Quotes About Approximations

Maybe this is what life is like - we try to see clearly but what we see is never clear and is never going to be. The more we strive the murkier it becomes. All we are left with are approximations, nuances, multitudes of plausible explanations. Take your pick.

Projections are just bullshit. They're just guesses.

Working in the digital domain, you're using approximations of things; the actual sound wave never enters the equation. You deal with sections of it, and you're able to do so much more by just reducing the information to a finite amount.

I take aliens very seriously and don't appreciate light entertainment or weak approximations being made of them.

If perception is not absolute, no deduction from perception can be absolute. No matter how ingeniously one juggles with approximations, they do not magically turn into certainties; at best, they become the most accurate possible approximations.

All models are approximations. Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful. However, the approximate nature of the model must always be borne in mind.

Men of science have made abundant mistakes of every kind; their knowledge has improved only because of their gradual abandonment of ancient errors, poor approximations, and premature conclusions.

We live in a system of approximations. Every end is prospective of some other end, which is also temporary; a round and final success nowhere. We are encamped in nature, not domesticated.

Nor have I any reason for wishing to eliminate this evidence of my initial views. Even to-day I regard them not as errors but as valuable first approximations to knowledge which could only be fully acquired after long and continuous efforts.

His poorly constituted blood has allowed the infiltration of uncertainties, approximations, problems; his wavering vitality, the intrusion of question marks and exclamation points. How define the virus which, eroding his somnolence, has stunned him with insomnia among the universal siesta?

In normal speech and prose our thoughts and feelings are diluted (by stock phrases and roundabout approximations); in poetry those thoughts and feelings can be, must be, concentrated.

It is a mistake to be too concerned with names and titles, my dear Rekhyt. Such things are never more than rough approximations; matters of convenience. The people speak this out of ignorance. It's when they understand your nature and are still abusive that you will have to worry." He grinned at me side-long, "Which is always possible, let's face it.

Science does not aim at establishing immutable truths and eternal dogmas; its aim is to approach the truth by successive approximations, without claiming that at any stage final and complete accuracy has been achieved.

I hope that I am generous and tolerant, but certainly on the intellectual side I think that there are discoverable truths, and some things that are closer approximations to the truth than others.

Other, more technically adroit people would soon generate closer approximations of reality. What mattered was (a) it was a rational, testable hypothesis; and (b) James made it so clear and interesting that it provoked a lot of intelligent people to join the conversation. "The

And it was in the mitigated midnight of these approximations that she had discerned the promise of her dawn.

La ciencia es acumulativa; cada nueva teoría incorpora las teorías anteriores válidas como aproximaciones, e incluso explica por qué esas aproximaciones funcionan, caso de que así sea.

Science and technology benefit each other, but at its most fundamental level science is not undertaken for any practical reason. Though science has nothing to say one way or the other about the existence of God or an afterlife, its goal is to find explanations of natural phenomena that are purely naturalistic. Science is cumulative; each new theory incorporates successful earlier theories as approximations, and even explains why these approximations work, when they do work.

The theory of universal gravitation is not cast-iron. No theory is, and there is always room for improvement. Isn't that so? Science is constructed out of approximations that gradually approach the truth. . . Well, that means all theories are subject to constant testing and modification, doesn't it? And if it eventually turns out that they're not quite close enough to the truth, they need to be replaced by something that's closer. Right?

as normally solved by engineers, would require any number of perfectly reasonable but aesthetically displeasing approximations. Lawrence's solution would provide exact results.

Those of us who write and study history are accustomed to its approximations and ambiguities. This is why we do not take literally the tenth-hand reports of frightened and illiterate peasants who claim to have seen miracles or to have had encounters with messiahs and prophets and redeemers who were, like them, mere humans. And this is also why we will never submit to dictation from those who display a fanatical belief in certainty and revelation.

How long, she asked, was this fraudulent stage-show called science to go on producing its 'closer and closer' approximations to an 'absolute and disinterested' truth? How long was the 'déception rationale', the con trick of objectivism to be practiced?

Justice based purely on laws is about as accurate as a portrait created out of large low-resolution color pixels. If you stand back far enough it looks good. Come any closer and the glaring approximations overtake all semblance of the original. Justice should be viewable under the microscope, not from a telescope. And for that it needs to be based not on law but on truth.

In that great game of hide and seek which is played in our memory when we seek to recapture a name, there is not any series of gradual approximations. We see nothing, then suddenly the name appears in its exact form and very different from what we thought we could make out.