Quotes about scope
page 2

Ragnar Frisch photo

“Two important features in the modern development of economics are the application of mathematics to abstract economic reasoning… and the attempt at placing economics on a numerical and experimental basis by an intensive study of economic statistics.
Both these developments have a common characteristic: they emphasize the quantitative character of economics. This quantitative movement in our estimation is one of the most promising developments in modern economics. We also consider it important that the two aspects of the quantitative method referred to should be furthered, developed, and studied jointly as two integrating parts of economics.
We therefore venture to propose the establishment of an international periodical devoted to the advancement of the quantitative study of economic phenomena, and especially to the development of a closer relation between pure economics and economic statistics.
We believe that the scope of the new journal would be happily suggested if it is called "Oekonometrika."”

Ragnar Frisch (1895–1973) Norwegian economist

Accordingly, the quantitative study of economic phenomena here considered may be termed econometrics.
Frisch (1927) as quoted in Divisia 1953, pp.24-25; Cited in: Bjerkholt, Olav. " Ragnar Frisch and the foundation of the Econometric Society and Econometrica http://www.ssb.no/a/histstat/doc/doc_199509.pdf." ECONOMETRIC SOCIETY MONOGRAPHS 31 (1998): 26-57.
Lead paragraph of a memorandum on the importance of establishing the journal "Oekonometrika"
1920

Edith Hamilton photo

“The story begins with a somewhat disgruntled hero, who perceived of the world as populated with stupid people, everywhere committing the environmental fallacy. The fallacy was a case not merely of the “mind’s falling into error,” but rather of the mind leading all of us into incredible dangers as it first builds crisis and then attacks crisis.
Like all heroes, this one looked about for resources, for aids that would help in a dangerous battle, and he found plenty of support – in both the past and the present. It won’t hurt to summarize the story thus far. If the intellect is to engage in the heroic adventure of securing improvement in the human condition, it cannot rely on “approaches,” like politics and morality, which attempt to tackle problems head-on, within the narrow scope. Attempts to address problems in such a manner simply lead to other problems, to an amplification of difficulty away from real improvement. Thus the key to success in the hero’s attempt seems to be comprehensiveness. Never allow the temptation to be clear, or to use reliable data, or to “come up to the standards of excellence,” divert you from the relevant, even though the relevant may be elusive, weakly supported by data, and requiring loose methods.
Thus the academic world of Western twentieth century society is a fearsome enemy of the systems approach, using as it does a politics to concentrate the scholars’ attention on matters that are scholastically respectable but disreputable from a systems-planning point of view.”

C. West Churchman (1913–2004) American philosopher and systems scientist

Source: 1960s - 1970s, The Systems Approach and Its Enemies (1979), p. 145; cited in C. WEST CHURCHMAN: CHAMPION OF THE SYSTEMS APPROACH http://filer.case.edu/nxb41/churchman.html, 2004-2007 Case Western Reserve University

Herbert Marcuse photo
Hermann Weyl photo
Jesse Helms photo

“It is a magnificent country, lonely, grand in scale, stretching for mile upon mile, the clear blue air stabbed with peaks of snow, where the sun glints on the ice surfaces, green as sea ice, breath taking in its scope.”

Judy LaMarsh (1924–1980) Canadian politician, writer, broadcaster and barrister.

Source: Memoirs Of A Bird In A Gilded Cage (1969), CHAPTER 8, Centennial summer, p. 196 (On Canada...)

George W. Bush photo
Norbert Wiener photo
V. V. Giri photo

“Unemployment is the problem of problems which has made our youths naxalites. Educated youth are deprived of all deserving comforts and their growing discontent has given scope for the sppedy growth of naxalism.”

V. V. Giri (1894–1980) Indian politician and 4th president of India

Saleem Shaikh in: Business Environment, 2/E http://books.google.co.in/books?id=sfOH_n1vseUC&pg=PA287, Pearson Education India, 1 September 2010

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Damian Pettigrew photo
Marshall McLuhan photo
Wolfhart Pannenberg photo
Angela Merkel photo
Paul Davies photo
Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Sr. photo
Norman Tebbit photo
Jane Roberts photo

“The issue of 'science' does not intrude itself directly upon the occasion of the performance of a musical work, at least a non-electronically produced work, since—as has been said—there is at least a question as to whether the question as to whether musical composition is to be regarded as a science or not is indeed really a question; but there is no doubt that the question as to whether musical discourse or—more precisely—the theory of music should be subject to the methodological criteria of scientific method and the attendant scientific language is a question, except that the question is really not the normative one of whether it 'should be' or 'must be,' but the factual one that it is, not because of the nature of musical theory, but because of the nature and scope of scientific method and language, whose domain of application is such that if it is not extensible to musical theory, then musical theory is not a theory in any sense in which the term ever has been employed. This should sound neither contentious nor portentous, rather it should be obvious to the point of virtual tautology.”

Milton Babbitt (1916–2011) American composer

From Milton Babbitt, "The Structure and Function of Musical Theory", College Music Symposium, Vol. 5 (Fall 1965), pp. 49-60; reprinted in Perspectives on Contemporary Music Theory, ed. Benjamin Boretz and Edward T. Cone (New York: Norton, 1972), pp. 10-21, ISBN 0393005488, and in Milton Babbitt, The Collected Essays of Milton Babbitt, ed. Stephen Peles, with Stephen Dembski, Andrew Mead, and Joseph N. Straus (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), pp. 191-201, ISBN 0691089663.

“[Scientists whose work has no clear, practical implications would want to make their decisions considering such things as:] the relative worth of (1) more observations, (2) greater scope of his conceptual model, (3) simplicity, (4) precision of language, (5) accuracy of the probability assignment.”

C. West Churchman (1913–2004) American philosopher and systems scientist

Source: 1940s - 1950s, Costs, Utilities, and Values, Sections I and II. (1956), p. 248 as cited in: Douglas, H.E. (2009) Science, Policy, and the Value-Free Ideal

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George Holmes Howison photo
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Igor Ansoff photo
Perry Anderson photo
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William A. Dembski photo
Max Frisch photo

“Where the works gives scope for individuality, one sees a blossoming of self respect”

Max Frisch (1911–1991) Swiss playwright and novelist

Sketchbook 1946-1949

Alan Bennett photo
Wolfram von Eschenbach photo

“By the miracle of genius he created a masterpiece [Parzival], epic in scope, noble in purpose, humorous, humane, tender, and rational.”

Wolfram von Eschenbach (1170–1220) German knight and poet

Roger Sherman Loomis The Development of Arthurian Romance (New York: Dover, [1963] 2000) p. 67.
Criticism

Anthony Burgess photo

“…even the police discussed this violence as possibly coming within the scope of their terms of reference.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Beds in the East (1959)

Ossip Zadkine photo

“Because the scope of the sculptor's subject remains so limited, we must be careful to concentrate as much meaning or emotion as possible in the few forms that remain at our disposal.”

Ossip Zadkine (1890–1967) French sculptor

c. 1960
Source: 1960 - 1968, Dialogues – conversations with.., quotes, c. 1960, p. 153

Erwin Schrödinger photo
Morrissey photo
Lawrence Lessig photo
Bill Bryson photo
Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis photo
Murray Bookchin photo
Erwin Schrödinger photo
John R. Commons photo
Syama Prasad Mookerjee photo
Hans Haacke photo
Ambrose Bierce photo
Larry Wall photo

“The random quantum fluctuations of my brain are historical accidents that happen to have decided that the concepts of dynamic scoping and lexical scoping are orthogonal and should remain that way.”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

[199709021854.LAA12794@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

Reese Palley photo

“The single commandment of anchoring is: Thou shall create scope.”

Reese Palley (1922–2015)

"There Be No Dragons" 1996

Francis Bacon photo

“Touching the secrets of the heart and the successions of time, doth make a just and sound difference between the manner of the exposition of the Scriptures and all other books. For it is an excellent observation which hath been made upon the answers of our Saviour Christ to many of the questions which were propounded to Him, how that they are impertinent to the state of the question demanded: the reason whereof is, because not being like man, which knows man’s thoughts by his words, but knowing man’s thoughts immediately, He never answered their words, but their thoughts. Much in the like manner it is with the Scriptures, which being written to the thoughts of men, and to the succession of all ages, with a foresight of all heresies, contradictions, differing estates of the Church, yea, and particularly of the elect, are not to be interpreted only according to the latitude of the proper sense of the place, and respectively towards that present occasion whereupon the words were uttered, or in precise congruity or contexture with the words before or after, or in contemplation of the principal scope of the place; but have in themselves, not only totally or collectively, but distributively in clauses and words, infinite springs and streams of doctrine to water the Church in every part. And therefore as the literal sense is, as it were, the main stream or river, so the moral sense chiefly, and sometimes the allegorical or typical, are they whereof the Church hath most use; not that I wish men to be bold in allegories, or indulgent or light in allusions: but that I do much condemn that interpretation of the Scripture which is only after the manner as men use to interpret a profane book.”

XXV. (17)
The Advancement of Learning (1605)

Leonid Hurwicz photo
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner photo

“In the United States, international business still means the U. S. and the rest of the world. Here it is different. We wanted to learn about the reality of international business and understand the role and scope of strategy within that.”

Renée Mauborgne American economist

Renée Mauborgne in: Stuart Crainer, " W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne: The Thought Leader Interview http://www.strategy-business.com/article/11695?gko=d33f3," strategy+business, January 12, 2002. First Quarter 2002. Issue 26 (originally published by Booz & Company)

John O. Brennan photo

“As far as the allegations of the CIA hacking into Senate computers, nothing could be further from the truth, … We wouldn’t do that. I mean, that’s just beyond the, you know, the scope of reason in terms of what we do.”

John O. Brennan (1955) 7th Director of the Central Intelligence Agency

Conversation with Andrea Mitchell of NBC News, March 11, 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6apC6jN0TZo&feature=youtu.be&t=18m36s,

Dwight D. Eisenhower photo
Maimónides photo
Felix Frankfurter photo

“Ethical judgments can be [should be] included in the scope of science”

C. West Churchman (1913–2004) American philosopher and systems scientist

Cited in: John P. van Gigch (2006) Wisdom, Knowledge, and Management. p. 2
1940s - 1950s, Theory of Experimental Inference (1948)

Antonio Negri photo
Herbert Marcuse photo
Witold Doroszewski photo
Thomas Kuhn photo
Thomas Carlyle photo

“If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly; if they be na inhabited, what a waste of space.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

On other stars
Attributed by John Burroughs on the first page of his 1920 book Accepting The Universe
Attributed by Carl Sagan at a November 20, 1972 symposium on "Life Beyond Earth and the Mind of Man", held at Boston University
[Berendzen, Richard, ed., Life Beyond Earth and the Mind of Man, 1973, NASA Scientific and Technical Information Office, Washington, DC, LCCN 73-600150]
"Life Beyond Earth and the Mind of Man 1975", Google Video, c. 0:02:50, 2006-09-11 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8949469271181885482&q=owner%3Anara+type%3Anasa, Edited version of symposium, released by National Archives, under Google Video partnership http://www.archives.gov/google/.
Attributed
Variant: A sad spectacle. If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly. It they be not inhabited, what a waste of space.

Alexis De Tocqueville photo
René Descartes photo
Thomas Little Heath photo
Thomas Aquinas photo

“Whether God can make the past not to have been?
Objection 1: It seems that God can make the past not to have been. For what is impossible in itself is much more impossible than that which is only impossible accidentally. But God can do what is impossible in itself, as to give sight to the blind, or to raise the dead. Therefore, and much more can He do what is only impossible accidentally. Now for the past not to have been is impossible accidentally: thus for Socrates not to be running is accidentally impossible, from the fact that his running is a thing of the past. Therefore God can make the past not to have been.
Objection 2: Further, what God could do, He can do now, since His power is not lessened. But God could have effected, before Socrates ran, that he should not run. Therefore, when he has run, God could effect that he did not run.
Objection 3: Further, charity is a more excellent virtue than virginity. But God can supply charity that is lost; therefore also lost virginity. Therefore He can so effect that what was corrupt should not have been corrupt. On the contrary, Jerome says (Ep. 22 ad Eustoch.): "Although God can do all things, He cannot make a thing that is corrupt not to have been corrupted." Therefore, for the same reason, He cannot effect that anything else which is past should not have been.
I answer that, As was said above (Q[7], A[2]), there does not fall under the scope of God's omnipotence anything that implies a contradiction. Now that the past should not have been implies a contradiction. For as it implies a contradiction to say that Socrates is sitting, and is not sitting, so does it to say that he sat, and did not sit. But to say that he did sit is to say that it happened in the past. To say that he did not sit, is to say that it did not happen. Whence, that the past should not have been, does not come under the scope of divine power. This is what Augustine means when he says (Contra Faust. xxix, 5): "Whosoever says, If God is almighty, let Him make what is done as if it were not done, does not see that this is to say: If God is almighty let Him effect that what is true, by the very fact that it is true, be false": and the Philosopher says (Ethic. vi, 2): "Of this one thing alone is God deprived---namely, to make undone the things that have been done."
Reply to Objection 1: Although it is impossible accidentally for the past not to have been, if one considers the past thing itself, as, for instance, the running of Socrates; nevertheless, if the past thing is considered as past, that it should not have been is impossible, not only in itself, but absolutely since it implies a contradiction. Thus, it is more impossible than the raising of the dead; in which there is nothing contradictory, because this is reckoned impossible in reference to some power, that is to say, some natural power; for such impossible things do come beneath the scope of divine power.
Reply to Objection 2: As God, in accordance with the perfection of the divine power, can do all things, and yet some things are not subject to His power, because they fall short of being possible; so, also, if we regard the immutability of the divine power, whatever God could do, He can do now. Some things, however, at one time were in the nature of possibility, whilst they were yet to be done, which now fall short of the nature of possibility, when they have been done. So is God said not to be able to do them, because they themselves cannot be done.
Reply to Objection 3: God can remove all corruption of the mind and body from a woman who has fallen; but the fact that she had been corrupt cannot be removed from her; as also is it impossible that the fact of having sinned or having lost charity thereby can be removed from the sinner.”

Summa Theologica Question 25 Article 6 http://www.ccel.org/ccel/aquinas/summa.FP_Q25_A4.html
Summa Theologica (1265–1274), Unplaced by chapter

E. W. Hobson photo

“Perhaps the least inadequate description of the general scope of modern Pure Mathematics—I will not call it a definition—would be to say that it deals with form, in a very general sense of the term; this would include algebraic form, functional relationship, the relations of order in any ordered set of entities such as numbers, and the analysis of the peculiarities of form of groups of operations.”

E. W. Hobson (1856–1933) British mathematician

Source: Presidential Address British Association for the Advancement of Science, Section A (1910), p. 287; Cited in: Robert Edouard Moritz. Memorabilia mathematica; or, The philomath's quotation-book https://archive.org/stream/memorabiliamathe00moriiala#page/4/mode/2up, (1914), p. 5: Definitions and objects of mathematics.

Archibald Macleish photo
Francis Parkman photo
Zhang Zhijun photo
Frederick Douglass photo

“And here I hold that a liberal and brotherly welcome to all who are likely to come to the United States is the only wise policy which this nation can adopt. It has been thoughtfully observed that every nation, owing to its peculiar character and composition, has a definite mission in the world. What that mission is, and what policy is best adapted to assist in its fulfillment, is the business of its people and its statesmen to know, and knowing, to make a noble use of this knowledge. I need not stop here to name or describe the missions of other or more ancient nationalities. Our seems plain and unmistakable. Our geographical position, our relation to the outside world, our fundamental principles of government, world-embracing in their scope and character, our vast resources, requiring all manner of labor to develop them, and our already existing composite population, all conspire to one grand end, and that is, to make us the perfect national illustration of the unity and dignity of the human family that the world has ever seen. In whatever else other nations may have been great and grand, our greatness and grandeur will be found in the faithful application of the principle of perfect civil equality to the people of all races and of all creeds. We are not only bound to this position by our organic structure and by our revolutionary antecedents, but by the genius of our people. Gathered here from all quarters of the globe, by a common aspiration for national liberty as against caste, divine right govern and privileged classes, it would be unwise to be found fighting against ourselves and among ourselves, it would be unadvised to attempt to set up any one race above another, or one religion above another, or prescribe any on account of race, color or creed.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

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A. P. J. Abdul Kalam photo
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Michael Bloomberg photo

“It boggles the mind that nearly two centuries after Darwin, and 80 years after John Scopes was put on trial, this country is still debating the validity of evolution.”

Michael Bloomberg (1942) American businessman and politician, former mayor of New York City

http://www.nysun.com/article/33432
Faith Based Science

John Reid, Baron Reid of Cardowan photo

“Our system is not fit for purpose. It's inadequate in terms of its scope, it's inadequate in terms of its information technology, leadership, management systems and processes.”

John Reid, Baron Reid of Cardowan (1947) British politician

Of the Home Office Immigration and Nationality Directorate; BBC News 23 May 2006 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/5007148.stm

Lil Wayne photo

“I got a scope on the barrel thats a hammer with a camera”

Lil Wayne (1982) American rapper, singer, record executive and businessman

Bottles and Rockin J's Game Featuring DJ Khaled, Busta Rhymes, Rick Ross, Fabolous, Lil Wayne, and Teyana Taylor
Official Mix tapes, Guest appearances

Kurt Lewin photo

“The scope of time ahead which influences present behavior, and is therefore to be regarded as part of the present life-space, increases during development. This change in time perspective is one of the most fundamental facts of development. Adolescence seems to be a period of particularly deep change in respect to time perspective. The change can be partly described as a shift in scope. Instead of days, weeks, or months, now years ahead are considered in certain goals. Even more important is the way in which these future events influence present behavior. The ideas of a child of six or eight in regard to his occupation as an adult are not likely to be based on sufficient knowledge of the factors which might help or interfere with the realization of these ideas. They might be based on relatively narrow but definite expectations or might have a dream or playlike character. In other words, "ideal goals" and "real goals" for the distant future are not much distinguished, and this future has more the fluid character of the level of irreality. In adolescence a definite differentiation in regard to the time perspective is likely to occur. Within those parts of the life-space which represent the future, levels of reality and irreality are gradually being differentiated.”

Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) German-American psychologist

Kurt Lewin (1939) "Field theory and experiments in social psychology" in: American Journal of Sociology. Vol 44. p. 879.
1930s

Friedrich Hayek photo
John Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh photo