“If one basic axiom controls the cosmos, it must be this: In a situation of infinity every possible condition occurs, not once, but an infinite number of times.”
Section 4 (pp. 173-174)
Short fiction, Rumfuddle (1973)
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Jack Vance213
American mystery and speculative fiction writer 1916–2013Related quotes
Olaf Stapledon book Star Maker
Anticipating the Many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics by 20 years.
Source: Star Maker (1937), Chapter XV: The Maker and His Works; 2. Mature Creating (p. 180)
Morris Kline (1908–1992) American mathematician
Source: Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times (1972), p. 253.
Walter Terence Stace (1886–1967) British civil servant, educator and philosopher.
p. 46-47.
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
As quoted in Williams' Weighing the Odds: A Course in Probability and Statistics (2001), p. 498
Attributed from posthumous publications
Georg Cantor (1845–1918) mathematician, inventor of set theory
As quoted in Infinity and the Mind (1995) by Rudy Rucker.
Thomas Pynchon book Gravity's Rainbow
Gravity's Rainbow (1973)
Context: No, as none of these, but instead a point in space, a point hung precise as the point where burning must end, never launched, never to fall. And what is the specific shape whose center of gravity is the Brennschluss Point? Don't jump at an infinite number of possible shapes. There's only one. It is most likely an interface between one order of things and another. There's a Brennschluss point for every firing site. They still hang up there, all of them, a constellation waiting to have a 13th sign of the Zodiac named for it...
Camille Paglia (1947) American writer
Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality", p. 111
Context: Pornography does not cause rape or violence, which predate pornography by thousands of years. Rape and violence occur not because of patriarchal conditioning but because of the opposite, a breakdown of social controls.
W. Ross Ashby (1903–1972) British psychiatrist
Source: An Introduction to Cybernetics (1956), Part I: Mechanism, p. 25