viii One's response to any problem is constrained by one's understanding of it
viii This book will demonstrate that our understanding of science is simplistic and thus inadequate
to the task at hand. We must develop a more sophisticated understanding of what science is, and, as a consequence,
what it can and cannot do for us.
ix It is a well-worn clich� to say that in order to look for creative solutions to the problems we face,
we must learn to "think outside the box."
p.3 The experience of suddenly becoming aware of what was formerly a blind spot is shocking and disturbing.
p.3 Stuart Kauffman, the theoretical biologist and complex systems researcher, said,
My claim is not simply that we lack sufficient knowledge or wisdom to predict the future evolution of the
biosphere, economy, or human culture. It is that these things are inherently beyond prediction. Not even the most
powerful computer imaginable can make a compact description in advance of the regularities of these processes.
p.39 The most profound motivation for doing science is the sense of wonder, even awe, that arises naturally
when confronted with the intricacies of the natural world.
p.70 Ambiguity is the way things are. Certainty is temporary; it comes and goes.
p.73 The arts admit ambiguity as legitimate; the sciences do not.
p.73 the psychologist John Kounios defines creativity as the "ability to restructure one's understanding
of a situation in a nonobvious way."
p.90 ambiguity, not logical consistency, is the way things are.
p.92 Learning does not happen unless there is an acknowledgement, implicitly or explicitly, that there is
a problem, question, or deficiency. Learning is not merely the accumulation of facts. It consists of an insight into the relationship
between facts.
p.108 Measurement is the most basic thing you do in science; if something cannot be measured, I'd be tempted
to say it is not science. You can scarcely imagine a scientific experiment that does not measure some quantity or
other. And how is it measured? It must be measured by using a yardstick of some kind. And what is a yardstick? It
is a standard model of the quantity being measured - length or weight, whatever. This yardstick is
a way of introducing number into the situation.
p.109 Quantity is the latent mathematical potential that is implicit in a given situation, while measurement
is the activity through which that mathematical potential is made explicit.
p.109 One of the most basic functions of perception is the ability to differentiate figure from ground [JLJ
- we also might say signal from noise]
p.114 It may well be that historical progress in mathematics is in part due to the process of abstraction,
which inevitably involves narrowing the focus of attention to precisely those properties of the situation that one finds most
immediately relevant.
p.117 Creative individuals often have a way of thinking about scientific situations that are unique.
p.131 Every scientific situation has two elements: objects... and relations (or forces) between these objects.
[JLJ - see Selye]
p.157 ambiguity is resolved when the situation is understood. Understanding is the resolution
of ambiguity.
p.157 The most basic thing about ambiguity in the way I am using the term is that it is "generative" not
static; the ambiguity generates potential resolutions. Any specific definition or particular understanding of ambiguity
must necessarily be tentative... ambiguity is real but cannot be made precise... It is ambiguity and not certainty
that best describes the way things are.
p.159 the change being described disappears at the theoretical level; we describe change using an unchanging
theory of change.
p.163 as I have discussed at length, reality is ultimately ungraspable.
p.165 ambiguity is ambiguous... clarity is a particular aspect of ambiguity. [JLJ - glad you clarified
that for us.]
p.165 The statement of the fundamental ambiguity says that... ambiguity is fundamental and that
non-ambiguity is merely one aspect of this fundamental ambiguity.
p.170 Something about ambiguity always slips from our grasp, making it ungraspable... Yet there is also
something we can understand.
p.172 "fundamentally things are ambiguous."
p.173 the clarity we assume to be a basic feature of the natural world merely masks a deeper ambiguity.
One of the functions of mathematics and science is precisely to deny this ambiguity.
p.173 Clarity arises from ambiguity in acts of creativity. Ideas structure situations, and situations that
are structured in this way appear to be clear and coherent.
p.176 Science is a point of view, and there is always room for other points of view.
p.176 The clarity of science has room within it for the ambiguous and goes seriously astray when
this ambiguity is unacknowledged.
p.177 At each level, the statement of the fundamental ambiguity gives us an insight into what is
going on; at every level, the same fundamental dynamic of ambiguity plays itself out.
p.178 The results of science and the critical problems that we face demand that we face up to uncertainty
and ambiguity, no matter how stressful this is.
p.179 True thinking is thinking that looks disorder and uncertainty straight in the face. -Edgar Morin
p.183 when one is modeling some situation... it is reasonable to use any assumptions that work,
but it is not reasonable to make these assumptions into "laws," or to forget that these are assumptions that people
made in the first place.
p.183 This book has argued for the existence of a blind spot that needs to be taken into account
in our scientific reconstruction of the world. The blind spot exists whether we acknowledge it or not, so the crucial
question concerns the nature of our response.
p.185 The world of the uncertain is the world of creative possibilities.
