Reductive Quotes

Science is a victim of its own reductive metaphors: 'Big Bang,' 'selfish gene' and so on. Richard Dawkins' selfish gene fitted with the Thatcherite politics of the time. It should actually be the 'altruistic gene,' but he'd never have sold as many books with a title like that. (Charles Jencks)
I object to several popular ideas. I don't think anyone's work is reductive. The most the term can mean is that new work doesn't have what the old work had. Its not so definitive that a certain kind of form is missing; a description and discussion of the kind present is pretty definitive. View quote
Donald Judd
I don't think it's a good idea for a writer to psychoanalyze herself or try to explain why she writes what she writes-it's a reductive way of looking at oneself and one's work. Readers really participate in the writing of a book. As a writer I'm giving the reader signs to help create the story with me. The reader is bringing his or her own memories, intelligence, preconceptions, prejudices, likes, dislikes. So the characters in your copy of the book are going to look and sound different than in mine. I have my own ideas, but once the book is out there it's not really mine anymore, and my own idea isn't any more valid than yours. And then I begin the long process of disengaging. View quote
Donna Tartt
Muslim fundamentalists have toppled governments and either assassinated or threatened the enemies of Islam with the death penalty. Similarly, Jewish fundamentalists have settled in the Occupied Territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with the avowed intention of driving out the Arab inhabitants, using force if necessary. Thus they believe that they are paving a way for the advent of the Messiah, which is at hand. In all its forms, fundamentalism is a fiercely reductive faith. View quote
Karen Armstrong
I gather you were all too busy killing each other.” "That's a fairly reductive summary of our history, but I don't suppose it's too far from the truth. View quote
Alastair Reynolds
It's an honor putting art above politics. Politics can be seductive in terms of things reductive to the soul. View quote
Robert Redford
We have fallen into this very mean description of humanity. Naturalism in fiction is too reductive in its definition of human beings. View quote
Ben Okri
It seems to me that any ideology is bad because it is inevitably reductive and identifies other ideologies as evil, and itself with truth, whereas both truth and goodness are always transcendent. View quote
Alexander Schmemann
They don't change the analytic, reductive methodology, just the interpretations and conclusions. There seems little to lose, and much to gain. View quote
Roger Wolcott Sperry
I do not contest that this top-down instrumental use for pure politics was being made to some degree; but to reduce the entire process of cultural evolution to a matter of politics betrays a profound misunderstanding. This view disregards the intrinsic appeal of the Sanskrit tradition, including for non-elites, and the various roles it played in the cultures it touched. In particular, to dismiss the entire symbolic discourse of Sanskrit as 'mystifying' is to apply a reductive Marxism that cannot account for sacredness in the lives of people. View quote
Rajiv Malhotra
I think time will show that the new approach, emphasizing emergent "macro" control, is equally valid in all the physical sciences, and that the behavioral and cognitive disciplines are leading the way to a more valid framework for all science. Although the theoretic changes make little difference in physics, chemistry, molecular biology, and so on, they are crucial for the behavioral, social, and human sciences. They don't change the analytic, reductive methodology, just the interpretations and conclusions. There seems little to lose, and much to gain. (Roger Wolcott Sperry)