“As Kurt Vonnegut pointed out in his first novel, Player Piano, some people love problem-solving and tinkering—and that is the final, irreducible driver of human history. Wars and faiths and leaders come and go, but the problem-solvers’ slow, steady work is the fulcrum upon which history turns.”

— Gregory Benford

Afterword to Nooncoming, p. 104
In Alien Flesh (1986)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "As Kurt Vonnegut pointed out in his first novel, Player Piano, some people love problem-solving and tinkering—and that …" by Gregory Benford?

Gregory Benford 87

Science fiction author and astrophysicist 1941

Related quotes

“We shall have to evolve
problem-solvers galore —
since each problem they solve
creates ten problems more.”

Piet Hein (1905–1996) Danish puzzle designer, mathematician, author, poet

The Only Solution
Grooks

“[Professionals] define the problems of their art similarly and agree on criteria for an acceptable solution. They know the history of previous attempts to solve those problems, or some of it, and the new problems those attempts generated. They know the history of work like theirs, so that they, their support personnel, and their audiences can understand what they have attempted and how and to what degree it works.”

Howard S. Becker (1928) American sociologist

Source: Art Worlds (1982), p. 230.

“They [laboratory groups] bypass such questions as how one comes to know that a problem exists, what it does to solution adequacy to be working on several different things concurrently with problem solving, what it's like to go about solving a felt, intuited problem rather than an explicitly stated consensually validated problem which was made visible to all members at a specific point in time.”

Karl E. Weick (1936) Organisational psychologist

Karl E. Weick (1971, p. 9), as cited in: Harry L. Davis. " Decision Making within the Household http://www.unternehmenssteuertag.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Redaktion/Seco@home/nachhaltiger_Energiekonsum/Literatur/entscheidungen_haushalte/Decision_Making_within_the_Household.pdf," The Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 2, No. 4. (Mar., 1976), pp. 241-260.
1970s

“It's the invention of: work. What do people do that animals don't? Work. What does work mean: It means you sacrifice the present for the future. Why do you do that? Because you know that you're vulnerable, and because you're awake. From here on in, from this point forward, there's no return to unconscious paradise. I don't care how many problems you've solved so that today's okay. You have a lot of problems coming up. No matter how much you work, you're never going to work enough to solve all the problems. All you're going to do from here on in is be terrified of the future. That's the price of waking up. It's the end of paradise, and that's the beginning of history.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Concepts

“Private citizens have more power to do public good and solve common problems than ever before in human history.”

Bill Clinton (1946) 42nd President of the United States

Made that statement during a conference in Ottawa, Canada, in March 2006. He concluded that a trend of international goodwill has been developing since the 2004 tsunami and said, with a hint of optimism, that the world is now at “a time of unprecedented interdependence.”
Source: JW.org http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/2007361?q=clinton&p=par
2000s

“Sleep can also assist with problem resolution. You would be amazed to know that many major discoveries in human history have resulted from revelations that occur upon arising. People first reflect on a particular problem before resting. During sleep, they concentrate on the problem on an unconscious level. When they awaken, they have the resolution to the conflict or problem.”

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

Source: Books, Spiritual Warrior, Volume I: Uncovering Spiritual Truths in Psychic Phenomena (Hari-Nama Press, 1996), Chapter 1: Dreams: A State of Reality, p. 24