Quotes About Context

Instead of causes, biology is repeatedly about propensities, potentials, vulnerabilities, predispositions, proclivities, interactions, modulations, contingencies, if/then clauses, context dependencies, exacerbation or diminution of preexisting tendencies. Circles and loops and spirals and Möbius strips.

We have multiple dichotomies in our heads, and ones that seem inevitable and crucial can, under the right circumstances, have their importance evaporate in an instant.

This context dependency means that rather than causing X, testosterone amplifies the power of something else to cause X.

don't hate aggression; we hate the wrong kind of aggression but love it in the right context. And conversely, in the wrong context our most laudable behaviors are anything but. The motoric features of our behaviors are less important and challenging to understand than the meaning behind our muscles' actions.

Secure-attachment 7Rs show more generosity than average. Thus 7R has something to do with generosity—but its effect is entirely context dependent.

It is virtually impossible to understand how biology works outside the context of environment.

For Apple, and many companies, mobile apps are the secret sauce of the Age of Context; mobile mapping is the most strategic of all categories.

Throughout this book, we've referred to the balance between the benefits and dark sides of the Age of Context. Perhaps the most complex, controversial and sometimes volatile dark side is the issue of user privacy.

Architecture doesn't exist in isolation. It is, in effect, like joining an existing conversation. Architecture should be responsive to its context, purpose, and moment in time.

You cannot teach a poor person to be rich until they change their context. Teaching a person with poor or middle class person's context is a waste of time…and it does annoy them.

she is richer because her context is bigger and she thinks in terms of millions.

It's dreadful what little things lead people to misunderstand each other.

Well, we could have a jolly funeral, you know, said Dan. We looked at him in such horror that Dan hastened to apologize.

Now that's an Okay that really means Okay, not that Okay that women use that means everything but Okay.

nudity meant just without clothes on, neither good nor bad.

An approximate answer to the right problem is worth a good deal more than an exact answer to an approximate problem.

Given any rule, however ?fundamental? or ?necessary? for science, there are always circumstances when it is advisable not only to ignore the rule, but to adopt its opposite.

If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday.

Whenever anyone says, 'theoretically', they really mean, 'not really'.

Fruitful discourse in science or theology requires us to believe that within the contexts of normal discourse there are some true statements.

Nonbelievers may hear all the notes of science, but without a theistic context and perspective they will not hear the song.

The same set of statistics can produce opposite conclusions at different levels of aggregation.

As much as we think of performance management as numeric and thus perfectly quantifiable, it is as much a product of context and social science as the products we design and develop.

most social acts have to be understood in their setting, and lose meaning if isolated. No error in thinking about social facts is more serious than the failure to see their place and function.