Elucidation Quotes
Without doubt, if we are to go back to that ultimate, integral experience, unwarped by the sophistications of theory, that experience whose elucidation is the final aim of philosophy, the flux of things is one ultimate generalization around which we must weave our philosophical system.
Alfred North Whitehead
The Scientific discourse extracts truths from the errors which surround and oppose it on all sides and in every form; and, by demolition of these opposing views as error, and as impossible to true thought, shows the truth as that which alone remains after their withdrawal, and therefore as the only possible truth: and in this separation of opposites, and elucidation of the truth from the confused chaos in which truth and error lie mingled together, consists the peculiar and characteristic nature of the Scientific discourse. This method creates and produces truth, before our eyes, out of a world full of error.
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Admirers of the ‘purified' Nietzsche have been hard put to unite his sanctioning of barbarity with an often subtle and rarefied cultural critique. But we can easily dispose of this dichotomy. In the first place, the union of ultra-refinement and brutality was by no means a personal quirk requiring psychological elucidation, but a universal, psychical-moral distinguishing mark of imperialist decadence.
György Lukács
Either history is really governed by laws, and in that case a truly human-activity is impossible, except perhaps in a technical sense; or human beings really make their own history, and then the task of theory will not be directed to discovering 'laws', but to the elucidation of the conditions with in which human activity unfolds.
Cornelius Castoriadis
Given my interest in the concept of time, it was only natural that my attention was focused on the second principle, as I felt from the start that it would introduce a new, unexpected element into the description of physical world evolution. No doubt it was the same impression illustrious physicists such as Boltzmann and Planck would have felt before me. A huge part of my scientific career would then be devoted to the elucidation of macroscopic as well as microscopic aspects of the second principle, in order to extend its validity to new situations, and to the other fundamental approaches of theoretical physics, such as classical and quantum dynamics.
Ilya Prigogine
The elucidation of the theory of centripetal and disturbing forces is necessarily less complete. Still... a general conception of the nature of the action of those forces... sufficient to preserve the student from the gross errors... may be obtained from explanations like those here offered. The methods of ascertaining the weight of the Earth and other bodies are... more difficult of explanation; yet... something may be done even in these.
George Biddell Airy
An innovative discussion of building empirical models and the fitting of surfaces to data. Introduces the general philosophy of response surface methodology, and details least squares for response surface work, factorial designs at two levels, fitting second-order models, adequacy of estimation and the use of transformation, occurrence and elucidation of ridge systems, and more. Some results are presented for the first time. Includes real-life exercises, nearly all with solutions.
George E. P. Box
Another theme of the Wake that helps in the understanding of the paradoxical shift from cliché to archetype is "pastimes are past times". The dominant technologies of one age become the games and pastimes of a later age. In the twentieth century the number of past times that are simultaneously available is so vast as to create cultural anarchy. When all the cultures of the world are simultaneously present, the work of the artist in the elucidation of form takes on new scope and new urgency. Most men are pushed into the artist role. The artist cannot dispense with the principle of doubleness and interplay since this kind of hendiadys-dialogue is essential to the very structure of consciousness, awareness, and autonomy.
Marshall McLuhan
Much of social science has been built as a citadel against metaphysics and politics. Faithful to the outlook produced by the modern revolt against ancient philosophy, the classic social theorists were anxious to free themselves first from the illusions of metaphysics, then from the seeming arbitrariness of political judgments. They wanted to create a body of objective knowledge of society that would not be at the mercy of philosophical speculation or political controversy, and, up to a point, they succeeded. But now we see that to resolve its own dilemmas, social theory must again become, in a sense, both metaphysical and political. It must take a stand on issues of human nature and human knowledge for which no "scientific" elucidation is, or may ever be, available. And it must acknowledge that its own future is inseparable from the fate of society.
Roberto Mangabeira Unger
One can say, looking at the papers in this symposium, that the elucidation of the genetic code is indeed a great achievement. It is, in a sense, the key to molecular biology because it shows how the great polymer languages, the nucleic acid language and the protein language, are linked together.
Francis Crick
That fondness for science, ... that affability and condescension which God shows to the learned, that promptitude with which he protects and supports them in the elucidation of obscurities and in the removal of difficulties, has encouraged me to compose a short work on calculating by al-jabr and al-muqabala, confining it to what is easiest and most useful in arithmetic.
Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī
