p.14 I want to examine the topic of the power of richness through the lens of my experience learning how wildland firefighters try to make sense of confusing and complex interactions among [the various details of their surroundings]. These complex interactions are consequential because they can generate fatalities.

p.14-15 perception (specific instances) without conception is blind; conception (general simplifications, categories, interrelated variables) without perception is empty. "To perceive, we typify, there is no other alternative" (Gherardi & Turner, 1987: 14) [JLJ - actual quote: "To perceive, we typify: there is no alternative. Without structure, perception is chaotic and any account of the world must typify. One of the most difficult tasks in qualitative social science research is deciding just what kind or level of typification is useful in the appraising of field notes and interview transcripts in order to allow the material to release its sociological messages (Martin & Turner, 1987; Strauss, 1987; Turner, 1988)."]

p.16 it takes a complicated sensing device to register a complicated set of events... Haberstroh describes the law of requisite variety this way: "If the environment can disturb a system in a wide variety of ways, then effective control requires a regulator that can sense these disturbances and intervene with a commensurately large repertory of responses" (1965: 1176). Thus, it takes richness to grasp richness. [JLJ - Haberstroh, C. J. 1965. Organization design and system analysis. In J. G. March (Ed.), Handbook of organizations: 1172-1212. Chicago: Rand McNally]

p.17 Something is rich relative to something else.

p.17 If things seem simple... you're not paying attention... richness gives to elapsed events their own present in all its possibilities, incoherence, and might-have-beens (Dening, 1996: 204)... we have to enter into the experience of those actors in the past who, like us, experience a present as if all the possibilities are still there... we need to accept that the signature of a rich account is often the preservation of disorder and confusion.

p.18 Recall [Swiss-born American zoologist and geologist who taught at Harvard, Jean] Louis Agassiz's admonitions: "You have not looked carefully, that is not right, it is right there in front of your eyes." Richness restrains hubris.

p.18 richness... This is... an argument for detail, for thoroughness, for prototypical narratives, and an argument against formulations that strip out most of what matters. It is an argument that the power of richness lies in the fact that it feeds on itself in ways that enlarge our understanding of the human condition.