“The truly privileged theories are not the ones referring to any particular scale of size or complexity, nor the ones situated at any particular level of the predictive hierarchy—but the ones that contain the deepest explanations.”

—  David Deutsch , book The Fabric of Reality

The Fabric of Reality (1997)

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 "The truly privileged theories are not the ones referring to any particular scale of size or complexity, nor the ones si…" by David Deutsch?
David Deutsch photo
David Deutsch 20
British physicist 1953

Related quotes

Kurt Lewin photo

“Even if all the laws of psychology were known, one could make a prediction about the behavior of a man only if in addition to the laws, the special nature of the particular situation were known.”

Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) German-American psychologist

Source: 1930s, Principles of topological psychology, 1936, p. 11.

Adam Ferguson photo

“Theory consists in referring particular operations to the principles, or general laws, under which they are comprehended; or in referring particular effects to the causes from which they proceed.”

Adam Ferguson (1723–1816) Scottish philosopher and historian

Introduction, Section IV, Of Theory, p. 7.
Institutes of Moral Philosophy (1769)

Joan Robinson photo

“It seems that neither the Keynesian nor the Marxian prognosis of the future of capitalism is being fulfilled and we are left without any particular theory as to what will happen next.”

Joan Robinson (1903–1983) English economist

Source: Contributions to Modern Economics (1978), Chapter 20, Has Capitalism Changed?, p. 227

“The term rationalize refers to any situations in which a person's action is described with reference to some supporting reason or cause. The term “legitimate” refers to one criterion by which rationalizations are selected from the many possible explanations for action. Justifications or rationalizations are selected primarily when they are acceptable explanations in a given social context. This means they fit with the facts as known according to the rules of behavior generally followed.”

Gerald R. Salancik (1943–1996) American organizational theorist

Source: A social information processing approach to job attitudes and task design. 1978, p. 231

Carl Barus photo

“Among recent contributions we may refer in particular to Professor A. G. Greenhill's noteworthy papers… when one remembers that these complex curves reach only especially simple cases of gyroscope motion, one may get some notion of the difficulty of the problem involved.”

Carl Barus (1856–1935) U.S. physicist

Footnote: Greenhill: Applications of Elliptic Functions, Proc. Lond. Math. Soc., 1895, 1896; Engineering, July, 1896.
"The Mathematical Theory of the Top" (April 8, 1898)

Gregory of Nyssa photo

“Is it not want of reason in any one to suppose that when he has striven successfully to escape the dominion of one particular passion, he will find virtue in its opposite?”

Gregory of Nyssa (335–395) bishop of Nyssa

On Virginity, Chapter 16

Francisco Aragón photo

“The advice to any young poet is to embrace your freedom and not feel constrained to write in one particular way or only about one particular topic. If they’re Latino poets, I would encourage them not only to read widely, but also to read Latino poetry, to familiarize themselves with their particular tradition within American literature…”

Francisco Aragón (1968) poet

On his advice to Latino poets in “Interview with Francisco Aragón: Latino Poetry From All Its Perspectives” https://www.sampsoniaway.org/literary-voices/2010/09/16/interview-with-francisco-aragon-latino-poetry-from-all-its-perspectives/ in Sampsonia Way (2010 Sept 16)

“A semantic definition of a particular set of command types, then, is a rule for constructing, for any command of one of these types, a verification condition on the antecedents and consequents.”

Robert Floyd (1936–2001) American computer scientist

Source: Assigning Meanings to Programs http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~weimer/2007-615/reading/FloydMeaning.pdf (1967), p. 21 [italics in original, math symbols omitted].

Eckhart Tolle photo

“◦"At the deepest level of Being, you are one with all that is”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

“The question of whether particular goals are achievable by specified means (or indeed by any means at all) is an elementary and unavoidable question about any theory of justice.”

William H. Riker (1920–1993) American political scientist

Liberalism Against Populism (1982)

Related topics