“Data itself can be thought of as an energetic phenomenon that links us in our capacity as knowing subjects to an external physical world.”

—  Max Boisot

Source: Information Space, 1995, p. 22

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 "Data itself can be thought of as an energetic phenomenon that links us in our capacity as knowing subjects to an extern…" by Max Boisot?
Max Boisot photo
Max Boisot 17
British academic and educator 1943–2011

Related quotes

John F. Kennedy photo
Alfred Binet photo

“Since we seek to know what is the physical phenomenon we perceive, we must first enunciate this proposition, which will govern the whole of our discussion: to wit— Of the outer world we know nothing except our sensations.”

Alfred Binet (1857–1911) French psychologist and inventor of the first usable intelligence test

Source: The Mind and the Brain, 1907, p. 12

Émile Durkheim photo
Sigmund Freud photo
Wassily Kandinsky photo
Maurice Merleau-Ponty photo

“The unit of coding is the most basic segment, or element, of the raw data or information that can be assessed in a meaningful way regarding the phenomenon.”

Richard Boyatzis (1946) American business theorist

Source: Transforming qualitative information (1998), p. 63.

Arthur Stanley Eddington photo

“The external world of physics has thus become a world of shadows. In removing our illusions we have removed the substance, for indeed we have seen that substance is one of the greatest of our illusions.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882–1944) British astrophysicist

Introduction
The Nature of the Physical World (1928)
Context: In physics we have outgrown archer and apple-pie definitions of the fundamental symbols. To a request to explain what an electron really is supposed to be we can only answer, "It is part of the A B C of physics".
The external world of physics has thus become a world of shadows. In removing our illusions we have removed the substance, for indeed we have seen that substance is one of the greatest of our illusions. Later perhaps we may inquire whether in our zeal to cut out all that is unreal we may not have used the knife too ruthlessly. Perhaps, indeed, reality is a child which cannot survive without its nurse illusion. But if so, that is of little concern to the scientist, who has good and sufficient reasons for pursuing his investigations in the world of shadows and is content to leave to the philosopher the determination of its exact status in regard to reality. In the world of physics we watch a shadowgraph performance of the drama of familiar life. The shadow of my elbow rests on the shadow table as the shadow ink flows over the shadow paper. It is all symbolic, and as a symbol the physicist leaves it. Then comes the alchemist Mind who transmutes the symbols. The sparsely spread nuclei of electric force become a tangible solid; their restless agitation becomes the warmth of summer; the octave of aethereal vibrations becomes a gorgeous rainbow. Nor does the alchemy stop here. In the transmuted world new significances arise which are scarcely to be traced in the world of symbols; so that it becomes a world of beauty and purpose — and, alas, suffering and evil.
The frank realisation that physical science is concerned with a world of shadows is one of the most significant of recent advances.

Albert Einstein photo

“I want to know how God created this world. I'm not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

As quoted in "A Talk with Einstein" in The Listener 54 (1955) p. 123
Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and Religion (1999)

Neal A. Maxwell photo

Related topics