Predictions usually deal with events--who will win an election, whether or not a country will go to war, the specification of a ne...w invention; they center on decisions. Yet such predictions, while possible, cannot be formalized, i.e. made subject to rules. The prediction of events is inherently difficult. Events are the intersect of social vectors (interests, forces, pressures, and the like). While one can to some extent assess the strength of these vectors individually, one would need a "social physics" to predict the exact crosspoints where decisions and forces combine.... Forecasting is possible where there are regularities and recurrences of phenomena (these are rare), of where there are persisting trends whose direction, if not exact trajectory, can be plotted with statistical time-series or be formulated as historical tendencies. Necessarily, therefore, one deals with probabili ties and an array of possible projections. But the limitations of forecasting are also evident. The further one reaches ahead in time with a set of forecasts, the greater the margin for error, since the fan of the projections widens.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In matters of usage there are two extremes. At the extreme right are the purists, the standpatters, the rigid traditionalists who ...brook little or no change and who go by the rules--as many rules as they can recall or invent. They may not speak or write brilliantly, but they are grammatically unassailable--except when they forget some rule or misinterpret one.... At the extreme left are the permissivists, the heretics who argue that there is no such thing as "correct" usage. They maintain that usage is what people say, but they neglect to disclose what people they are talking about--most people in general or most intelligent people or most educated people or most writing people or what. Oddly enough, despite the loose approach of the permissivists, who have made some headway in the schools, there is evidence that people do crave authority in matters of language, they do ask for rules and rulings. They do not seem to appreciate the freedom that the permissivists are so eager to bestow upon them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In my own view, there are clear differences between child and adult artistic activity. While the child may be aware that he is doi...ng things differently from others, he does not fully appreciate the rules and conventions of symbolic realms; his adventurousness holds little significance. In contrast, the adult artist is fully cognizant of the norms embraced by others; his willingness, his compulsion, to reject convention is purchased, at the very least, with full knowledge of what he is doing and often at considerable psychic cost to himself. As Picasso once remarked, "I used to draw like Raphael, but it has taken me a whole lifetime to learn to draw like a child."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Science is not gadgetry. The desirable adjuncts of modern living, although in many instances made possible by science, certainly d...o not constitute science. Basic scientific knowledge often (but not always) is a prerequisite to such developments, but technology primarily deserves the credit for having the financial courage, the ingenuity, and the driving energy to see to it that so-called "pure knowledge" is in fact brought to the practical service of man. And it should also be recognized that those who have the urge to apply knowledge usefully have themselves often made significant contribution to pure knowledge and have even more often served as a stimulation to the activities of a pure researcher.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The purpose of ritual for men is to learn the rules of power and competition. Watching sports together, for example, they see the ...formal enactment of ritual, become loyal to a team, learn to conceal their vulnerability. The purpose of ritual for women (going to lunch together, sharing a favorite salon, etc.) is to learn how to make human connections. They are often more intimate and vulnerable with one another than they are with their men, and taking care of other women teaches them to take care of themselves. In these formal ways, men and women domesticate their emotional lives. But their strategies are different, their biological itineraries are different. His sperm needs to travel, her egg needs to settle down. It's astonishing that they survive happily at all.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... life cannot be administered by definite rules and regulations; that wisdom to deal with a man's difficulties comes only throug...h some knowledge of his life and habits as a whole ...LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is no kind of false Wit which has been so recommended by the Practice of all Ages, as that which consists in a Jingle of Wor...ds, and is comprehended under the general Name of Punning. It is indeed impossible to kill a Weed, which the Soil has a natural Disposition to produce. The seeds of Punning are in the Minds of all Men, and tho' they may be subdued by Reason, Reflection, and good Sense, they will be very apt to shoot up in the greatest Genius, that is not broken and cultivated by the Rules of Art. Imitation is natural to us, and when it does not raise the Mind to Poetry, Painting, Musick, or other more noble Arts, it often breaks out in Punns and Quibbles.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »