Quotes from Fritjof Capra

Our Western science, ever since the 17th century, has been obsessed with the notion of control, of man dominating nature. This obsession has led to disaster.

Science does not need mysticism and mysticism does not need science but man needs both.

Subatomic particles have no meaning as isolated entities, but can only be understood as interconnections between the preparation of an experiment and the subsequent measurement.

Subatomic particles do not exist but rather show 'tendencies to exist', and atomic events do not occur with certainty at definite times and in definite ways, but rather show 'tendencies to occur'.

Tektology was the first attempt in the history of science to arrive at a systematic formulation of the principles of organization operating in living and nonliving systems.

A page from a journal of modern experimental physics will be as mysterious to the uninitiated as a Tibetan mandala. Both are records of enquiries into the nature of the universe.

Whenever we look at life, we look at networks.

One of the key insights of the systems approach has been the realization that the network is a pattern that is common to all life. Wherever we see life, we see networks.

Ecology and spirituality are fundamentally connected, because deep ecological awareness, ultimately, is spiritual awareness.

The elements of life are dynamic patterns of mass and energy, events rather than objects.

The principles of classical management theory have become so deeply ingrained in the ways managers think about organizations that for most of them the design of formal structures, linked by clear lines of communication, coordination, and control, has become almost second nature. This largely unconscious embrace of the mechanistic approach to management has now become one of the main obstacles to organizational change.

The double role of living systems as parts and wholes requires the interplay of two opposite tendencies: an integrative tendency to function as part of a larger whole, and a self-assertive, or self-organizing tendency to preserve individual autonomy (see Chapter 7).

From the systems point of view, it is evident that one of the main obstacles to organizational change is the — largely unconscious — embrace by business leaders of the mechanistic approach to management.

taught us to be aware of ourselves as isolated egos existing "inside" our bodies; it has led us to set a higher value on mental than manual work; it has enabled huge industries to sell products – especially to women – that would make us owners of the "ideal body"; it has kept doctors from seriously considering the psychological dimensions of illness, and psychotherapists from dealing with their patients' bodies.

Science is of no value unless it is accompanied by social concern.

He had a deep respect for life, a special compassion for animals, and great awe and reverence for nature's complexity and abundance. While a brilliant inventor and designer himself, he always thought that nature's ingenuity was vastly superior to human design. He felt that we would be wise to respect nature and learn from her.

In the words of a Zen poem, At dusk the cock announces dawn; At midnight, the bright sun.

the properties of a particle can only be understood in terms of its activity—of its interaction with the surrounding environment—and that the particle, therefore, cannot be seen as an isolated entity but has to be understood as an integrated part of the whole.

We have become so obsessed with rational knowledge, objectivity, and quantification that we are very insecure in dealing with human values and human experience. - Margaret M. Lock

The original sense of the word 'therapist' in its Greek form therapuetes , was that of an attendant. A therapist, Laing maintained, should therefore be a specialist in attentiveness and awareness.

Intersections of lines, for example, remain intersections, and the hole in a torus (doughnut) cannot be transformed away. Thus a doughnut may be transformed topologically into a coffee cup (the hole turning into a handle) but never into a pancake. Topology, then, is really a mathematics of relationships, of unchangeable, or "invariant," patterns.

We are but whirlpools in a river of ever-flowing water," he wrote. "We are not stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves.

A sustainable business organization would be embedded in an "ecology of organizations," in which the waste of any one organization would be a resource for another.

One of Prigogine's greatest contributions has been to create a new thermodynamics to describe living systems.The organizing activity of living, selforganizing systems, finally, is cognition, or mental activity. This implies a radically new concept of mind, which was first proposed by Gregory Bateson. Mental process is defined as the organizing activity of life. This means that all interactions of a living system with its environment are cognitive, or mental interactions.