Quotes About Mechanism

A living being like you or me usually has two elements: a set of instructions that tell the system how to keep going and how to reproduce itself, and a mechanism to carry out the instructions. In biology, these two parts are called genes and metabolism.

If man is nothing but a material mechanism and part of the world mechanism, then his choices of good and evil are mechanically determined, and he cannot be said to be an autonomous and responsible ethical being. Thus if materialism is to save moral responsibility and at the same time save determinism, it must represent man as partially determined (in his organic functions) and partially free (in his ethical capacity).

Whatever the cause, software that lacks a concept at the foundation of its design is, at best, a mechanism that does useful things without explaining its actions.

The challenge here is to create a mechanism for empowering innovation teams out in the open. This is the path toward a sustainable culture of innovation over time as companies face repeated existential threats. My suggested solution is to create a sandbox for innovation that will contain the impact of the new innovation but not constrain the methods of the startup team.

When it is light and one can see the cogs of the monstrous clock go round and the springs unwind one thinks of people as a part of this mechanism. And so people grow vague in one's mind and unhuman or only half-human.

In other words, the market is not a weighing machine, on which the value of each issue is recorded by an exact and impersonal mechanism, in accordance with its specific qualities. Rather should we say that the market is a voting machine, whereon countless individuals register choices which are the product partly of reason and partly of emotion.

Psychotropic drugs have also been organized according to structure (e.g., tricyclic), mechanism (e.g., monoamine, oxidase inhibitor [MAOI]), history (first generation, traditional), uniqueness (e.g., atypical), or indication (e.g., antidepressant). A further problem is that many drugs used to treat medical and neurological conditions are routinely used to treat psychiatric disorders.

DENIAL Defense mechanism in which the existence of unpleasant realities is disavowed; refers to keeping out of conscious awareness any aspects of external reality that, if acknowledged, would produce anxiety.

As the power of Christianity declined through the centuries that have followed the Reformation, Calvinism played a less and less important part, while the new philosophies of mechanism and rationalism correspondingly increased.

I don't have a shred of regret about entering the exchange-rate mechanism.

I trust the regulatory mechanism; it is a fair and independent mechanism, and the politicians and government do not interfere with the regulators.

Finding a release mechanism after the pressure of a Test-match week can take over, and the next game can seem as though it might as well be six months away.

I think having a sense of humor is just as important a coping mechanism as it is a gift for everyday life.

The SSRC committee turned attention from team research for building a model of the United States to doing one for world trade in order to investigate the international transmission mechanism.

I think that fear is a mechanism a tool for control.

Genetic modification is a very powerful tool. But like any powerful tool, when using it, you have to take into account the environmental impact, the food safety aspects and so on. There must be a strong regulatory mechanism.

an elegant mechanism emerges: a broken symmetry, hidden from our view by a field pervading space.

Fear is neither a disease nor a perversion. Fear is our most essential survival mechanism. It has many forms and functions. The mouse staring into the snake's face doesn't apologize for its interest.

You prefer not to see the gears of the clock, as to better tell time.

Memory and Habit are attributes of the Time cancer. They control the most simple Proustian episode, and an understanding of their mechanism must precede any particular analysis of their application.

Such were the professor's words - rather let me say such the words of the fate - enounced to destroy me. As he went on I felt as if my soul were grappling with a palpable enemy; one by one the various keys were touched which formed the mechanism of my being; chord after chord was sounded, and soon my mind was filled with one thought, one conception, one purpose.

It wasn't courage that motivated this casual, impersonal manner of treating so much pain; it was a special brand of cowardice, a destructive defense mechanism, forcing others to listen to the most horrendous experiences and yet denying them the moment of empathy: don't feel sorry for me; nothing is too big for me to handle. This is nothing, nothing really.

The scientific argument [...] is that the attribution of agency to the natural world was a mistake, although a useful one in an evolutionary sense. [...] [T]o the contrary, [...] it was the notion of nature as a passive, ultimately inert mechanism that was the mistake, and perhaps the biggest one that humans ever made.

PENDULUM CLOCK (1656)