Quotes About Complexity

There is better reason than ever for believing that the structure and complexity of our world is inherent in our physical laws and not in some special, unknowable microstate. The universe is a recursively defined geometric object.

Complexity is self-generating. The diversity of our world is understandable because it is possible to design imaginary self-consistent worlds potentially as complex as our own.     This is no mere restatement of common sense. Everyone daydreams alternate worlds, but the imagination soon tires of filling in details. Ulam, Von Neumann, and Conway showed that a few recursive rules can paint in all the details. Creation can be simple.

The cat language is very complex," Shawn said. "If a cat had written the Harry Potter books, he could have gotten through the whole thing in fifteen pages, tops. And he would still have found the space to mention

We didn't say anything because there was such an awful lot to say, and no language to say it in.

Who can be wise, amazed, temperate and furious, Loyal and neutral, in a moment? No man.

The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together.

You are pictures out of doors,Bells in your parlors, wildcats in your kitchens,Saints in your injuries, devils being offended,Players in your housewifery, and housewives in your beds.

Who can be wise, amaz'd, temperate and furious,Loyal and neutral, in a moment? No man.

A woman mov'd is like a fountain troubled,Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty.

Do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe?

A little more than kin, and less than kind.

And, while in my lifetime I've seen science make extraordinary inroads into solving the most complex questions of life, after all this time I admit that I am thrilled that there are some things that forever will remain a mystery. For example, do I wear a toupee?

It was one of those times when the unsatisfactory complexity of the world fades far enough into the distance for the moment to become a thing in itself.

Grandeur and beauty are so very opposite, that you often diminish the one as you increase the other. Variety is most akin to the latter, simplicity to the former.

By failing to observe and understand groups, we fail to see how the world actually works and instead find ourselves surrounded by "meaningless, unrelated and destructive phenomena." It's arguable that in In Dubious Battle Steinbeck's point about crowds was that the only way to understand them is to watch them and see how they behave—to, as Doc Burton puts it, see the superorganism in action.

some historians now say there is no single history at all—just a multitude of histories, one for each region, language, family, industry, class, and race.

It points, for instance, to the fact that there is never an abstract, single 'Christian answer' to an issue to which all Christians are bound to adhere or conform.

The architectural profession has struggled to develop forms of environmental accounting that can guide the design process without overly burdening or complicating it.

the body will always be more sophisticated than the mind

Things come apart much easier than they go together.

Marriage is like the Middle East, isn't it? There's no solution.

Over time, a commitment to challenging, focused work and leisure produces not only better daily experience, but also a more complex, interesting person: the long-range benefit of the focused life. As Hobbs put it, the secret of fulfillment is "to choose trouble for oneself in the direction of what one would like to become.

The human story does not always unfold like a mathematical calculation on the principle that two and two make four. Sometimes in life they make five or minus three; and sometimes the blackboard topples down in the middle of the sum and leaves the class in disorder and the pedagogue with a black eye.

This is one of those cases in which the imagination is baffled by the facts.