Quotes About Complexity

Chaos doesn't mean that the system is behaving randomly, it means that it is unpredictable because it has many variables, it is too complex to measure, and even if it could be measured, theoretically the measurement cannot be done accurately and the tiniest inaccuracy would change the end result an enormous amount.

The classic example from biology is the huge, towerlike structure that is built by some ant and termite species. These structures only emerge when the ant colony reaches a certain size (more is different) and could never be predicted by studying the behavior of single insects in small colonies.

Twain's moods changed frequently, and it is unrealistic to saddle him with one dominant emotion during his final years, when he was as likely to assume the part of the joker as that of the angry prophet.

Every man has within himself the entire human condition

The reverse side of truth has a hundred thousand shapes and no defined limits.

Truly man is a marvelously vain, diverse, and undulating object. It is hard to found any constant and uniform judgement on him. -from By diverse means we arrive at the same end

Man is indeed an object miraculously vain, various and wavering. It is difficult to found a judgement on him which is steady and uniform.

We are all lumps, and of so various and inform a contexture, that every piece plays, every moment, its own game, and there is as much difference betwixt us and ourselves as betwixt us and others.

Wij zijn niets dan stukjes en beetjes, verweven tot zó'n vormeloos en onsamenhangend geheel dat elk onderdeel, elk moment, een eigen rol speelt. En er bestaat evenveel onderscheid tussen ons en onszelf als tussen ons en de ander.

Her insanda, insanl???n bütün hâlleri vard?r.

For I never see the whole of anything; nor do those who promise to show it to us.

Each man contains the entire pattern of the human condition.

Every one of us is a hodge-podge, so shapeless and diverse in structure that each piece, each moment, plays its own game. And there is as much difference between us and ourselves as there is between us and others. I

We're moving towards such a strange time.A time when all our moral choices will be complicated and compromised by our love of progress

People were so strange and sometimes you got tired just thinking about them.

These days, the bigger the company, the less you can figure out what it does. Time was when a car company made cars, a mining company dug mines. It's not like that anymore.

There is not one but many silences, and they are an integral part of the strategies that underlie and permeate discourses.

The frontiers of a book are never clear-cut: beyond the title, the first lines, and the last full-stop, beyond its internal configuration and its autonomous form, it is caught up in a system of references to other books, other texts, other sentences: it is a node within a network.

marginile unei c?rÅ£i nu sunt niciodat? clar ÅŸi riguros trasate: dincolo de titlu, de primele rânduri ÅŸi de punctul final, mai presus de configuraÅ£ia sa intern? ÅŸi de forma care îi confer? autonomie, ea se afl? prins? într-un sistem de trimiteri la alte c?rÅ£i, la alte texte, la alte fraze: este un nod într-o reÅ£ea.

When the old Ptolemaic model had accumulated so many epicycles that the movement of the stars became complicated and unreadable, a change became necessary. The center of the system was moved toward the sun, and everything became clear again. The written code of Hammurabi no doubt put an end to the socio-juridical difficulties that had arisen in oral law. Our own complexities come from a crisis of writing.

I may not be evil, but that doesn't mean I'm a saint.

Soft flesh mingled with defiant will to create one frustratingly perfect woman.

War is a mass of contradictions and carefully acknowledged truths.

It is remarkable that a gigantic, city-size computer is required to simulate a piece of human tissue that weighs three pounds, fits inside your skull, raises your body temperature by only a few degrees, uses twenty watts of power, and needs only a few hamburgers to keep it going.