Quotes About Calculability

There seems to be a time scale in all natural processes beyond which structural stability and calculability become incompatible. In planetary mechanics this scale is of such an extent that the incompatibility is not evident, whereas in quantum mechanics it is so short that the incompatibility is immediately felt, and today the physicist sacrifices structural stability for computability. I hope that he will not have cause to regret this choice.

True law is not imposed; it arises from unintentional developments. (...)Law emerges (...) as something not merely legislated but given. The later positivism knows no origin and has no home. It recognizes only causes or basic norms. It seeks to be the opposite of "unintended" law. Its ultimate goal is control and calculability.

The essence of policy is its contingency; its success depends on the correctness of an estimate which is in part conjectural. The essence of bureaucracy is its quest for safety; its success is calculability . . . The attempt to conduct policy bureaucratically leads to a quest for calculability which tends to become a prisoner of events.