Explanation Quotes - Page 16

• How scientists go about their job: and it's a process, it's a question of asking questions, respecting observation, respecting experiment, having tentative explanations and then testing them.... There is a problem sometimes with how we teach science at schools. Because we sometimes teach it as if it has been chiseled in stone.

  Paul Nurse

  Jobs, School, Asking Questions

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• Modernistic-Abstractionist-Art consists of 75% explanation and 25% God knows what!

  Maxfield Parrish

  Art, God Knows, Knows

  Said to William O. Chessman on March 27, 1936. "Maxfield Parrish". Book by Coy L. Ludwig, 1973.

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• Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is the only workable explanation that has ever been proposed for the remarkable fact of our own existence, indeed the existence of all life wherever it may turn up in the universe.

  John Maynard Smith

  Theory Of Evolution, May, Facts

  John Maynard Smith (1993). “The Theory of Evolution”, p.15, Cambridge University Press

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• Regardless of the extent to which the media promote "politically correct," but scientifically wrong, resolutions from professional societies such as the American Anthropological Association, facts remain facts and require appropriate scientific, not political or ideological, explanation. None of this should be construed as meaning that environmental factors play no part in individual and group differences. But with each passing year and each new study, the evidence for the genetic contribution to these differences becomes more firmly established than ever.

  J. Philippe Rushton

  Years, Play, Environmental Factors

  Mankind Quarterly, Volume 39, Issue 2 (p. 231), Winter 1998.

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• Historically, labor unions arose when people had gotten a taste of a different lifestyle and were willing to pay a lot more for their basic livelihood and had gotten into a fix they couldn't get out of - because they had accepted the unacceptable to begin with. Accepting something you have to form a labor union to fight after the fact only tells me that people were acting against their own best (or even good) interests for a long time. I don't see any rational, coherent explanation for this sort of behavior in humans, but it's all over the place.

  Erik Naggum

  Fighting, Long, People

  "Source access vs dynamism". Usenet discussion groups, groups.google.com. August 28, 1999.

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• Sometimes I feel that a more rational explanation for all that has happened during my lifetime is that I am still only thirteen years old, reading Jules Verne or H. G. Wells, and have fallen asleep.

  Stanislaw Ulam

  Reading, Years, Sometimes

  "Adventures of a Mathematician". Book by Stanislaw Ulam. Preface To the 1983 Edition, p. 27,

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• By an incredible coincidence, Gamow and Edward Condon, who had discovered simultaneously and independently the explanation of radioactivity (one in Russia, the other in this country), came to spend the the last ten years of their lives within a hundred yards of each other in Boulder.

  Stanislaw Ulam

  Country, Russia, Years

  "Adventures of a Mathematician" by Stanislaw Ulam, Third Edition, (p. 267), 1991.

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• The apostles suffered incredible persecution and died horrible deaths in the Christian cause. The only possible explanation for their zeal was that they had actually seen, talked with and eaten with the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ. If Christ had not really risen and had not appeared to the apostles, would they all have died for a lie?

  Fritz Ridenour

  Christian, Jesus, Lying

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• One could dismiss the zombie trend as merely feeding a mass public that craves the strange and bizarre. Such an explanation would be only skin-deep. Popular culture often provides a window into the subliminal or unstated fears of citizens, and zombies are no exception. Some cultural commentators argue that the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks are a primary cause for renewed interest in the living dead, and the numbers appear to back up this assertion.

  Daniel Drezner

  Numbers, September 11, Zombie

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• Crocker's Rules didn't give you the right to say anything offensive, but other people could say potentially offensive things to you, and it was your responsibility not to be offended. This was surprisingly hard to explain to people; many people would read the careful explanation and hear, "Crocker's Rules mean you can say offensive things to other people."

  Eliezer Yudkowsky

  Responsibility, Mean, People

  "Radical Honesty". lesswrong.com. September 10, 2007.

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• There are many aspects of time we just do not understand. That’s the thing about writing a popular book: You realize the things you understand because for those you can give a really simple explanation. But some things about time I just don’t know how to give simple explanations for, even though I can tell you mathematically what’s going on.

  Lisa Randall

  Book, Writing, Simple

  Interview with Robert Birnbaum, themorningnews.org. February 9, 2006.

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• Our alleged facts might be true in all kinds of ways without contradicting any truth already known. I will dwell now on only one possible line of explanation, - not that I see any way of elucidating all the new phenomena I regard as genuine, but because it seems probable I may shed a light on some of those phenomena. All the phenomena of the universe are presumably in some way continuous; and certain facts, plucked as it were from the very heart of nature, are likely to be of use in our gradual discovery of facts which lie deeper still.

  William Crookes

  Lying, Heart, Light

  "Address to the Society for Psychical Research". "Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research", Volume 12, (p. 338), March 1897.

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• The theory of politics that emerges from the political literature of the pre-Revolutionary years rests on the belief that what lay behind every political scene, the ultimate explanation of every political controversy, was the disposition of power.

  Bernard Bailyn

  Years, Political, Literature

  Bernard Bailyn (2012). “The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution”, p.55, Harvard University Press

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• Creativity can never be explained by appeal to reason alone. Like the birth of a child, creativity compels us not to explanation but to wonder and awe.

  George Vaillant

  Children, Creativity, Birth

  George E. Vaillant (1995). “The Wisdom of the Ego”, p.230, Harvard University Press

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• The scientific method is the ultimate elegant explanation. It is the ultimate foundation for anything worthy of the name "explanation". It makes no sense to talk about explanations without having a process for deciding which are right and which are wrong, and in a broad sense that is what the scientific method is about. All of the other wonderful explanations celebrated here owe their origin and credibility to the process by which they are verified-the scientific method.

  Nathan Myhrvold

  Names, Scientific Method, Foundation

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• To me, the explanation of life seems to be its melody, its pattern. And I feel in life such an infinite, truly inconceivable fantasy.

  Isak Dinesen

  Patterns, Fantasy, Infinite

  Interview with Bent Mohn, The New York Times Book Review, November 3, 1957.

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• The transcendent and the numinous can be accessible to the most materialistic of scientists, without positing the supernatural. At the same time, there is no reason to mistrust the same experiences in believers simply because they posit a supernatural source. The question is not, "Does God exist?" It's irrelevant. The question is whether believers and nonbelievers can rejoice in the same experiences and not denigrate the other's explanation as to the origins of very powerful human responses.

  Norman Cota

  Powerful, Unity, Doe

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• I've always wondered where explanations end and excuses begin.

  Errol Morris

  Excuse, Ends

  "New Morris Film Traps McNamara in a Fog of War" by Ron Rosenbaum, observer.com. September 29, 2003.

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• As for the Jews, their explanation of anti-Semitism is more characteristic yet. In addition to the usual cliche, "with hatred and savagery" - naturally with no motive, they do not care to discuss motives - according to them, anti-Semitism is a madness, an intellectual degeneration, an affliction of the spirit.

  A. C. Cuza

  Hatred, Intellectual, Usual

  "Ştiinţa antisemitismului ("The Science of Anti-Semitism")". "Apararea Nationala" ("The National Defense") No. 16, Nov. 15, 1922.

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• Historians are presumed to be unable to "do psychology," which is "mystical" anyway, so they are forced to accept the most "rational" explanations... "and it is on these that history is built.

  Lloyd deMause

  Psychology, Accepting, Mystical

  Lloyd DeMause (1975). “The New Psychohistory”, New York : Psychohistory Press

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• Although my view is a world-wide one and my area of observation is Europe, the nation closest to my heart is, understandably, my homeland. And it is a fortunate coincidence, fortunate in terms of the explanation of the world, that it is this country which is the clearest example of the playground of destructive development in the whole world.

  Pentti Linkola

  Country, Heart, Views

  "Can Life Prevail?: A Radical Approach to the Environmental Crisis". Book by Pentti Linkola, 2004.

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• It appears, from all that precedes, reasonably certain that if there be any relative motion between the earth and the luminiferous ether, it must be small; quite small enough entirely to refute Fresnel's explanation of aberration.

  Albert A. Michelson

  Aberration, Earth, Enough

  "On the Relative Motion of the Earth and the Luminiferous Ether". Article by by Albert A. Michelson and Edward W. Morley. American Journal of Science, 1887, 34 (203), p. 341, en.wikisource.org. 1887.

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• Without the Christian explanation of original sin, the seemingly silly story of Adam and Eve and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, there was no explanation of conflict. At all.

  Donald Miller

  Christian, Silly, Evil

  Donald Miller (2012). “Blue Like Jazz: Movie Edition: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality”, p.32, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• You can assume that if a writer's work has survived for centuries, there are reasons why this is so, explanations that have nothing to do with a conspiracy of academics plotting to resuscitate a zombie army of dead white males.

  Francine Prose

  Army, White, Zombie

  Francine Prose (2009). “Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them”, p.15, Harper Collins

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• Death is not regarded as a natural affair by primitive man. Death is believed to be due to the intervention of some malevolent or at least not well disposed power. Normally it should not take place. So we have all through history crude explanations of death, as e.g., the influence of the serpent, the devil, sin.

  Joseph Alexander Leighton

  Men, Primitive Man, Devil

  Joseph Alexander Leighton (1918). “The Field of Philosophy: An Outline of Lectures on Introduction to Philosophy”

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