Quotes About Explanation

Science is thus a paradigm for how we ought to gain knowledge—not the particular methods or institutions of science but its value system, namely to seek to explain the world, to evaluate candidate explanations objectively, and to be cognizant of the tentativeness and uncertainty of our understanding at any time.

A definition is a dictionary's explanation of the meaning of an English word using other English words, intended to be read by a whole person, applying the entirety of his or her intelligence and language skills.

Any hypothesis that comes out of left field to explain a massive social trend with a single overlooked event will almost certainly turn out to be wrong, even if it has some data supporting it at the time.

Explanation by the tongue makes most things clear, But love unexplained is clearer.

The cop looks annoyed, like we're giving him a headache. I want to explain everything to him, show him that it's really not as screwed up as it all sounds, but then I remember that it is.

If you have a comprehensive explanation for everything then it decreases uncertainty and anxiety and reduces your cognitive load. And if you can use that simplifying algorithm to put yourself on the side of moral virtue then you're constantly a good person with a minimum of effort.

Our behavioral patterns are exceedingly complex, and psychology is a young science. The scope of our behavioral wisdom exceeds the breadth of our explicit interpretation. We act, even instruct, and yet do not understand. How can we do what we cannot explain?

There are no innocuous ideologies. They're forms of pathological over simplification and they're also clubs, I mean the kind of clubs that you hit people with as well as the kind that you belong to... the advantage (to me) of being an ideologue is that I can explain everything, I can feel morally superior, and I know who my enemies are...and you know what you're supposed to do with enemies? They're not your friends, you move against them.

Marx did the same thing when he described man in a fundamentally economic, class-based manner, and history as the eternal battleground of bourgeoisie and proletariat. Everything can be explained by running it through a Marxist algorithm.

They adopt a single axiom: government is bad, immigration is bad, capitalism is bad, patriarchy is bad. Then they filter and screen their experiences and insist ever more narrowly that everything can be explained by that axiom.

One of the great joys of mathematics is the incontrovertible feeling that you've understood something the right way, all the way down to the bottom; it's a feeling I haven't experienced in any other sphere of mental life. And when you know how to do something the right way, it's hard-for some stubborn people, impossible-to make yourself explain it the wrong way.

You can explain it to a Congressman in six minutes and he can talk about it for six months.

The family historian must master the art of storytelling. What, after all, is truth without anecdote, history without events, explanation without narration--or yet life itself without a story? Stories are not just the wells from which we drink most deeply but at the same time the golden threads that hold and bind--Ariadne's precious string that leads us through the labyrinth that connects living present and the living past.

For those who believe, no explanation is necessary. For those who do not, none will suffice.

When split-brain patients fabricate verbal (left hemisphere based) explanations for behaviors that were produced by the right hemisphere, the left hemisphere is generating explanations of behaviors produced by nonconscious systems and does so in the maintenance of a sense of self. That is, our behavior is an important way we come to know who we are. This is the essence of Gazzaniga's interpreter theory of consciousness (see Chapter 6).

The searching human mind is not satisfied merely to discover facts. We also want to know how things happen and why.

Science is wonderfully equipped to answer the question 'How?' but it gets terribly confused when you ask the question 'Why?'

The reason for this was not that the subject was simple enough to be explained without mathematics, but rather that it was much too involved to be fully accessible to mathematics.

If you are defamed, let time vindicate you — silence is a thousand times better than explanation. Explanations do not explain. Let your life be its own excuse for being — cease all explanations and all apologies and just live your own life. By minding your own business you give others an opportunity to mind theirs; and depend upon it, the great souls will appreciate you for this very thing.' In

If the scriptures had been written with one half of the care and ability with which they have been explained and defended, they would not have been the cause of so much contention and mischief, and they would not have stood in need of so much explanation and defense.

Neither explaining suffering nor offering a program for the elimination of suffering, Lamentations keeps company with the extensive biblical witness that gives dignity to suffering by insisting that God enters our suffering and is companion to our suffering.

Explanation separates us from astonishment, which is the only gateway to the incomprehensible.

Time will explain it all. He is a talker, and needs no questioning before he speaks.

Wonder is the sense, which comes in a flash but won't go away, that things are not as straightforward as they seem, that the ordinary way, or explanation and argument leaves you with unbearable contradictions and impossibilities.