THOUGHTS, QUOTES AND STORIES


Please remember to use the 'find' function in the 'edit' pull-down menu to look up a specific word, phrase or name in this assortment. Also, while I realize that this may be a disappointment to some, I make an earnest attempt to avoid mindless humor in this collection.

On Truth, by Soren Kierkegaard

Truth exists for the individual only as he himself produces it in action.

On Exclusivity and Creativity, by Terry Tempest Williams

History has shown us that exclusivity in the name of empire building eventually fails. Fear of discord undermines creativity. And creativity lies at the heart of adaptive evolution.

On Science, by Ivan Pavlov

Only science, exact science about human nature itself, and the most sincere approach to it by the aid of the omnipotent scientific method, will deliver man from his present gloom, and will purge him from his contemporary shame in the sphere of interhuman relationships.

On Communication, author unknown

We tend to reject certain words. In a preliminary study of the wording of the 1970 U.S. census questions, it was found that people objected to the question: Do you "share" a bathroom or shower with someone else? The words "also use" were preferred. No doubt, most of us are sympathetic with the plumber who wrote the Bureau of Standards in Washington to say he had found that hydrochloric acid opened clogged drains in a hurry and asked if it was a good thing to use. The reply came back: "The efficacy of hydrochloric acid is indisputable, but the corrosive residue is incompatible with metallic permanence." The plumber replied that he was glad to know it was all right to use acid. The scientist showed the letter to his boss, who replied to the plumber: "We cannot assume responsibility for the production of toxic and noxious residue with hydrochloric acid and suggest you use an alternative procedure." The plumber thanked the Bureau and reported he was glad they approved his use of acid. Finally the correspondence from Washington got through to the plumber: "Don't use hydrochloric acid. It eats the hell out of the pipes."

On Feminism, by --Rebecca West

I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat...

On Change, by Parmenides

Upon those that step into the same rivers, different and different waters flow.

On Intelligence and Higher Education, by Isaac Asimov

What is intelligence anyway? When I was in the army I received a kind of aptitude test that all the soldiers took and, against a normal of 100, scored 160. No one at the base had ever seen a figure like that and for two hours they made a big fuss over me. (It didn't mean anything. The next day I was still buck private with KP as my highest duty.)

. . .Suppose my auto-repair man devised questions for an intelligence test. Or suppose a carpenter did, or a farmer, or indeed almost anyone except and academician. By every one of those tests, I'd prove myself a moron. And I'd be a moron, too. In a world where I could not use my academic training and my verbal talents but had to do something intricate or hard working with my hands, I would do poorly. My intelligence, then, is not absolute but is a function of the society I live in and of the fact that a small subsection of that society has managed to foist itself on the rest of as an arbiter of such matters.

Consider my auto-repair man. . . He had a habit of telling me jokes whenever he saw me. One time he raised his head from under the automobile hood to say: "Doc a deaf-and-dumb guy went into a hardware store to ask for some nails. He put two fingers together on the counter and made hammering motions with the other hand. The clerk brought him a hammer. He shook his head and pointed to the two fingers he was hammering. The clerk brought him nails. He picked out the sizes he wanted and left. Well, doc, the next guy who came in was a blind man. He wanted scissors. How do you suppose he asked for them?"

Indulgently, I lifted my right hand and made scissoring motions with my first two fingers. Whereupon my auto-repair man laughed raucously and said, "Why you dumb jerk, he used his voice and asked for them." Then he said smugly, "I've been trying that on all my customers today." "Did you catch many?" I asked. "Quite a few," he said, "But I knew for sure I'd catch you." "Why is that?" I asked. "Because you're so damned educated, Doc, I knew you couldn't be very smart."

And I have an uneasy feeling he had something there.

On Objectivity, by Karl Popper

Observation is always observation in the light of theories. . . It is only the inductivist prejudice that leads people to think that there could be a phenomenal language free of theories.

On Women and Reality, by Germaine Greer

Perhaps . . . women have always been in closer contact with reality than men: it would seem to be the just recompense for being deprived of idealism.

On Creativity, Problem-Solving, and Education, by Alexander Calandra

Some time ago, I received a call form a colleague who asked if I would be the referee on the grading of an examination question. He was about to give a student a zero for his answer to a physics question, while the student claimed he should receive a perfect score and would if the system were not set up against the student. The instructor and the student agreed to submit this to an impartial arbiter, and I was selected.

I went to my colleague's office and read the examination question: "Show how it is possible to determine the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer."

The student had answered: "Take the barometer to the top of the building, attach a long rope to it, lower the barometer to the street, and then bring it up, measuring the length of the rope. The length of the rope is the height of the building."

I pointed out that the student really had a strong case for full credit, since he had answered the question completely and correctly. On the other hand, if full credit were given it could well contribute to a high grade for the student in his physics course. A hgih grade is supposed to certify competence in physics, but the answer did not confirm this. I suggested that the student have another try at the question. I was not surprised that my colleague agreed, but I was surprised that the student did.

I gave the student six minutes to answer the question, with the warning that his answer should show some knowledge of physics. At the end of five minutes, he had not written anything. I asked if he wished to give up but he said no. He had many answers to this problem; he was just thinking of the best one. I excused myself for interrupting him, and asked him to please go on. In the next minute, he dashed off his answer which read:

"Take the barometer to the top of the building and lean over the edge of the roof. Drop the barometer, timing its fall with a stopwatch. Then using the formula S=1/2at(t), calculate the height of the building."

At this point, I asked my colleague if he would give up. He conceded, and I gave the student almost full credit.

In leaving my colleague's office, I recalled that the student had said he had other answers to the problem, so I asked him what they were. "Oh yes," said the student. "There were many ways of getting the height of the building with the aid of a barometer. . .Probably the best," he said, "is to take the barometer to the basement and knock on the superintendent's door. When the superintendent answers, you speak to him as follows: "Mr. Superintendent, here I have a fine barometer. If you tell me the height of this building, I will give you this barometer."

At this point I asked the student if he really did not know the conventional answer to this question. He admitted that he did, but said that he was fed up with high school and college instructors trying to teach him how to think, to use "the scientific method," and to explore the deep inner logic in a pedantic way rather than teaching him the structure of the subject.

On Science, by Paul Feyerabend

The idea that a method that contains firm, unchanging, and absolutely binding principles for conducting the business of science meets considerable difficulty when confronted with the results of historical research--there is not a single rule, however, plausible, and however firmly grounded in epistemology, that is not violated at some time or other. It becomes evident that such violations are not accidental events; they are not results of insufficient knowledge or of inattention which might have been avoided. On the contrary, we see that they are necessary for progress.

On Democratic Responsibility, by Juvenal

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who is to oversee the overseers?)

On Age, Author Unknown

The error of age is to think that experience is a substitute for intelligence. The error of youth is to think that intelligence is a substitute for experience.

A History of the World, by Tim Wallace

If we could, at this time, shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely 100 people with all th existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look like this:

When one considers our world from such an incredibly compressed perspective, the need for both tolerance and understanding becomes glaringly apparent.

On Ambition, by Tim Morasch

One day a fisherman was on a beach with his fishing pole propped up in the sand and his solitary line cast out into the sparkling blue surf. He was enjoying the warmth of the afternoon sun and the prospect of catching a fish. About that time, a businessman came walking down the beach, trying to relieve some fo the stress of his day. He noticed the fisherman sitting on the beach and decided to find out why this fisherman was fishing instead of working harder to make a living for himself and his family. "You aren't going to catch any fish that way," said the businessman to the fisherman, "you should be working rather than lying on the beach." The fisherman looked up at the tall businessman, smiled and replied, "And what will my reward be?" "Well you can get bigger nets and catch more fish" was the businessman's answer. "And then what will my reward be?" asked the fisherman again. The businessman replied, "You will make more money and you'll be able to buy a boat, and then you can catch even larger catches of fish." "And then what will my reward be?" asked the fisherman again. The businessman was getting a little irritated with the fisherman's questions. "You can buy a bigger boat, and hire some people to work it for you." he said. "And then what will my reward be?" repeated the fisherman. The businessman was noticeably annoyed. "Don't you get it? You can build up a fleet of fishing boats, sail all over the world, and let all your employees catch fish for you!" Once again the fisherman asked, "And then what will my reward be?" The businessman was red with rage at this point at shouted at the fisherman, "Don't you understand that you can become so rich that you'll never have to work for your living again? You can spend the rest of your days sitting on this beach, looking at the sunset. You won't have a care in the world!" The fisherman, still smiling, looked out at the sunset for a moment and then said, "And what do you think I'm doing right now?"

On The Inevitability of Philosophy, by Karl Jaspers

There is no escape from philosophy. The question is only whether a philosophy is conscious or not, whether it is good or bad, muddled or clear. Anyone who rejects philosophy is himself unconsciously practicing a philosophy.

On Tribulation, by Lao Tsu

The biggest problem in the world could have been solved when it was small.

On Academic Freedom, by Wayne Viney (about Max Meyer)

In 1929, Max Meyer's undergraduate student O. Hobar Mowrer, later destined for recognition as a learning theorist, constructed a questionnaire designed to fulfill a course requirement in the sociology department. According to Esper (1967), Meyer have advice to Mowrer about the wording of several questions and provided some envelopes to cut down on mailing expenses. The questionnaire explored attitudes on such topics as premarital sex, divorce, common-law marriage, and the effects of working women on the economy. The questionnaire, typical of a type that later became so commmon, was premature in the conservative setting of Columbia, Missouri. Newspapers carried inflammatory editorials on the questionnaire and there were petitions calling for the dismissal of Meyer and the sociology professor under whom Mowrer was studying. Finally, Meyer was suspended for one year without pay for assisting Mowrer. The sociology professor was fired. A year later, Meyer was fired when he "made the mistake" of presenting his own polemic version of the incident at a professional meeting. Numerous voices were raised in protest against the dismissal of a man who had devoted so much of his life to the University of Missouri and who had worked so diligently on behalf of the hearing impaired. In an obituary, Hirsh (1967) declared that in retrospect the whole incident brought more shame on the curators of Missouri University than on Meyer himself."

On History, by Napoleon Bonaparte

What is history other than a fable agreed upon?

On The Nature of Truth, by Ralph W. Emerson

No truth [is] so sublime but it may be trivial tomorrow in the light of new thoughts.

On Law, by Hermann von Helmholtz

I have proceeded on the conviction that law and order even if they are not fundementally sound are better than contradictions and lawlessness.

On Absolutes, by William James

Nothing includes everything or dominates everything. The word 'and' trails along after every sentence.

On Self-Control, by Sigmund Freud

The ego is not master in its own house.

On Existence, by Michael Novak

The darkness is habitable.

On Minority Influence, by Margaret Mead

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

On Control, by B.F. Skinner

We often overlook the fact that human behavior is also a form of control ...A person acts upon the environment, and what he achieves is essential to his survival and the survival of the species.

On Exclusivity, by Terry Tempest Williams

History has shown us that exclusivity in the name of empire building eventually fails. Fear of discord undermines creativity. And creativity lies at the heart of adaptive evolution.

On Earth, by Charles Darwin

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

On Slow Progress, by Charles Darwin

But the chief cause of our natural unwillingness to admit that onespecies has given birth to other and distinct species, is that we arealways slow in admitting any great change of which we donot see the intermediate steps... The mind cannot possibly grasp thefull meaning of the term of a hundred million years; it cannot add up and perceive the full effects of many slight variations, accumulated during an almost infinite number of generations.

On Learning By Example, by Albert Bandura (1977, p. 22)

Learning would be extremely laborious, not to mention hazardous, if people had to rely solely on the effects of their own actions to inform them what to do... Because people can learn from example what to do, at least in approximate form, before performing any behavior, they are spared needless error.

On Persectution, by Edward Yashinski (Yiddish poet who survived the Shoah, but died a political prisoner in Poland)

Fear not your enemies, for they can only kill you
Fear not your friends, for they can only betray you
Fear only the indifferent, who permit the killers and betrayers to walk safely on the earth.