Environmentalism as a Religion (2003)
Context: The second reason to abandon environmental religion is more pressing. Religions think they know it all, but the unhappy truth of the environment is that we are dealing with incredibly complex, evolving systems, and we usually are not certain how best to proceed. Those who are certain are demonstrating their personality type, or their belief system, not the state of their knowledge.
“Knowledge is a potential for a certain type of action, by which we mean that the action would occur if certain tests were run. For example, a library plus its user has knowledge if a certain type of response will be evoked under a given set of stipulations.”
Source: 1960s - 1970s, The Design of Inquiring Systems (1971), p. 11
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C. West Churchman 64
American philosopher and systems scientist 1913–2004Related quotes
The Law of Mind (1892)
Context: But no mental action seems necessary or invariable in its character. In whatever manner the mind has reacted under a given sensation, in that manner it is the more likely to react again; were this, however, an absolute necessity, habits would become wooden and ineradicable, and no room being left for the formulation of new habits, intellectual life would come to a speedy close. Thus, the uncertainty of the mental law is no mere defect of it, but is on the contrary of its essence. The truth is, the mind is not subject to "law," in the same rigid sense that matter is. It only experiences gentle forces which merely render it more likely to act a given way than it otherwise would be. There always remains a certain amount of arbitrary spontaneity in its action, without which it would be dead.
Source: Défense des Lettres [In Defense of Letters] (1937), pp. 17-18
a comment on Hacker News (April 2012) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3834636
“The Phaedrus and the Nature of Rhetoric,” p. 24.
The Ethics of Rhetoric (1953)
“All types of knowledge, ultimately mean self knowledge.”
Bruce Lee: The Lost Interview (1971)
Source: Tao of Jeet Kune Do
Source: Urban renewal and social conflict in Paris, 1972, p. 93