniscule advancements in movement throughout its body. As well as tigers, I also studied domestic cats, and by so doing managed to achieve a combination of mannerisms represented by both. The overall impression is of latent ferocity and a lust for blood, but at the same time there are also slow, graceful movements that mask the creature's power.”

Ray Harryhausen (1920–2013) American animator

Source: An Animated Life (2003), p. 252

Cats , Time , Animals

“His manner of Studie was thus…About every three houres his man was to bring him a roll and a pott of Ale to refocillate his wasted spirits: so he studied and dranke, and munched some bread; and this maintained him till night, and then, he made a good Supper: now he did well not to dine, which breakes off one's fancy, which will not presently be regained: and 'tis with Invention as a flux, when once it is flowing, it runnes amaine: if it is checked, flowes but guttim [drop by drop]: and the like for perspiration, check it, and 'tis spoyled.”

John Aubrey book Brief Lives

"William Prynne"
Brief Lives

Night

“What excites pleasure in me is the meeting and conversing with old friends. But it is very galling when my friends do not visit me because there is a biting wind, or the roads are muddy through the rain, or perhaps because they are sick. Then I feel isolated. Although I myself do not drink, yet I provide spirits for my friends, […]. In front of my house runs a great river, and there I can sit with my friends in the shadow of the lovely trees. […] When they come they drink and chat, just as they please, but our pleasure is in the conversation and not in the liquor. We do not discuss politics because we are so isolated here that our news is simply composed of rumors, and it would only be a waste of time to talk with untrustworthy information. We also never talk about other people's faults, because in this world nobody is wrong, and we should beware of backbiting. We do not wish to injure anyone, and therefore our conversation is of no consequence to anyone. We discuss human nature about which people know so little because they are too busy to study it.”

Shi Nai'an (1296–1372) Chinese writer

Variant translation by Lin Yutang: "When all my friends come together to my house, there are sixteen persons in all, but it is seldom that they all come. But except for rainy or stormy days, it is also seldom that none of them comes. Most of the days, we have six or seven persons in the house, and when they come, they do not immediately begin to think; they would take a sip when they feel like it and stop when they feel like it, for they regard the pleasure as consisting in the conversation, and not in the wine. We do not talk about court politics, not only because it lies outside our proper occupation, but also because at such a distance most of the news is based upon hearsay; hearsay news is mere rumour, and to discuss rumours would be a waste of our saliva. We also do not talk about people's faults, for people have no faults, and we should not malign them. We do not say things to shock people and no one is shocked; on the other hand, we do wish people to understand what we say, but people still don't understand what we say. For such things as we talk about lie in the depths of the human heart, and the people of the world are too busy to hear them." (The Importance of Living, 1937; pp. 218–219)
Preface to Water Margin

Love , People , Pleasure , World

“Logic aims to instruct the human mind as to its own nature and processes; it will lay bare the interior working of our mind for our guidance. The object of the study of logic is thought, its nature, and its proper classification.”

Joseph Dietzgen (1828–1888) german philosopher

Letter 2
Letters on Logic: Especially Democratic-Proletarian Logic (1906)

Nature

“The purpose of studying Buddhism is not to study Buddhism but to study ourselves. You are not your body. You are the Big Activity. You are just expressing the smallest particle of the Big Activity. That is all. But when you become attached to a temporal expression of the Big Activity, it is time to talk about Buddhism.”

Shunryu Suzuki book Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

Part 3, No. 3 "Study Yourself"
Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind (1973)

Time

“The aim of linguistics is to go beyond the study of individual languages to determine what the universal properties of language are, and to establish a ‘universal grammar’ that would account for the range of linguistic variation that is humanly possible.”

David Crystal (1941) British linguist and writer

Source: The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, 1987, p. 84

Universe

“As with emotionally drawn-out religious initiations, neurobiological studies of stress disorders indicate that subjects become intensely absorbed by sensory displays. The mystical experiences of schizophrenics and temporal lobe epileptics, which may be at the extreme end of the "normal" distribution of religious experience, also exhibit intense sensory activity. These may help to inspire new religions. There is no evidence, however, that more "routine" religious experiences that commit the bulk of humanity to the supernatural have any characteristic pattern of brain activity.”

Scott Atran (1952) Anthropologist

Introduction: an evolutionary riddle, p. 16
In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion (2002)

Religion , Help

“Look what the Iraq Study Group came up with. You know, that was a totally nonpartisan group of, you know, 10 wise Americans, you know, some of them Republican, some of then Democrats from different, you know, experiences. They came out with a long list of recommendations. Now, you can say well, I wouldn't agree with that one or wouldn't agree with this one, but the fundamental point they made is that there is no military solution. There is only a political resolution and you've got to bring everybody into the game in order to move it forward, you know. And for whatever reason, this administration rejects that. They won't talk to bad people. That means they won't talk to the Iranians and the Syrians… If they're our enemies, then believe me, I think they are, because they certainly don't wish us any well outcome, then we need to know more about them. I think it's a sign of strength to get into a process with people who you are concerned about their motives, who's really calling the shots. This administration won't do that. So, to a certain extent we're flying blind.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Interview http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,244985,00.html with Greta van Susteren on FOX News (19 January 2007)
Senate years (2001 – January 19, 2007)

People , Game , Motivation , Thinking

“No man had ever heard a nightingale,
When once a keen-eyed naturalist was stirred
To study and define — what is a bird.”

Emma Lazarus (1849–1887) American poet

Critic and Poet: an Epilogue http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/critic-and-poet-an-epilogue/

Bird

“Modem mainstream economic theory bravely assumes that people make their decisions in such a way as to maximize their utility. Accepting this assumption enables economics to predict a great deal of behavior (correctly or incorrectly) without ever making empirical studies of human actors.”

Herbert A. Simon (1916–2001) American political scientist, economist, sociologist, and psychologist

Simon (1990) "Invariants of Human Behavior" in: Annu. Rev. Psychol. 41: p. 6.
1980s and later

People , Way , Behavior , Decision

“He was the more surprised to see that Sumner invited a renewal of old relations. He found himself treated almost confidentially. Not only was he asked to make a fourth at Sumner's pleasant little dinners in the house on La Fayette Square, but he found himself admitted to the Senator's study and informed of his views, policy and purposes, which were sometimes even more astounding than his curious gaps or lapses of omniscience.

On the whole, the relation was the queerest that Henry Adams ever kept up. He liked and admired Sumner, but thought his mind a pathological study. At times he inclined to think that Sumner felt his solitude, and, in the political wilderness, craved educated society; but this hardly told the whole story. Sumner's mind had reached the calm of water which receives and reflects images without absorbing them; it contained nothing but itself.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Education , Thinking , Solitude , Water

“One study suggests that the most effective way to increase n Achievement may be to try simply and directly to alter the nature of an individual’s fantasies.”

David C. McClelland (1917–1998) American psychological theorist

Source: The Archiving Society, 1961, p. 417

Way , Nature

“The two great conceptual revolutions of twentieth-century science, the overturning of classical physics by Werner Heisenberg and the overturning of the foundations of mathematics by Kurt Gödel, occurred within six years of each other within the narrow boundaries of German-speaking Europe. … A study of the historical background of German intellectual life in the 1920s reveals strong links between them. Physicists and mathematicians were exposed simultaneously to external influences that pushed them along parallel paths. … Two people who came early and strongly under the influence of Spengler's philosophy were the mathematician Hermann Weyl and the physicist Erwin Schrödinger. … Weyl and Schrödinger agreed with Spengler that the coming revolution would sweep away the principle of physical causality. The erstwhile revolutionaries David Hilbert and Albert Einstein found themselves in the unaccustomed role of defenders of the status quo, Hilbert defending the primacy of formal logic in the foundations of mathematics, Einstein defending the primacy of causality in physics. In the short run, Hilbert and Einstein were defeated and the Spenglerian ideology of revolution triumphed, both in physics and in mathematics. Heisenberg discovered the true limits of causality in atomic processes, and Gödel discovered the limits of formal deduction and proof in mathematics. And, as often happens in the history of intellectual revolutions, the achievement of revolutionary goals destroyed the revolutionary ideology that gave them birth. The visions of Spengler, having served their purpose, rapidly became irrelevant.”

Freeman Dyson (1923) theoretical physicist and mathematician

The Scientist As Rebel (2006)

Life , People , History , Mathematics

“Paint studies of parts, for instance a piece of land, a group of trees or things like that, but always in a way that people can understand these things in relation with the whole landscape, by adding behind that group of trees the air in a right tone color and thereby in connection with the trees... Furthermore studies of a whole, preferably very simple subjects - A meadow with horizon and a piece of air to examine further the general tone color, the harmony of the whole.... and study nature even more by thinking about it than working after it.”

Willem Roelofs (1822–1897) Dutch painter and entomologist (1822-1897)

translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek
(original Dutch: citaat van Willem Roelofs, in het Nederlands:) Schilder studies van gedeelten, bv. een stuk grond, een boomgroep of dergelijke maar toch altijd zóó dat men die in verband met het geheele landschap begrijpen kan, door achter die boomgroep de lucht juist van toon en daardoor in verband met de boomen er bij te schilderen.. .Verder studies van een geheel, liefst zeer eenvoudige sujetten - Eene weide met horizon en stuk lucht. Om nog meer de algemeene toon, de harmonie van het geheel na te gaan.. ..en bestudeer de natuur nog meer met er over te denken dan met er na [naar!?] te werken.
Quote from a letter of Roelofs to his pupil Hendrik W. Mesdag, 27 May 1866; as cited by De Bodt, in Halverwege Parijs, Willem Roelofs en de Nederlandse Schilderskolonie in Brussel, Gent, 1995a, p. 238
1860's

People , Color , Way , Understanding

“Do not confuse understanding with a larger vocabulary, sacred writings are beneficial in stimulating desire for inward realization, if one stanza at a time is slowly assimilated. Continual intellectual study results in vanity and the false satisfaction of an undigested knowledge.”

Yukteswar Giri (1855–1936) Indian yogi and guru

Autobiography of a Yogi (1946)

Understanding , Knowledge , Time , Falseness

“What I am trying to do is to present a unified scientific view of life; that is, a view integrating life's biological, cognitive, and social dimensions. I have had many discussions with social scientists, cognitive scientists, physicists and biologist who question that task, who said that this would not be possible. They ask, why do I believe that I can do that? My belief is based largely on our knowledge of evolution. When you study evolution, you see that there was, first of all, evolution before the appearance of life, there was a molecular type of evolution where structures of greater and greater complexity evolved out of simple molecules. Biochemist who study that have made tremendous progress in understanding that process of molecular evolution. Then we had the appearance of the first cell which was a bacterium. Bacteria evolved for about 2 billion years and in doing so invented, if you want to use the term, or created most of the life processes that we know today. Biochemical processes like fermentation, oxygen breathing, photosynthesis, also rapid motion, were developed by bacteria in evolution. And what happened then was that bacteria combined with one another to produce larger cells — the so-called eukaryotic cells, which have a nucleus, chromosomes, organelles, and so on. This symbiosis that led to new forms is called symbiogenesis.”

Fritjof Capra (1939) American physicist

Capra (2007) in: Francis Pisani " An Interview with Fritjof Capra http://ijoc.org/ojs/index.php/ijoc/article/view/69/25" in: International Journal of Communication Vol 1 (2007).

Life , Understanding , Question , Knowledge

“It is a question of going beyond the description of mechanisms of interaction between locations and activities, in order to discover the structural laws of the production and functioning of the spatial forms studied… There is no specific theory of space, but quite simply a deployment and specification of the theory of social structure, in order to account for the characteristics of the particular social form, space and its articulation with other historically given, form and processes.”

Manuel Castells (1942) Spanish sociologist (b.1942)

Source: The Urban Question: A Marxist Approach, 1977, p. 124 as quoted in: Phil Hubbard, Rob Kitchin (2010) Key Thinkers on Space and Place. p. 101

Law , Question

“Scientology, the word means study of life, study of knowledge, and that's where it is. It takes up all areas of life itself, things that are integral and maxims that are related to life and very existence. Let me give you an example. It's better if I take that, because it is such a broad-ranging subject covering so many different areas, the subject of communication. This is something that major breakthroughs exist in Scientology, being able to communicate in the world around you. And I think everybody would agree that this is an important subject. Well, there's an actual formula for communication which can be understood.”

David Miscavige (1960) leader of the Church of Scientology

Scientology Leader Gave ABC First-Ever Interview: David Miscavige, Scientology Leader and Best Man at Tom Cruise's Wedding, Spoke to ABC News' 'Nightline' in 1992, ABC News, November 18, 2006, 2010-07-03 http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=2664713,.

Life , World , Communication , Knowledge

“First we must study how colonization works to decivilize the colonizer, to brutalize him in the true sense of the word, to degrade him, to awaken him to buried instincts, to covetousness, violence, race hatred, and moral relativism; and we must show that each time a head is cut off or an eye put out in Vietnam and in France they accept the fact, each time a little girl is raped and in France they accept the fact, each time a Madagascan is tortured and in France they accept the fact, civilization acquires another dead weight, a universal regression takes place, a gangrene sets in, a center of infection begins to spread; and that at the end of all these treaties that have been violated, all these lies that have been propagated, all these punitive expeditions that have been tolerated, all these prisoners who have been tied up and interrogated, all these patriots who have been tortured, at the end of all the racial pride that has been encouraged, all the boastfulness that has been displayed, a poison has been instilled into the veins of Europe and, slowly but surely, the continent proceeds toward savagery.”

Aimé Césaire (1913–2008) Martiniquais politician

Source: Discourse on Colonialism (1955), pp. 35-36

Girl , Sense , Universe , Time

“During the past thirty years, the women’s movement has supported women to express virtually every feeling women felt. To other women. To Men. To society. Women’s feelings became course curriculum, women’s studies, TV specials, talk shows, and Lifetime cable. Women’s feelings were called both education and entertainment. Men’s were repressed until they were called ulcers.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000)

Women , Men , Education , Feeling

“No regulation of commerce can increase the quantity of industry in any society beyond what its capital can maintain. It can only divert a part of it into a direction into which it might not otherwise have gone; and it is by no means certain that this artificial direction is likely to be more advantageous to the society than that into which it would have gone of its own accord. Every individual is continually exerting himself to find out the most advantageous employment for whatever capital he can command. It is his own advantage, indeed, and not that of the society, which he has in his view. But the study of his own advantage naturally, or rather necessarily leads him to prefer that employment which is most advantageous to the society.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book IV, Chapter II, p. 486.

Nature , Parting

“For a man who is sensitive to nature, happiness consists in expressing nature. How infinitely happy, then, is the man who reflects nature like a mirror without being aware of it, who does the thing for love of it and not from any pretensions to take first place. This noble unself-consciousness is what we find in all truly great men, in the founders of the arts. I picture the great Poussin, in his retreat, delighting in the study of the human heart.... I picture Raphael in the arms of his mistress, turning from La Fornarina to paint his Saint Cecilia.... I am only too well aware that I am far not only from their divine spirit, but even from their modest simplicity…”

Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) French painter

Quote in a letter to Delacroix' friend J. B. Pierret, 23 October 1818, from the Forest of Boixe; as quoted in Eugene Delacroix – selected letters 1813 – 1863, ed. and transl. Jean Stewart, art Works MFA publications, Museum of Fine Art Boston, 2001, p. 43
1815 - 1830

Love , Men , Art , Nature

“The graph does show one tremendous rise and collapse which stands out starkly from all the other fluctuations. This is commonly called the "new era" stock market of 1927-33. The striking feature of this phenomenon was that the new era existed solely in the minds of market speculators. The whole episode, in retrospect, now seems to have been one of those rare manifestations of mass financial madness which we used to study in our history books under the titles of "the South Sea Bubble", "the Mississippi Bubble" and so on.”

Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) American investor

Source: The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949), Chapter II, The Investor and Stock-Market Fluctuations, p. 36

Books , History , Sea , Madness

“The construction of hypotheses is a creative act of inspiration, intuition, invention; its essence is the vision of something new in familiar material. The process must be discussed in psychological, not logical, categories; studied in autobiographies and biographies, not treatises on scientific method; and promoted by maxim and example, not syllogism or theorem.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

"The Methodology of Positive Economics" (1953)

“His [Sarpi's] career soon revealed another cause of his return; he evidently felt the same impulse which stirred his contemporaries, Lord Bacon and Galileo, for he began devoting himself to the whole range of scientific and philosophical studies, especially to mathematics, physics, astronomy, anatomy, and physiology. In these he became known as an authority, and before long was recognized as such throughout Europe. It is claimed, and it is not improbable, that he anticipated Harvey in discovering the circulation of the blood, and that he was the forerunner of noted discoverers in magnetism. Unfortunately the loss of the great mass of his papers by the fire which destroyed his convent in 1769 forbids any full estimate of his work; but it is certain that among those who sought his opinion and advice were such great discoverers as Acquapendente, Galileo, Torricelli, and Gilbert of Colchester, and that every one of these referred to him as an equal, and indeed as a master.”

Andrew Dickson White (1832–1918) American politician

Source: Seven Great Statesmen in the Warfare of Humanity with Unreason (1915), p. 4-5

Mathematics , Loss

“The original idea [for Destroy All Monsters! ] was to show all of the monsters. We then started thinking about undersea farming. Eventually, we came up with the idea of an island on which all of the monsters had been collected for scientific study. You see, we imagined that undersea farming would be required to feed all of the monsters. I very much wanted to explore that idea, but because of financial constraints, I was not allowed to do so. Only the idea of an island of monsters survived.”

Ishirō Honda (1911–1993) Japanese film director

As quoted by David Milner, "Ishiro Honda Interview" http://www.davmil.org/www.kaijuconversations.com/honda.htm, Kaiju Conversations (December 1992)

Imagination , Idea , Thinking

“.. I am always between two currents of thought, first the material difficulties, turning round and round to make a living; and second, study of color. I am always in hope of making a discovery there, to express the love of two lovers by a marriage of two complementary colors, their mingling and their opposition, the mysterious vibrations of kindred tones. To express the thought of a brow by the radiance of a light tone against a sombre background. To express hope by some star, the eagerness of a soul by a sunset radiance. Certainly there is nothing in that of stereoscopic realism, but is it not some thing that actually exists?”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from Arles, September 1888; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 531) p. 22
1880s, 1888

Love , Marriage , Hope , Color

“During my studies at the E. P. I. T. A., I wrote a Lisp interpreter under Windows 3.1. During six months, I discovered Windows, its stupid memory model, the Microsoft C compiler, and its numerous bugs.”

Benoît Minisini (1973) French computer programmer

Quoted from the Gambas Website, http://gambas.sourceforge.net/introduction.html http://gambas.sourceforge.net/introduction.html

Stupidity , Memory

“Why study this fringe area …? If one considers it worthless, lacking in veracity, won't discussing it give it more credibility than it deserves? If we ignore it, perhaps it will go away.”

Stephen Williams (archeologist)

As quoted in Sumathi Ramaswamy: The Lost Land of Lemuria: Fabulous Geographies, Catastrophic Histories (University of California Press, 2004) p.3

“The core study of geography is the study of places, that is the analysis of the significant differences that distinguish the various areas of the world from each other. Among the differences that are significant to this areal differentiation, one of the more obvious are differences in landforms; one of the least obvious to the eye, but nonetheless important in molding the character of areas, are the differences in their political organization. In pursuing these and other separate topics, geographers "radiate out in diverse directions" "and for various distances, toward the cores of other disciplines."”

Richard Hartshorne (1899–1992) American Geographer

As long as they realise where they are in reference to the central core, they may hope to understand each other purposes.
R. Hartshorne (1950) "The functional approach in political geography," Annals of the Association of American Geographers Vol. 40 (2), p. 95

World , Hope , Understanding

“Mad, adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence; not conforming to standards of thought, speech, and action derived by the conformants from study of themselves; at odds with the majority; in short, unusual. It is noteworthy that persons are pronounced mad by officials destitute of evidence that they themselves are sane.”

Ambrose Bierce book The Devil's Dictionary

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

Personality , Madness

“The main contribution one can make as a student to one's country in peace or wartime is to study hard and effectively.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

The Path To Power (1995)

Peace , Country

“I rapidly discovered that Aristotle had known almost no mechanics at all. … How could his characteristic talents have deserted him so systematically when he turned to the study of motion and mechanics? Equally, if his talents had so deserted him, why had his writings in physics been taken so seriously for so many centuries after his death? … I was sitting at my desk with the text of Aristotle's Physics open in front of me… Suddenly the fragments in my head sorted themselves out in a new way, and fell into place together. My jaw dropped, for all at once Aristotle seemed a very good physicist indeed, but of a sort I'd never dreamed possible. Now I could understand why he had said what he'd said, and what his authority had been. Statements that had previously seemed egregious mistakes, now seemed at worst near misses within a powerful and generally successful tradition. That sort of experience -- the pieces suddenly sorting themselves out and coming together in a new way -- is the first general characteristic of revolutionary change that I shall be singling out after further consideration of examples. Though scientific revolutions leave much piecemeal mopping up to do, the central change cannot be experienced piecemenal, one step at a time. Instead, it involves some relatively sudden and unstructured transformation in which some part of the flux of experience sorts itself out differently and displays patterns that were not visible before.”

Thomas Kuhn (1922–1996) American historian, physicist and philosopher

Source: The Road Since Structure (2002), p. 16-17; from "What Are Scientific Revolutions?" (1982)

Death , Dreams , Way , Understanding

“The development (rather than the history) of operations research as a science consists of the development of its methods, concepts, and techniques. Operations research is neither a method nor a technique; it is or is becoming a science and as such is defined by a combination of the phenomena it studies.”

Russell L. Ackoff (1919–2009) Scientist

Source: 1950s, The development of operations research as a science, 1956, p. 265, the lead paragraph ; Cited in: Joe Kelly (1969) Organizational behaviour. p. 26.

History , Science

“What these thinkers despise in the man of study is precisely the man who … does not predicate the capture of its environment by the species, or who, if he does predicate it, as the scientist does by his discoveries, retains for himself only the joy of knowledge and abandons the practical exploitation of his discoveries to others.”

Julien Benda (1867–1956) French essayist

Source: Treason of the Intellectuals (1927), p. 148

Knowledge , Joy

“Referring to a professor aboard ship: This passenger — the first and only one we had had, except to go from port to port on the coast — was no one else than a gentleman whom I had known in my smoother days, and the last person I should have expected to see on the coast of California — Professor Nuttall of Cambridge. I had left him quietly seated in the chair of the Botany and Ornithology Department at Harvard University, and the next I saw of him, he was strolling about San Diego beach, in a sailors' pea jacket, with a wide straw hat, and barefooted, with his trousers rolled up to his knees, picking up stones and shells… I was often amused to see the sailors puzzled to know what to make of him, and to hear their conjectures about him and his business… The Pilgrim's crew called Mr. Nuttall "Old Curious," from his zeal for curiosities; and some of them said that he was crazy, and that his friends let him go about and amuse himself this way. Why else would (he)… come to such a place as California to pick up shells and stones, they could not understand. One of them, however, who had seen something more of the world ashore said, "Oh, 'vast there!… I've seen them colleges and know the ropes. They keep all such things for cur'osities, and study 'em, and have men a purpose to go and get 'em… He'll carry all these things to the college, and if they are better than any that they have had before, he'll be head of the college. Then, by and by, somebody else will go after some more, and if they beat him he'll have to go again, or else give up his berth. That's the way they do it. This old covery knows the ropes. He has worked a traverse over 'em, and come 'way out here where nobody's ever been afore, and where they'll never think of coming."”

Richard Henry Dana Jr. book Two Years Before the Mast

This explanation satisfied Jack; and as it raised Mr. Nuttall's credit, and was near enough to the truth for common purposes, I did not disturb it.
Source: Two Years Before the Mast (1840), p. 267

Men , Truth , World , Way

“Draw all kind of everyday object placed, in such a way that they have in them the life of the man or woman – corsets that have just been removed, for example, and which retain the form of the body. Do a series in aquatint on mourning, different blacks – black veils of deep mourning floating on the face – black gloves – mourning carriages, undertaker’s vehicles – carriages like Venetian gondolas. On smoke – smoker’s smoke, pipes, cigarettes, cigars – smoke from locomotives, from tall factory chimneys, from steam boats, etc. On evening – infinite variety of subjects in cafes, different tones of glass robes reflected in the mirrors. On bakery, bread. Series of baker's boys, seen in the cellar itself or through the basement windows from the street – backs the colour of the pink flour – beautiful curves of dough – still-life's of different breads, large, oval, long, round, etc. Studies in color of the yellows, pinks, grays, whites of bread…… Neither monuments nor houses have ever been done from below, close up as they appear when you walk down the street. [a working note in which Degas planned series of views of modern Paris, the same time when he sketched the backstreet brothels, making graphic unflinching and even his realistic 'pornographic' sketches he called his 'glimpses through the keyhole', in which he also experimented with perspectives]”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

Quote from Degas' Notebooks; Clarendon Press, Oxford 1976, nos 30 & 34 circa 1877; as quoted in The private lives of the Impressionists, Sue Roe, Harpen Collins Publishers, New York 2006, p. 182
quotes, undated

Life , Beauty , Color , Way

“Two main lines are readily distinguished. One already well developed in the hands of von Bertalanffy and his co-workers, takes the world as we find it, examines the various systems that occur in it - zoological, physiological, and so on - and then draws up statements about the regularities that have been observed to hold. This method is essentially empirical. The second method is to start at the other end. Instead of studying first one system, then a second, then a third, and so on, it goes to the other extreme, considers the set of all conceivable systems and then reduces the set to a more reasonable size. This is the method I have recently followed.”

W. Ross Ashby (1903–1972) British psychiatrist

Ashby (1958) "General Systems Theory as a new Discipline". General Systems, 3 (1958). p. 1-6; cited in: Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1968) General System Theory. p. 94-95

World , Drawing

“But a kind of genius can come of this deprivation of sensation, of experience. It has been mistaken as naïve intelligence, when in fact it is empty intelligence, pure intelligence. The composition of the mind is altered. Its previous cultivation is disintegrated and it has greater access to the brain, the body: it is Supersanity. Learning is turned inside out. You have to start from the top and work your way down. You must study mathematical theory before simple arithmetic; theoretical physics before applied physics; anatomy, you might say, before you can walk.”

Jack Abbott book In the Belly of the Beast

In the Belly of the Beast (1981)

Way , Intelligence , Mathematics , Learning

“The analytical equations, unknown to the ancient geometers, which Descartes was the first to introduce into the study of curves and surfaces, are not restricted to the properties of figures, and to those properties which are the object of rational mechanics; they extend to all general phenomena. There cannot be a language more universal and more simple, more free from errors and from obscurities, that is to say more worthy to express the invariable relations of natural things.
Considered from this point of view, mathematical analysis is as extensive as nature itself; it defines all perceptible relations, measures times, spaces, forces, temperatures; this difficult science is formed slowly, but it preserves every principle which it has once acquired; it grows and strengthens itself incessantly in the midst of the many variations and errors of the human mind.
Its chief attribute is clearness; it has no marks to express confused notions. It brings together phenomena the most diverse, and discovers the hidden analogies which unite them.”

Joseph Fourier book The Analytical Theory of Heat

Preliminary Discourse, p.7 Note: often quoted as Mathematics [or mathematical analysis] compares the most diverse phenomena and discovers the secret analogies that unite them.
The Analytical Theory of Heat (1878)

Error , Mathematics , Nature , Universe

“There are approximately 100,000 clerics in Iran and over 60,000 of them are in Qom. Most of them are theology students who have been studying there for many years, between 10-25 years on average…. Every student has to study a minimum of 25 years before he can attain the status of ‘ayatollah’, however most students spend 10 years studying in the hawza.”

Mohsen Kadivar (1959) Iranian philosopher

Inside Iran: Hujjat al Islam Mohsen Kadivar http://aawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=3&id=8575 April 2007

“There should be a study of a house directly elected by the people of the world to whom the nations are accountable.”

Ernest Bevin (1881–1951) British labour leader, politician, and statesman

House of Commons speech, 23 November 1945.

People , World , Housing

“After 7,000 biblical years — 6,000 years of restoration history plus the millennium, the time of completion — communism will fall in its 70th year. Here is the meaning of the year 1978. Communism, begun in 1917, could maintain itself approximately 60 years and reach its peak. So 1978 is the border line and afterward communism will decline; in the 70th year it will be altogether ruined. This is true. Therefore, now is the time for people who are studying communism to abandon it.”

Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012) Korean religious leader

The Way of Restoration http://www.tparents.org/Moon-Books/sm-gww/GWW-07.htm, (April, 1972)

People , History , Communication , Time

“By prayer I mean not merely prayer from the mouth, but of the mind and heart, of all the powers of the soul and senses of the body. This is the prayer prayed by the soul who wills and desires to find this divine light, studying, meditating and reading without cease in the Book and the more-than-a-book of Life. This Book of Life is the entire life of Christ while he lived as a mortal on earth.”

Angela of Foligno (1248–1309) Italian saint

Source: The Memorial and Instructions, p. 302

Life , Books , Soul , Sense

“One of the many importants ideas introduced by Minkowski into the study of convex bodies was that of gauge function. Roughly, the gauge function is the equation of a convex body. Minkowski showed that the gauge function could be defined in a purely geometric way and that it must have certain properties analogous to those possessed by the distance of a point from the origin. He also showed that conversely given any function possessing these properties, there exists a convex body with the given function as its gauge function.”

Carl Ludwig Siegel (1896–1981) German mathematician

[Lectures on the Geometry of Numbers, https://books.google.com/books?id=dyH4CAAAQBAJ&pg=PA6] (p. 6)

Way , Idea , Gauge

“Why so negative?' says the spider to the fly. 'Be objective, forget your prejudices'. But there is no way the fly can be objective, however much she may want to be: 'to look at the web objectively, from the outside - what a dream', muses the fly, 'what an empty, deceptive dream'…. Any study of the web that does not start from the fly's entrapment in it is quite simply untrue.”

John Holloway book Change the World Without Taking Power

Change the World Without Taking Power (2002)

Dreams , Way , Flying , Forgetting

“Arguments to the effect that it is wrong to cause pain and suffering to animals are often rejected by claiming that animals simply do not suffer. … Ironically, it is precisely upon the assumption that animals do suffer from stress, fear, and pain in a manner similar to humans that the validity of much of animal experimentation rests. Few, if any, conditions are studied as widely in animals as are pain, stress, ulcers, fear, and anxiety.”

Deborah Mayo American philosopher

Source: Against a Scientific Justification of Animal Experiments, pp. 345-346

Pain , Fear , Suffering , Animals

“Many people fail to grasp this point, apparently because they think of "scientific" evidence as only that produced in laboratories by controlled experiments. This leads them to treat field studies, however careful, thorough and well-documented, as "anecdotal"--mere preparation for the real thing, therefore properly ignored till it bears fruit entitled to be considered by learned persons. This attitude was much like that of cavalry generals in the First World War, waiting patiently for the infantry to clear the ground so that they could make the dashing charges that alone they thought entitled the name of warfare. Because these creatures are complex, only a tiny fraction of important truths about them can ever be seen in laboratories of expressed in control experiments. The same, of course, is true of the human race.”

Mary Midgley (1919–2018) British philosopher and ethicist

Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1979). 224.

War , People , Truth , World

“Women's studies is institutionalized sexism.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992), Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders : Academe in the Hour of the Wolf, p. 242

Women

“To us, analysis is the study of a problem domain, leading to a specification of externally observable behavior; a complete, consistent, and feasible statement of what is needed; a coverage of both functional and quantified operational characteristics”

Ed Yourdon (1944–2016) American software engineer and pioneer in the software engineering methodology

e.g. reliability, availability, performance
Source: Object-oriented design (1991), p. 18.

Behavior , Problem

“…an intellectual instinct which extracts the essence from the phenomena of life, as a bee sucks honey from a flower. In addition to study and reflections, life itself serves as a source.”

Carl von Clausewitz book On War

On War (1832), Book 2

Life , Flowers , Bee

“The dissatisfaction with life and the world, felt more or less in the present state of society and intellect by every discerning and highly conscientious mind, gave in his case a rather melancholy tinge to the character, very natural to those whose passive moral susceptibilities are more than proportioned to their active energies. For it must be said, that the strength of will of which his manner seemed to give such strong assurance, expended itself principally in manner. With great zeal for human improvement, a strong sense of duty and capacities and acquirements the extent of which is proved by the writings he has left, he hardly ever completed any intellectual task of magnitude. He had so high a standard of what ought to be done, so exaggerated a sense of deficiencies in his own performances, and was so unable to content himself with the amount of elaboration sufficient for the occasion and the purpose, that he not only spoilt much of his work for ordinary use by over-labouring it, but spent so much time and exertion in superfluous study and thought, that when his task ought to have been completed, he had generally worked himself into an illness, without having half finished what he undertook. From this mental infirmity (of which he is not the sole example among the accomplished and able men whom I have known), combined with liability to frequent attacks of disabling though not dangerous ill-health, he accomplished, through life, little in comparison with what he seemed capable of;”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/74/mode/1up pp. 74-75

Men , Nature , Health , Time

“I've studied men from my topsy-turvy
Close, and I reckon, rather true.
Some are fine fellows: some, right scurvy;
Most, a dash between the two.”

George Meredith (1828–1909) British novelist and poet of the Victorian era

Juggling Jerry http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.asp?poet=6583&poem=26458, st. 7 (1859).

Men

“The results of this study are presented under three general headings. The first, and most extensive, section consists of data relating to the factors that lead to positive and negative attitudes toward the job. It will be recalled that the major question this study set out to investigate was whether different kinds of factors were responsible for bringing about job satisfaction and job dissatisfaction.”

Frederick Herzberg (1923–2000) American psychologist

Source: The motivation to work, 1959, p. 57

Question

“If poetry is like an orgasm, an academic can be likened to someone who studies the passion-stains on the bedsheets.”

Irving Layton (1912–2006) Romanian-born Canadian poet

Obs II.
The Whole Bloody Bird (1969)

Passion

“The American psychologist Julian Jaynes, in a controversial study on the origin of consciousness, argued that the bicameral mind - in which one of the hemispheres becomes specialized in silent reading - is a late development in humankind's evolution, and that the process by which this function develops is still changing.”

Alberto Manguel (1948) writer

The Silent Readers, p. 46.
A History of Reading (1996)

Change , Reading

“It is impossible to encircle the hips of a girl with my right arm and hold her smile in my left hand, then proceed to study the two items separately. Similarly, we can not separate life from living matter, in order to study only living matter and its reactions. Inevitably, studying living matter and its reactions, we study life itself”

Albert Szent-Györgyi (1893–1986) Hungarian biochemist who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1937

Mi è impossibile cingere i fianchi di una ragazza con il mio braccio destro e serrare il suo sorriso nella mia mano sinistra, per poi tentare di studiare i due oggetti separatamente. Allo stesso modo, non ci è possibile separare la vita dalla materia vivente, allo scopo di studiare la sola materia vivente e le sue reazioni. Inevitabilmente, studiando la materia vivente e le sue reazioni, studiamo la vita stessa.
The Nature of Life, Academic press, 1948.

Life , Smile , Girl

“Cybernetics as a specific field grew out of a series of interdisciplinary meetings held from 1944 to 1953 that brought together a number of noted post-war intellectuals, including Wiener, John von Neumann, Warren McCulloch, Claude Shannon, Heinz von Foerster, W. Ross Ashby, Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead. Hosted by the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation, these became known as the Macy Conferences on Cybernetics. From its original focus on machines and animals, cybernetics quickly broadened to encompass minds (e. g. in the work of Bateson and Ashby) and social systems (e. g. Stafford Beer's management cybernetics), thus recovering Plato's original focus on the control relations in society.
Through the 1950s, cybernetic thinkers came to cohere with the school of General Systems Theory (GST), founded at about the same time by Ludwig von Bertalanffy, as an attempt to build a unified science by uncovering the common principles that govern open, evolving systems. GST studies systems at all levels of generality, whereas Cybernetics focuses more specifically on goal-directed, functional systems which have some form of control relation.”

Francis Heylighen (1960) Belgian cyberneticist

Source: Cybernetics and Second-Order Cybernetics (2001), p.2 Cited in: " Notes on Heylighen 2001 http://thinkipedia.wikispaces.com/Notes+on+Heylighen+2001" at thinkipedia.wikispaces.com, 2013

War , School , Beer , Science

“I learned that the political is above the legal, that’s why when my advisors tell me, Evo, what you are doing is illegal, I say, if it is illegal, then do it legal, you have studied for that”

Evo Morales (1959) Bolivian politician

Press conference Digital Journals in Spanish such as La Razón citing the article "Cuando la ley se convierte en una piedra en el zapato" or Libertad Digital "Evo Morales confiesa que da "pasos ilegales" en Bolivia para aplicar sus reformas."

Learning

“General systems theory, in a sense, is no news at all, as Von Foerster found out when he attempted to organize a conference of general systems people and anthropologists. In a sense, the situation is comparable to that found by the Committee for the Study of Mankind, in which a committee that included Robert Redfidd tried to get each discipline to consider its relationship to the concept of Mankind. Anthropologists replied, "we are related already," and so they were. Something similar may be said of attempts to date in mathematical anthropology. The kind of information that a computer program can finally provide, on a level of a particular culture, is simply a reflection of how detailed field work has been done, and to the careful field worker, on kinship, for example, it provides no illumination.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1970s, Changing Styles of Anthropological Work, 1973, p. 8

People , Mathematics , Sense

“As for the passions and studies of the mind: avoid envy; anxious fears; anger fretting inwards; subtle and knotty inquisitions; joys and exhilarations in excess; sadness not communicated. Entertain hopes; mirth rather than joy; variety of delights, rather than surfeit of them; wonder and admiration, and therefore novelties; studies that fill the mind with splendid and illustrious objects, as histories, fables, and contemplations of nature.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Regimen of Health
Essays (1625)

Sadness , Fear , Hope , History

Quotes about studying page 13

Quotes about studying
page 13