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 »
Heaven has a Sea of Glass on which angels go sliding every afternoon. There are many golden streets, but the principal thoroughfar...es are Amen Street and Hallelujah Avenue, which intersect in front of the Throne. These streets play tunes when walked on, and all shoes have songs in them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is natural, now, to think of there being connected with a sign (name, combination of words, letter) besides that to which the s...ign refers, which may be called the reference of the sign, also what I should like to call the sense of the sign, wherein the mode of presentation is contained. In our example, accordingly, [an example in which lines a, b, and c all intersect at a single point] the reference of the expressions 'the point of intersection of a and b' and 'the point of intersection of b and c' would be the same, but not their senses. The reference of 'evening star' would be the same as that of 'morning star,' but not the sense.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Our missiles always make too short an arc: They fall, they rip the grass, they intersect... The curve of earth, and striking, break their own;LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What I have observed of the pond is no less true in ethics. It is the law of average. Such a rule of the two diameters not only gu...ides us toward the sun in the system and the heart in man, but draw lines through the length and breadth of the aggregate of a man's particular daily behaviors ... and where they intersect will be the height or depth of his character. Perhaps we need only to know how his shores trend and his adjacent country or circumstances, to infer his depth and concealed bottom.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If modernism had tried to anchor in consciousness a centre which could no longer hold--the conscience of the heroic, socially alie...nated artist--postmodernism had shown us an even darker side of modernity and the aporias of the aesthetic. It had shown that there is nothing for consciousness to be anchored to: no universal ground of truth, justice, or reason, so that consciousness itself is thus "decentred," no longer origin, author, location of intentional agency but a function through which impersonal forces pass and intersect--Dover Beach displaced by an international airport lounge.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »