Quotes about overview

A collection of quotes on the topic of overview, world, likeness, history.

Quotes about overview

David Mumford photo
Géza Révész photo
Douglas Coupland photo
Alastair Reynolds photo
Aung San Suu Kyi photo

“Lysenkoism is held up by bourgeois commentators as the supreme demonstration that conscious ideology cannot inform scientific practice and that "ideology has no place in science." On the other hand, some writers are even now maintaining a Lysenkoist position because they believe that the principles of dialectical materialism contradict the claims of genetics. Both of these claims stem from a vulgarisation of Marxist philosophy through deliberate hostility, in the first case, or ignorance, in the second. Nothing in Marx, Lenin or Mao contradicts the particular physical facts and processes of a particular set of natural phenomena in the objective world, because what they wrote about nature was at a high level of abstraction. The error of the Lysenkoist claim arises from attempting to apply a dialectical analysis of physical problems from the wrong end. Dialectical materialism is not, and has never been, a programmatic method for solving particular physical problems. Rather, dialectical analysis provides an overview and a set of warning signs against particular forms of dogmatism and narrowness of thought. It tells us, "Remember that history may leave an important trace. Remember that being and becoming are dual aspects of nature. Remember that conditions change and that the conditions necessary to the initiation of some process may be destroyed by the process itself. Remember to pay attention to real objects in space and time and not lose them utterly in idealized abstractions. Remember that qualitative effects of context and interaction may be lost when phenomena are isolated."”

Richard C. Lewontin (1929) American evolutionary biologist

And above all else, "Remember that all the other caveats are only reminders and warning signs whose application to different circumstances of the real world is contingent."
"The Problem of Lysenkoism" by Richard Lewontin and Richard Levins, in Hilary and Steven Rose (eds.), The Radicalisation of Science, Macmillan, 1976, p. 58.

Augustin Louis Cauchy photo

“As translated by Julio Antonio Gonzalo (2008). The Intelligible Universe: An Overview of the Last Thirteen Billion Years.”

Augustin Louis Cauchy (1789–1857) French mathematician (1789–1857)

World Scientific. p. 301.
Augustin-Louis Cauchy (1850). Considérations sur les ordres religieux adressées aux amis des sciences. Pommeret et Moreau. p. 26.
Original: Je suis catholique sincère comme l’ont été Corneille, Racine, La Bruyère, Bossuet, Bourdaloue, Fénelon ; comme l’ont été et le sont encore un grand nombre des hommes les plus distingués de notre époque, de ceux qui ont fait le plus d’honneur à la science, à la philosophie, à la littérature, qui ont le plus illustré nos académies. Je partage les convictions profondes qu'ont manifestées par leurs paroles, par leurs actions et par leurs écrits tant de savants de premier ordre , les Rutfini, les Haûy, les Laennec, les Ampère, les Pelletier, les Freycinet, les Coriolis; et si j'évite de nommer ceux qui restent, de peur de blesser leur modestie, je puis dire du moins que j'aimais à retrouver toute la noblesse, toute la générosité de la foi chrétienne dans mes illustres amis, dans le créateur de la cristallographie (le chanoine Haùy), dans le navigateur célèbre que porta l'Uranie (Claude-Marie de Freycinet), et dans l'immortel auteur de l'électricité dynamique (André-Marie Ampère)

Elfriede Jelinek photo
Paul Klee photo

“Am I God? / I have accumulated so many great things in me! / My head aches to the point of bursting. / It has to hold an overview of power. / May you want (are you worthy of it?) / that it be born to you.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Quote (1905), # 690, in The Diaries of Paul Klee, translation: Pierre B. Schneider, R. Y. Zachary and Max Knight; publisher, University of California Press, 1964
1903 - 1910

Richard Koch photo

“Business strategy should not be a grand and sweeping overview. It should be more like an under view, a peek beneath the covers to look in great detail at what is going on.”

Richard Koch (1950) German medical historian and internist

Source: The 80/20 principle: the secret of achieving more with less (1999), p. 58