“Because of the variables and the complexity of their interaction, the data assembled by descriptive musicology yield relatively few observable regularities.”

— Leonard B. Meyer

"Universalism and Relativism in the Study of Ethnic music", Ethnomusicology 4, no. 2:49-54 (1960); reprinted in Reading in Ethnomusicology, p. 270-71.

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Leonard B. Meyer 2

American composer and philosopher 1918–2007

Saul Gorn (1912–1992) computer scientist

Saul Gorn (1954) Planning Universal Semi-Automatic Coding

“In our analysis of complex systems (like the brain and language) we must avoid the trap of trying to find master keys. Because of the mechanisms by which complex systems structure themselves, single principles provide inadequate descriptions. We should rather be sensitive to complex and self-organizing interactions and appreciate the play of patterns that perpetually transforms the system itself as well as the environment in which it operates.”

Paul Cilliers (1956–2011) South African philosopher

Source: Complexity and Postmodernism (1998), p. 107

“[If] we can experimentally isolate a process and show that it can still work well, then it cannot require complex interaction with other parts of vision and can therefore be understood relatively well on its own.”

David Marr (1945–1980) British neuroscientist and psychologist

Vision, 1982

“There are many variables intertwined in every problem and components of all the variable involved have to be carefully studied. Forming solutions by studying and synthesizing the relationship among key variables seems to be very much in need. The ability to identify a meaning from observable and obtained data is the core of human characteristics in such changing society. Hence, inductive thinking has to be instilled in every learner for a productive citizenship in the changing world of tomorrow.”

Sukavich Rangsitpol (1935) Thai politician

citizenship in the changing world of tomorrow.

“In order to constitute a complex system, the elements have to interact, and this interaction must be dynamic.”

Paul Cilliers (1956–2011) South African philosopher

Source: Complexity and Postmodernism (1998), p. 3; as cited in: Richard Andrews, ‎Erik Borg, ‎Stephen Boyd Davis (2012), The SAGE Handbook of Digital Dissertations and Theses, p. 129

“It amazes me how people are often more willing to act based on little or no data than to use data that is a challenge to assemble.”

Robert J. Shiller (1946) American economist

“Geography is concerned to provide accurate, orderly, and rational description and interpretation of the variable character of the earth surface.”

Richard Hartshorne (1899–1992) American Geographer

Source: Perspective on the nature of geography (1958), p. 21

“To remove these one had to account for an “observer” (that is at least for one subject):
(i) Observations are not absolute but relative to an observer’s point of view (i. e., his coordinate system: Einstein);
(ii) Observations affect the observed so as to obliterate the observer’s hope for prediction (i. e., his uncertainty is absolute: Heisenberg).
After this, we are now in the possession of the truism that a description (of the universe) implies one who describes it”

Heinz von Foerster (1911–2002) Austrian American scientist and cybernetician

observes it
Source: 1980s, Notes on an epistemology for living things, 1981, p.258

“Intervening variables are essential to psychological analysis because without them our description of economic behavior would remain incomplete, our understanding of behavior limited, and our predictions of future behavior incorrect.”

George Katona (1901–1981) American psychologist

George Katona (1951). Psychological Analysis of Economic Behavior. McGraw-Hill, New York. p. 31

“The n-point correlation functions have proved useful not only as descriptive statistics but also as dynamic variables in the Newtonian theory of the evolution of clustering. ... The functions are generalized to mass correlation functions in position and momentum, and the BBGKY hierarchy of equations for their evolution is derived. This yields a new way to analyze the evolution of mass clustering in an expanding universe.”

Jim Peebles (1935) Canadian-American astronomer

[The Large-scale Structure of the Universe, 1980, Princeton Universe Press, xii, https://books.google.com/books?id=O_BPaHFtX1YC&pg=PR12]

“Because of the variables and the complexity of their interaction, the data assembled by descriptive musicology yield relatively few observable regularities.”

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Leonard B. Meyer 2

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