Method Quotes - page 43
This book is dedicated to the memory of my teacher Rudolf Bultmann. He encouraged me more than thirty years ago to deal more intensively with the extra-canonical writings from the early Christian period. His unwavering insistence upon the consistent application of the historical-critical method and his emphasis upon the investigation of early Christian literature in the context of the history of religions must remain basic commitments of New Testament scholarship.
Helmut Koester
We regard as 'scientific' a method based on deep analysis of facts, theories, and views, presupposing unprejudiced, unfearing open discussion and conclusions. The complexity and diversity of all the phenomena of modern life, the great possibilities and dangers linked with the scientific-technical revolution and with a number of social tendencies demand precisely such an approach, as has been acknowledged in a number of official statements.
Andrei Sakharov
I advocate training in arms for those who believe in the method of violence. I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honor than that she should in a cowardly manner become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonor.
But I believe that nonviolence is infinitely superior to violence, forgiveness is more manly than punishment, forgiveness adorns a soldier. But abstinence is forgiveness only when there is the power to punish, it is meaningless when it pretends to proceed from a helpless creature. A mouse hardly forgives cat when it allows itself to be torn to pieces by her. ... I do not believe myself to be a helpless creature. Only I want to use India's and my strength for better purpose.
Let me not be misunderstood. Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.
Mahatma Gandhi
It is ironic to think that man might determine his own future by something so seemingly trivial as the choice of an insect spray. All this has been risked-for what? Future historians may well be amazed by our distorted sense of proportion. How could intelligent beings seek to control a few unwanted species by a method that contaminated the entire environment and brought the threat of disease and death even to their own kind? Yet this is precisely what we have done. We have done it, moreover, for reasons that collapse the moment we examine them. We are told that the enormous and expanding use of pesticides is necessary to maintain farm production. Yet is our real problem not one of overproduction?
Rachel Carson
[Berthe Morisot] always painted standing up, walking back and forth before the canvas. She would stare at her subject for a long time (and her look was piercing), her hand ready to place her brushstrokes just where she wanted them.. ..[her method was] to start with a light pencil-sketch, to repeat or very the theme in sanguine, to remodel the composition in pastel and, quite often, to carry forward the theme in watercolor and occasionally to carry it to a final culmination in a finished oil.
Berthe Morisot
The truth is, I was never a very good Party man. Probably but for the War of 1914, I should have gone on fairly comfortably as a Conservative official. But those four years burnt into me the insufferable conditions of international relations which made war the acknowledged method - indeed, the only fully authorized method - of settling international disputes. Thenceforth, the effort to abolish war seemed to me, and still seems to me, the only political object worth while.
Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood
Do not let us underrate the danger. It threatens everything we care for. For if it does succeed, it will not only bring us back to 1914 - in itself bad enough - but to something far worse even than that. For instance, it is now apparently part of the normal doctrine of those who advocate this system that no distinction can be made between combatants and non-combatants, and that a perfectly legitimate and indeed necessary method of warfare will be the wholesale destruction of unfortified cities and their inhabitants. No doubt there will be countervailing efforts to prevent such things happening; but there is, at any rate, one section of military thought which believes that the only way to stop the bombardment of the cities belonging to one belligerent will be the bombardment of the cities belonging to the other.
Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood
It was a real science; it had discovered there among the contingency and disorder, some valid general principles of evolution-development, adaptation, complexification, and many more specific principles as well, confirmed by the various subdisciplines.
What he needed were similar principles influencing human history. The little reading he did in historiography was not encouraging; it was either a sad imitation of the scientific method, or art pure and simple. About every decade a new historical explanation revised all that had come before, but clearly revisionism held pleasures that had nothing to do with the actual justice of the case being made.
Kim Stanley Robinson
This is our mission: to cast a ray of light and pass on. I compare the effects of these first lessons the impressions of a solitary wanderer who is walking serene and happy in a shady grove, meditating; that is leaving his inner thought free to wander. Suddenly a church bell pealing out nearby recalls to himself; then he feels more keenly that peaceful bliss which had already been born, though dormant, within him.
To stimulate life, leaving it free, however, to unfold itself, that is the first duty of the educator.
For such a delicate mission great art is required to suggest the right moment and to limit intervention, last one should disturb or lead astray rather than help the soul which is coming to life and which will live by virtue of its own efforts.
This art must accompany the scientific method, because the simplicity of our lessons bears a great resemblance to experiments in experimental psychology.
Maria Montessori
The modern method of production of sodium is based, therefore, as regards principles upon the conjoint labours of Davy and Faraday. ...These principles took their present form of application at the hands of... Hamilton Y. Castner... It is by Castner's process that all the sodium of to-day is manufactured.
Humphry Davy
It will be necessary to explain the spirit of the method of arranging the observed astronomical objects under consideration in such a manner, that one shall assist us to understand the nature and construction of the other. This end I propose to obtain by assorting them into as many classes as will be required to produce the most gradual affinity... and it will be found that those contained in one article, are so closely allied to those in the next, that there is perhaps not so much difference between them... as there would be in an annual description of the human figure were it given from the birth of a child till he comes to be a man in his prime.
William Herschel
Political correctness is America's newest form of intolerance, and it is especially pernicious because it comes disguised as tolerance. It presents itself as fairness, yet attempts to restrict and control people's language with strict codes and rigid rules. I'm not sure that's the way to fight discrimination. I'm not sure silencing people or forcing them to alter their speech is the best method for solving problems that go much deeper than speech.
..
These allegedly well-intentioned people have strayed so far from reality that it will not be a surprise for me to someday hear a rape victim referred to as an unwilling sperm recipient.
..
Political correctness cripples discourse, creates ugly language and is generally stupid.
George Carlin
Dear Does [= Theo van Doesburg ], thank you for your letter.. .I was glad to know that in principle you are in favour of the diamond hanging [Mondrian's painting, he made in 1919, hanging in a rhombus] and I think that in practice you will approve of this method for some of my things. You look at the thing [painting] itself, and not only the outward appearance..
Piet Mondrian
His great object was to obtain the glitter and sparkle of nature after a shower; and for this purpose, passing by the oak and elm, our two first trees, he took the white poplar and the ash - the one for the leaf, the other for the bark. This I had from himself, and it is a key to his pictures. A French paysagiste [landscape-painter] once came from Paris to request him to show him his method of painting. Constable said he should have been most happy to meet his wishes, but that unfortunately he had no method, and got his pictures up he did not know how. This I had from Mr. Field, who was present.
John Constable
Napier also invented a calculating device known as Napier's bones in 1617 and made common use of decimal multiplications and divisions. The device itself does not use logarithms, but rather is a convenient tool to reduce multiplication and division to a sequence of simple addition and subtraction operations. The method employed by Napier's bones was based on Arab mathematics and Fibonacci's Liber Abaci.
John Napier
