Theoretical Quotes - Page 13

• Theoretical approaches have their place and are, I suppose, essential but a theory must be tempered with reality.

  Jawaharlal Nehru

  Reality, Essentials, Theory

  Jawaharlal Nehru (1954). “Speeches 1949-1953”

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• The number one problem in academia today is not ignorant students but ignorant professors, who have substituted narrow "expertise" and "theoretical sophistication" (a preposterous term) for breadth and depth of learning in the world history of art and thought... Art is a vast, ancient interconnected web-work, a fabricated tradition. Overconcentration on any one point is a distortion. This is one of the primary reasons for the dullness and ineptitude of so much twentieth-criticism, as compared to nineteenth-century belles-lettres.

  Camille Paglia

  Art, Numbers, Ignorant

  "Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders: Academe in the Hour of the Wolf". Camille Paglia, "Arion", Third Series, Volume 1, No. 2, Spring 1991.

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• If you find that you're spending almost all your time on theory, start turning some attention to practical things; it will improve your theories. If you find that you're spending almost all your time on practice, start turning some attention to theoretical things; it will improve your practice.

  Donald Knuth

  Practice, Attention, Spending

  "Theory and Practice". Theoretical Computer Science, 1991.

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• The only knowledge that can truly orient action is knowledge that frees itself from mere human interests and is based in Ideas - in other words knowledge that has taken a theoretical attitude.

  Jurgen Habermas

  Attitude, Taken, Ideas

  "Knowledge and Human Interests". Book by Jürgen Habermas, 1971.

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• [Critical social science attempts] to determine when theoretical statements grasp invariant regularities of social action as such and when they express ideologically frozen relations of dependence that can in principle be transformed.

  Jurgen Habermas

  Principles, Frozen, Action

  "Knowledge and Human Interests". Book by Jürgen Habermas, 1971.

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• Sex itself only only exists in relation to procreation. That's one of the reasons why I sometimes object, and it's just a theoretical objection, but it's worth thinking about, to the whole notion that one calls what people of the same sex do, sexual relations. As a matter of fact, they have precisely turned their back on sexual relations, in order to engage in acts of mutual pleasure that have nothing whatsoever to do with sexuality...

  Alan Keyes

  Sex, Thinking, Order

  Alan Keyes' National Federation of Republican Assemblies Speech, www.keyesarchives.com. August 31, 2004.

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• It is hard to see how one could begin to develop a quantum-theoretical description of brain action when one might well have to regard the brain as "observing itself" all the time!

  Roger Penrose

  Brain, Might, Action

  Roger Penrose (2016). “The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics”, p.821, Oxford University Press

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• Myths often do a lot of theoretical good, while they are still new.

  Gilbert Ryle

  Myth, Stills

  Gilbert Ryle (2015). “The Concept of Mind”, p.17, Lulu Press, Inc

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• That's all very well as an abstract moral principle, Avril, a coffee-table theoretical construct, but there's no denying the sheer gratuitous pleasure to be derived from seeing members of the ruling class in pain and torment.

  Irvine Welsh

  Pain, Coffee, Class

  Irvine Welsh (1995). “The Acid House”, p.269, W. W. Norton & Company

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• This law (regarding the theoretical efficiency of heat engines by Mr. Joule), and the law of the maximum efficiency of heat engines, are particular cases of a general law which regulates all transformation of energy, and is the basis of the Science of Energetics.

  William John Macquorn Rankine

  Law, Energy, Heat

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• To avert the danger [posed by theory] to life, Nietzsche could choose one of two ways: he could insist on the strictly esoteric character of the theoretical analysis of life - that is, restore the Platonic notion of the noble delusion - or else he could deny the possibility of theory proper and so conceive of thought as essentially subservient to, or dependent on, life or fate... If not Nietzsche himself, at any rate his successors [Heidegger] adopted the second alternative.

  Leo Strauss

  Character, Fate, Two

  "Natural Right and History". Book by Leo Strauss, 1953.

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• One important idea is that science is a means whereby learning is achieved, not by mere theoretical speculation on the one hand, nor by the undirected accumulation of practical facts on the other, but rather by a motivated iteration between theory and practice.

  George E. P. Box

  Mean, Hands, Practice

  "Science and Statistics". Journal of the American Statistical Association, Vol. 71, No. 356, (p. 791), December, 1976.

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• Science has been effective at furthering our understanding of nature because the scientific ethos is based on three key principles: (1) follow the evidence wherever it leads; (2) if one has a theory, one needs to be willing to try to prove it wrong as much as one tries to prove that it is right; (3) the ultimate arbiter of truth is experiment, not the comfort one derives from one's a priori beliefs, nor the beauty or elegance one ascribes to one's theoretical models.

  Lawrence M. Krauss

  Keys, Ethos, Common Sense

  Lawrence M. Krauss (2012). “A Universe From Nothing”, p.16, Simon and Schuster

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• Now these two questions Does there exist a material reality distinct from sensible appearances? and What is the nature of reality? do not have their source in experimental method, which is acquainted only with sensible appearances and can discover nothing beyond them. The resolution of these questions transcends the methods used by physics; it is the object of metaphysics. Therefore, if the aim of physical theories is to explain experimental laws, theoretical physics is not an autonomous science; it is subordinate to metaphysics.

  Pierre Duhem

  Reality, Two, Theoretical Physics

  "The aim and structure of physical theory". Book by Pierre Duhem, translated by Philip P. Wiener, p. 10, 1991.

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• At present, when the prevailing forms of society have become hindrances to the free expression of human powers, it is precisely the abstract branches of science, mathematics and theoretical physics, which ... offer a less distorted form of knowledge than other branches of science which are interwoven with the pattern of daily life, and the practicality of which seemingly testifies to their realistic character.

  Max Horkheimer

  Character, Expression, Theoretical Physics

  Max Horkheimer (1972). “Critical Theory: Selected Essays”, p.133, A&C Black

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• Once the philosophical foundation of democracy has collapsed, the statement that dictatorship is bad is rationally valid only for those who are not its beneficiaries, and there is no theoretical obstacle to the transformation of this statement into its opposite.

  Max Horkheimer

  Philosophical, Democracies Have, Opposites

  Max Horkheimer (2013). “Eclipse of Reason”, p.19, A&C Black

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• For thousands of years humankind's finest minds have been struggling with the theoretical problem of finding the forms that would give peoples the possibility, without the greatest of torment, without internecine strife, of living side by side in friendship and brotherhood. Practically speaking, the first step in this direction is only being taken now, today.

  Mikhail Kalinin

  Struggle, Taken, Years

  "Survivor From An Unknown War: The Life of Isakjan Narzikul" by Stephen Lee Crane, (p. 3), 1999.

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• Theoretical webs, dirty webs, fusty webs, old and shrivelling away into nothingness, a fine dust.Who needs that kind of stuff. Far far better getting out into the open air and doing it, actually doing it, something solid and concrete and unconceptualisable.

  James Kelman

  Dirty, Air, Dust

  1989 A Disaffection.

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• What appear to be the most valuable aspects of the theoretical physics we have are the mathematical descriptions which enable us to predict events. These equations are, we would argue, the only realities we can be certain of in physics; any other ways we have of thinking about the situation are visual aids or mnemonics which make it easier for beings with our sort of macroscopic experience to use and remember the equations.

  Celia Green

  Reality, Thinking, Theoretical Physics

  "The Lost Cause: Causation and the Mind-body Problem". Book by Celia Green, 2003.

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• However we select from nature a complex [of phenomena] using the criterion of simplicity, in no case will its theoretical treatment turn out to be forever appropriate (sufficient).... I do not doubt that the day will come when [general relativity], too, will have to yield to another one, for reasons which at present we do not yet surmise. I believe that this process of deepening theory has no limits.

  Albert Einstein

  Believe, Yield, Simplicity

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• Experience arises together with theoretical assumptions not before them, and an experience without theory is just as incomprehensible as is (allegedly) a theory without experience.

  Paul Feyerabend

  Together, Assumption, Arise

  Paul Feyerabend (1993). “Against Method”, p.149, Verso

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• It is tribute to how far we have come in theoretical physics that it now takes enormous machines and a great deal of money to perform experiments whose results we can not predict.

  Stephen Hawking

  Theoretical Physics, Machines, Results

  Stephen W. Hawking (1993). “Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays”, Bantam

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• It is however pretty evident, on general principles, that in devising for mathematical truths a new form in which to record and throw themselves out for actual use, views are likely to be induced, which should again react on the more theoretical phase of the subject.

  Ada Lovelace

  Views, Principles, Use

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• Any philosophical and theoretical assurance that laughter is unique to the human being becomes somewhat unsure when one turns to the anthropological literature.

  Simon Critchley

  Laughter, Philosophical, Unique

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• [T]he shaman treats all realities as subjective, much like some modern theoretical physicists are beginning to do. In such a viewpoint the question of whether an experience is real or not makes no sense, because the answer is yes and no, depending on your point of view.

  Serge King

  Real, Views, Yes And No

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