Quotes about variation
page 3
Philo to Cleanthes, Part XII
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779)
"Creative Commons Humbug" in PC Magazine (18 July 2005) http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1838249,00.asp
2000s
1940s–present, Introduction to Nietzsche's The Antichrist
Source: The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (1863), Ch.21, p. 417-418
The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister's Pox: Mending the Gap between Science and the Humanities (Harmony, 2003), p. 82
Becker (1982) "Culture: A Sociological View", In: Yale Review, Summer 1982, pp. 513-27.
Source: The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1821) (Third Edition), Chapter VII, On Foreign Trade, p. 91
p, 125
A Treatise on Isoperimetrical Problems, and the Calculus of Variations (1810)
About the new modal style. Interviewed by The Jazz Review, 1958; Quotes in Paul Maher, Michael K. Dorr (2009) Miles on Miles: Interviews and Encounters with Miles Davis, p. 18.
1950s
Source: Lectures on Teaching, (1906), pp. 291-292
Source: Jayant V. Narlikar Violent Phenomena in the Universe http://books.google.com/books?id=VFbCAgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover, Courier Dover Publications, 16 October 2012, p. 1
Source: The Causes of Evolution (1932), Ch. IV Natural Selection, pp. 103-104.
Alan Moore on Anarchism (2009)
Context: I suppose I first got involved in radical politics as a matter of course, during the late 1960s when it was a part of the culture. The counterculture, as we called it then, was very eclectic and all-embracing. It included fashions of dress, styles of music, philosophical positions, and, inevitably, political positions. And although there would be various political leanings coming to the fore from time to time, I suppose that the overall consensus political standpoint was probably an anarchist one. Although probably back in those days, when I was a very young teenager, I didn’t necessarily put it into those terms. I was probably not familiar enough with the concepts of anarchy to actually label myself as such. It was later, as I went into my twenties and started to think about things more seriously that I came to a conclusion that basically the only political standpoint that I could possibly adhere to would be an anarchist one.
It furthermore occurred to me that, basically, anarchy is in fact the only political position that is actually possible. I believe that all other political states are in fact variations or outgrowths of a basic state of anarchy; after all, when you mention the idea of anarchy to most people they will tell you what a bad idea it is because the biggest gang would just take over. Which is pretty much how I see contemporary society. We live in a badly developed anarchist situation in which the biggest gang has taken over and have declared that it is not an anarchist situation – that it is a capitalist or a communist situation. But I tend to think that anarchy is the most natural form of politics for a human being to actually practice. All it means, the word, is no leaders. An-archon. No leaders.
And I think that if we actually look at nature without prejudice, we find that this is the state of affairs that usually pertains.
Source: The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966), p. 104-105
Vol. XIV: Great Musicians, http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/20318 Chapter 8: "Ludwig van Beethoven," pp. 228-230:
Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great (1916)
Context: There have always existed three ways of keeping the people loving and loyal. One is to leave them alone, to trust them and not to interfere. This plan, however, has very seldom been practised, because the politicians regard the public as a cow to be milked, and something must be done to make it stand quiet.
So they try Plan Number Two, which consists in hypnotizing the public by means of shows, festivals, parades, prizes and many paid speeches, sermons and editorials, wherein and whereby the public is told how much is being done for it, and how fortunate it is in being protected and wisely cared for by its divinely appointed guardians. Then the band strikes up, the flags are waved, three passes are made, one to the right and two to the left; and we, being completely under the hypnosis, hurrah ourselves hoarse.
Plan Number Three is a very ancient one and is always held back to be used in case Number Two fails. It is for the benefit of the people who do not pass readily under hypnotic control. If there are too many of these, they have been known to pluck up courage and answer back to the speeches, sermons and editorials. Sometimes they refuse to hurrah when the bass-drum plays, in which case they have occasionally been arrested for contumacy and contravention by stocky men, in wide-awake hats, who lead the strenuous life. This Plan Number Three provides for an armed force that shall overawe, if necessary, all who are not hypnotized. The army is used for two purposes — to coerce disturbers at home, and to get up a war at a distance, and thus distract attention from the troubles near at hand. Napoleon used to say that the only sure cure for internal dissension was a foreign war: this would draw the disturbers away, on the plea of patriotism, so they would win enough outside loot to satisfy them, or else they would all get killed, it really didn't matter much; and as for loot, if it was taken from foreigners, there was no sin.
A careful analyst might here say that Plan Number Three is only a variation of Plan Number Two — the end being gained by hypnotic effects in either event, for the army is conscripted from the people to use against the people, just as you turn steam from a boiler into the fire-box to increase the draft....
Sunday Service, 13 December 2004
Context: I'm not terribly interested in playing harp on other people's music right now. Partly because I feel like many people view the harp as this kind of gimmick. You know, like they have songs that are fully realized, complete songs, and then they think "How do we make this special? - Ooh, let's bring the harp in!" and they kind of want a harpist to play a glissando and play some heavenly noise in the background. I'm really interested in the harp as a fully actualized, self-contained way of presenting songs. That there is a bass in the harp - there is a way to create a rhythmic sense without drums - there's a way to have all sorts of textural variations and expressive variations.
I also don't want to feel bound to the harp, I'd be interested in bringing other instruments in at some time. But I think the harp has been viewed in one particular way for so long, and has been limited for so long, that I feel like I am really interested in stretching the boundaries of what it's capable of doing and how it's perceived.
Source: A Brief History of Everything (1996), p. 42
Context: Are the mystics and sages insane? Because they all tell variations on the same story, don't they? The story of awakening one morning and discovering you are one with the All, in a timeless and eternal and infinite fashion. Yes, maybe they are crazy, these divine fools. Maybe they are mumbling idiots in the face of the Abyss. Maybe they need a nice, understanding therapist. Yes, I'm sure that would help. But then, I wonder. Maybe the evolutionary sequence really is from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit, each transcending and including, each with a greater depth and greater consciousness and wider embrace. And in the highest reaches of evolution, maybe, just maybe, an individual's consciousness does indeed touch infinity — a total embrace of the entire Kosmos — a Kosmic consciousness that is Spirit awakened to its own true nature. It's at least plausible. And tell me: is that story, sung by mystics and sages the world over, any crazier than the scientific materialism story, which is that the entire sequence is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying absolutely nothing? Listen very carefully: just which of those two stories actually sounds totally insane?
Prologue
Anarchism : A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements (1962)
Context: It is the general idea put forward by Proudhon in 1840 that unites him with the later anarchists, with Bakunin and Kropotkin, and also with certain earlier and later thinkers, such as Godwin, Stirner, and Tolstoy, who evolved anti-governmental systems without accepting the name of anarchy; and it is in this sense that I shall treat anarchism, despite its many variations: as a system of social thought, aiming at fundamental changes in the structure of society and particularly — for this is the common element uniting all its forms — at the replacement of the authoritarian state by some form of non-governmental cooperation between free individuals.
Source: The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (1863), Ch.21, p. 420-421
Context: None of the observations are more in point, as bearing on the doctrine of what Hooker terms 'creation by variation,' than the great extent to which the internal characters and properties of plants, or their physiological constitution are capable of being modified, while they exhibit externally no visible departure from the normal form.... When several of these internal or physiological modifications are accompanied by variation in size, habits of growth, colour of the flowers, and other external characters, and these are found to be constant in successive generations, botanists may well begin to differ in opinion as to whether they ought to regard them as distinct species or not.
Source: The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (1863), Ch.21, p. 414
Context: Variation and natural selection would also afford a key to a multitude of geological facts otherwise wholly unaccounted for, as, for example, why there is generally an intimate connection between the living animals and plants of each great division of the globe and the extinct fauna and flora of the post-tertiary or tertiary formations of the same region...
Clifford & Pearson, Ch IV, Position, §19 On the Bending of Space
The Common Sense of the Exact Sciences (1885)
Context: We may... be treating merely as physical variations effects which are really due to changes in the curvature of our space; whether, in fact, some or all of those causes which we term physical may not be due to the geometrical construction of our space. There are three kinds of variation in the curvature of our space which we ought to consider as within the range of possibility.
(i) Our space is perhaps really possessed of a curvature varying from point to point, which we fail to appreciate because we are acquainted with only a small portion of space, or because we disguise its small variations under changes in our physical condition which we do not connect with our change of position. The mind that could recognise this varying curvature might be assumed to know the absolute position of a point. For such a mind the postulate of the relativity of position would cease to have a meaning. It does not seem so hard to conceive such a state of mind as the late Professor Clerk-Maxwell would have had us believe. It would be one capable of distinguishing those so-called physical changes which are really geometrical or due to a change of position in space.
(ii) Our space may be really same (of equal curvature), but its degree of curvature may change as a whole with the time. In this way our geometry based on the sameness of space would still hold good for all parts of space, but the change of curvature might produce in space a succession of apparent physical changes.
(iii) We may conceive our space to have everywhere a nearly uniform curvature, but that slight variations of the curvature may occur from point to point, and themselves vary with the time. These variations of the curvature with the time may produce effects which we not unnaturally attribute to physical causes independent of the geometry of our space. We might even go so far as to assign to this variation of the curvature of space 'what really happens in that phenomenon which we term the motion of matter.' <!--pp. 224-225
Rogers Commission Report (1986)
Context: The acceptance and success of these flights is taken as evidence of safety. But erosion and blow-by are not what the design expected. They are warnings that something is wrong. The equipment is not operating as expected, and therefore there is a danger that it can operate with even wider deviations in this unexpected and not thoroughly understood way. The fact that this danger did not lead to a catastrophe before is no guarantee that it will not the next time, unless it is completely understood. When playing Russian roulette the fact that the first shot got off safely is little comfort for the next. The origin and consequences of the erosion and blow-by were not understood. They did not occur equally on all flights and all joints; sometimes more, and sometimes less. Why not sometime, when whatever conditions determined it were right, still more leading to catastrophe?
In spite of these variations from case to case, officials behaved as if they understood it, giving apparently logical arguments to each other often depending on the "success" of previous flights.
Source: The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (1863), Ch.21, p. 411-412
Context: The competition of races and species, observes Mr. Darwin, is always most severe between those which are most closely allied and which fill nearly the same place in the economy of nature. Hence, when the conditions of existence are modified, the original stock runs great risk of being superseded by some one of its modified offshoots. The new race or species may not be absolutely superior in the sum of its powers and endowment to the parent stock, and may even be more simple in structure and of a lower grade of intelligence, as well as of organisation, provided, on the whole, it happens to have some slight advantage over its rivals. Progression, therefore, is not a necessary accompaniment of variation and natural selection, though, when a higher organisation happens to be coincident with superior fitness to new conditions, the new species will have greater power and a greater chance of permanently maintaining and extending its ground.
"Bisexuality and the Causes of Homosexuality: The Case of the Sambia"
Context: Social and cultural factors very broadly channel and limit sexual variation in human populations. Sexual laws, codes, and roles do restrict the range and intensity of sexual practices, as far as we can judge from the cross-cultural literature (Herdt and Stoller 1990). Kinsey lent his support to this view; Ford and Beach (1950) documented it in surveys; and Margaret Mead (1961) did so in her ethnographic studies. But biosocial, genetic, and hormonal predispositions also broadly limit and channel. Each culture's theory of the combination of these social and biological constraints we could call its theory of human sexual nature. Yet none of these broad principles, nor the local theory of human sexual nature, entirely explains or predicts a particular person's sexual desires or behaviors. A sexual behavior, that is, does not necessarily indicate an erotic orientation, preference, or desire. The homosexual is not the same as the homoerotic; whether in our society or one very exotic, I will claim, we can distinguish the homosexual from the homoerotic, as Oscar Wilde's case first hinted.
Source: A System of Logic (1843), p. 4
Context: [W]e may fancy that we see or feel what we in reality infer. Newton saw the truth of many propositions of geometry without reading the demonstrations, but not, we may be sure, without their flashing through his mind. A truth, or supposed truth, which is really the result of a very rapid inference, may seem to be apprehended intuitively. It has long been agreed by thinkers of the most opposite schools, that this mistake is actually made in so familiar an instance as that of the eyesight. There is nothing of which we appear to ourselves to be more directly conscious, than the distance of an object from us. Yet it has long been ascertained, that what is perceived by the eye, is at most nothing more than a variously coloured surface; that when we fancy we see distance, all we really see is certain variations of apparent size, and degrees of faintness of colour; and that our estimate of the object's distance from us is the result of a comparison (made with so much rapidity that we are unconscious of making it) between the size and colour of the object as they appear at the time, and the size and colour of the same or of similar objects as they appeared when close at hand, or when their degree of remoteness was known by other evidence. The perception of distance by the eye, which seems so like intuition, is thus, in reality, an inference grounded on experience; an inference, too, which we learn to make; and which we make with more and more correctness as our experience increases; though in familiar cases it takes place, so rapidly as to appear exactly on a par with those perceptions of sight which are really intuitive, our perceptions of colour.
Source: The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (1863), Ch.21, p. 412
Context: One of the principal claims of Mr. Darwin's theory to acceptance is, that it enables us to dispense with a law of progression as a necessary accompaniment of variation. It will account equally well for what is called degradation, or a retrograde movement towards a simpler structure, and does not require Lamarck's continual creation of monads; for this was a necessary part of his system, in order to explain how, after the progressive power had been at work for myriads of ages, there were as many beings of the simplest structure in existence as ever.
Prelude
Middlemarch (1871)
Context: Some have felt that these blundering lives are due to the inconvenient indefiniteness with which the Supreme Power has fashioned the natures of women: if there were one level of feminine incompetence as strict as the ability to count three and no more, the social lot of women might be treated with scientific certitude. Meanwhile the indefiniteness remains, and the limits of variation are really much wider than any one would imagine from the sameness of women's coiffure and the favorite love-stories in prose and verse. Here and there a cygnet is reared uneasily among the ducklings in the brown pond, and never finds the living stream in fellowship with its own oary-footed kind. Here and there is born a Saint Theresa, foundress of nothing, whose loving heart-beats and sobs after an unattained goodness tremble off and are dispersed among hindrances, instead of centring in some long-recognizable deed.
Source: The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (1863), Ch.20, p. 393
Context: I endeavoured to sketch out (and it was, I believe, the first systematic attempt to accomplish such a task) the laws which govern the extinction of species, with a view of showing that the slow, but ceaseless variations, now in progress in physical geography, together with the migration of plants and animals into new regions, must, in the course of ages, give rise to the occasional loss of some of them, and eventually cause an entire fauna and flora to die out; also, that we must infer, from geological data, that the places thus left vacant from time to time, are filled up without delay by new forms, adapted to new conditions, sometimes by immigration from adjoining provinces, sometimes by new creations. Among the many causes of extinction enumerated by me, were the power of hostile species, diminution of food, mutations in climate, the conversion of land into sea, and of sea into land, &c.
Source: On the Origin of Species (1859), chapter III: "Struggle For Existence", page 61 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=76&itemID=F373&viewtype=image
Context: Owing to this struggle for life, any variation, however slight and from whatever cause proceeding, if it be in any degree profitable to an individual of any species, in its infinitely complex relations to other organic beings and to external nature, will tend to the preservation of that individual, and will generally be inherited by its offspring. The offspring, also, will thus have a better chance of surviving, for, of the many individuals of any species which are periodically born, but a small number can survive. I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection, in order to mark its relation to man's power of selection.
Augustus (1937)
Context: History does not repeat itself except with variations, and it is idle to look for exact parallels, but we can trace a resemblance between the conditions of his time and those of to-day. Once again the crust of civilization has worn thin, and beneath can be heard the muttering of primeval fires. Once again many accepted principles of government have been overthrown, and the world has become a laboratory where immature and feverish minds experiment with unknown forces. Once again problems cannot be comfortably limited, for science has brought the nations into an uneasy bondage to each other. In the actual business of administration there is no question of today which Augustus had not to face and answer.
As quoted by Rachel Makabi, 'A Race Against Time' http://www.rezapahlavi.org/details_article.php?article=34&page=5, Newsweek International, Sept 4, 2006.
Interviews, 2006
On the inspiration for his novel Brother in “Interviews: David Chariandy” https://bookpage.com/interviews/22971-david-chariandy-fiction#.XfgMUulKjcs in BookPage (2018 Aug 1)
Source: Initiation Into Hermetics (1956), p. 35
Source: The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1821) (Third Edition), Chapter I, Section I, On Value, p. 11
On the Origin of Species (1859)
Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1839/may/14/ministerial-explanations#column_1015 in the House of Lords (14 May 1839) during the Bedchamber Crisis
Broadcast in Singapore (6 September 1954), quoted in The Times (7 September 1954), p. 7
Leader of the Opposition
These deep-rooted affinities are normally passed over in pious silence; they nevertheless constitute, from Epicurus to Spinoza and Hegel, the premises of Marx's materialism. They are hardly ever mentioned, for the simple reason that Marx himself did not mention them, and so the whole of the Marx-Hegel relationship is made to hang on the dialectic, because this Marx did talk about!
Louis Althusser, Essays in Self-Criticism (1976), "Is it Simple to be a Marxist in Philosophy?"
A - F, Louis Althusser
Preface
A Course of Lectures on Natural Philosophy and the Mechanical Arts (1807)
Session 884, Page 138
Dreams, Evolution and Value Fulfillment, Volume One (1986)
August 1909, Popular Science Monthly Volume 75, Article:"The Varificational Factor in Handwriting", p. 151
about Handwriting
August 1909, Popular Science Monthly Volume 75, Article:"The Varificational Factor in Handwriting", p. 150-151
about Handwriting
Source: What is Anthropology? (2nd ed., 2017), Ch. 2 : Key Concepts
Source: What is Anthropology? (2nd ed., 2017), Ch. 2 : Key Concepts
Source: What is Anthropology? (2nd ed., 2017), Ch. 1 : Why Anthropology?
these directions making between them meaningful angles, and senses, together defining one big conclusion or many. Spaces, volumes, suggested by the smallest means in contrast to their mass, or even including them, juxtaposed, pierced by vectors, crossed by speeds. Nothing at all of this is fixed. Each element able to move, to stir, to oscillate, to come and go in its relationships with the other elements in its universe. It must not be just a fleeting moment but a physical bond between the varying events in life. Not extractions, but abstractions. Abstractions that are like nothing in life except in their manner of reacting.
1930s, How Can Art Be Realized? (1932)
Part 1 “Four Classical Arguments”, Chapter 2 “The Argument from Design (and Some Creationist Calculations)” (p. 19)
Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (2008)
For Paris I am very busy - To Vienna a painting will be send.. .A second large painting has gone to Brussels - A [xxxx?] will offer drawings of us [drawings of him and his wife] and , at this moment they are crossing the Great Water, with destination to New York where they will be exhibited - we hope with success - Two beautiful paintings has enriched our collection again, one of Dupre and one of Rousseau. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)
(original Dutch: citaat van Hendrik Willem Mesdag, in het Nederlands:) Waarde Zwager – Zuster. Wij sukkelen ook weder de winter goed door, altijd bezig en werkende. Jammer dat de gelegenheid tot nieuw studien [maken] nog niet is gekomen het is altijd een aardige afwisseling. Nu is het altijd zee en pinken enz. [de onderwerpen in zijn schilderijen] - Voor Parijs ben ik druk bezig - Naar Weenen gaat een schilderij.. .Naar Brussel is een tweede groote schilderij gegaan – Een [xxxx?] zal teekeninge van ons [van hem en vrouw Sientje] bieden, zijn op dit oogenblik op den wijden Oeveren met bestemming naar New York waar ze geexposeerd zullen worden – naar wij hopen met succes – Een paar prachtige schilderijen een van Dupre en een van nl:Théodore RousseauRousseau onze collectie weder verrijkt
In a letter from The Hague, 15 Feb 1882 to Brother-in-law and Sister (Hindrik van Houten and Alida Cornelia Christina van Houten ten Bruggencate) from the original text in Dutch R.K.D. Archive, The Hague https://rkd.nl/explore/excerpts/707073
after 1880
“Godself sings one song
moment by moment
with infinite variations”
uni : one
verse : poem or song
Art Psalms (2008), Universe
"The Biblical Period" in The Jews (1949), p. 39, as cited in The Prophets (1962), p. 62
Source: Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (1996), page 5
Source: Full House (1996), Chapter 3, “Different Parsings, Different Images of Trends” (p. 33)