“It is commonly said that a pattern, however it is written, has four essential parts: a statement of the context where the pattern is useful, the problem that the pattern addresses, the forces that play in forming a solution, and the solution that resolves those forces. … it supports the definition of a pattern as "a solution to a problem in a context", a definition that [unfortunately] fixes the bounds of the pattern to a single problem-solution pair”
Source: Analysis Patterns: Reusable Object Models, 1997, p. 6
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Martin Fowler 18
British programmer 1963Related quotes
Source: Analysis Patterns: Reusable Object Models, 1997, p. 8
Source: The Machinery of Freedom, 1973, p.4
As translated by Lilia Graciela Vázquez
Variant: The impossibility of penetrating the divine scheme of the universe does not, however, dissuade us from planning human schemes, even though we know they must be provisional. The Analytic Language of Wilkins is not the least admirable of these schemes.
As translated by Will Fitzgerald
Other Inquisitions (1952), The Analytical Language of John Wilkins
Context: The impossibility of penetrating the divine pattern of the universe cannot stop us from planning human patterns, even though we are conscious they are not definitive. The analytic language of Wilkins is not the least admirable of such patterns.
“Spinoza formulated the problem of the socially patterned defect very clearly.”
Erich Fromm, in The Sane Society (1955), Ch. 2: Can A Society be Sick?—The Pathology of Normalcy
Context: Spinoza formulated the problem of the socially patterned defect very clearly. He says: "Many people are seized by one and the same affect with great consistency. All his senses are so strongly affected by one object that he believes this object to be present even if it is not. If this happens while the person is awake, the person is believed to be insane. … But if the greedy person thinks only of money and possessions, the ambitious one only of fame, one does not think of them as being insane, but only as annoying; generally one has contempt for them. But factually greediness, ambition, and so forth are forms of insanity, although usually one does not think of them as 'illness.'" These words were written a few hundred years ago; they still hold true, although the defects have been culturally patterned to such an extent now that they are not even generally thought any more to be annoying or contemptible.
Partly cited in: Jean-Marc Choukroun, Roberta Snow (1992) Planning for human systems: essays in honor of Russell L. Ackoff. p. 287.
1950s, The development of operations research as a science, 1956
“Whatever creativity is, it is in part a solution to a problem.”
"Apéritif" in Bury My Heart at W.H. Smith's (1990)
“Where there is life there is a pattern, and where there is a pattern there is mathematics.”
The Artful Universe (1995)
Context: Where there is life there is a pattern, and where there is a pattern there is mathematics. Once that germ of rationality and order exists to turn a chaos into a cosmos, then so does mathematics. There could not be a non-mathematical Universe containing living observers.<!-- Ch. 5, p. 230
Source: Designing Social Systems in a Changing World (1996), p. 34-35, as cited in Alexander Laszlo and Stanley Krippner (1992) " Systems Theories: Their Origins, Foundations, and Development http://archive.syntonyquest.org/elcTree/resourcesPDFs/SystemsTheory.pdf" In: J.S. Jordan (Ed.), Systems Theories and A Priori Aspects of Perception. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science, 1998. Ch. 3, pp. 47-74.
“If you are not a part of the solution, you are a part of the problem.”