Cause quotes

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Aristotle

Four Causes

“Plainly, then, these are the causes, and this is how many they are. They are four, and the student of nature should know them all, and it will be his method, when stating on account of what, to get back to them all: the matter, the form, the thing which effects the change, and what the thing is for.”'
  • Source: Aristotle, From Physics, Book II, Part 7, 198a21-26. As quoted in Stephen Everson, 'Aristotle on the Foundations of the State', Political Studies (1988), 36, 89-101. Reprinted in Lloyd P. Gerson (ed.), Aristotle: Politics, Rhetoric and Aesthetics (1999), 74.
Keywords: Epistemology_quotes Physics_quotes Cause_quotes Student_quotes Nature_quotes Knowledge_quotes Method_quotes Matter_quotes Form_quotes Effect_quotes Change_quotes

Claude_Bernard

Counterproof

“Experimenters, who see their ideas confirmed by an experiment, should still doubt and require a counterproof. Indeed, proof that a given condition always precedes or accompanies a phenomenon does not warrant concluding with certainty that a given condition is the immediate cause of that phenomenon.”
  • Source: From the book "An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine" written by Claude Bernard published in French in 1865 as "Introduction à l'étude de la médecine expérimentale". Translated to English by Henry Copley Greene in 1927 and republished by Henry Shuman, Inc. in 1949. Chapter II, page 55. Available online at https://archive.org/details/b21270557 retrieved 2024.
Keywords: Experimenter_quotes Idea_quotes Confirm_quotes Experiment_quotes Doubt_quotes Require_quotes Counterproof_quotes Proof_quotes Condition_quotes Always_quotes Precede_quotes Accompany_quotes Phenomenon_quotes Warrant_quotes Conclude_quotes Certainty_quotes Immediate_quotes Cause_quotes

Arthur_Bloch

Murphy's Law Corollary 3

“If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.”
  • Source: Attributed to Edward A Murphy, reported in the book “Murphy's Law and Other Reasons Why Things Go Wrong” written by Arthur Bloch, first edition published in 1977 by Price/Stern/Sloan, Los Angeles, California. ISBN-10: 0843104287. ISBN-13: 978-0843104288. Chapter Murphology, page 11.
Keywords: Possibility_quotes Several_quotes Go_quotes Wrong_quotes One_quotes Cause_quotes Most_quotes Damage_quotes Law_quotes Murphy(topic)_quotes

Robert_N_Britcher

Errors in Tests and Simulators

“The simulator software had to be tested as thoroughly as the software it was built to test. A fault in the simulator would cause the worst kind of problem, what computer analysts call a Byzantine failure. Byzantine failures are like traitors in a family. There is always a risk this will happen.”
  • Source: Britcher, Robert N. (1999). The Limits of Software: People, Projects, and Perspectives. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley. ISBN 0-201-43323-0. Page 61.
Keywords: Error_quotes Simulation_quotes Testing_quotes Software_quotes Fault_quotes Problem_quotes Analysis_quotes Byzantine_quotes Failure_quotes Traitor_quotes Risk_quotes Build_quotes Cause_quotes Computer_quotes Analyst_quotes Family_quotes

Mihaly_Csikszentmihalyi

Daydreaming

“One of the simplest ways to use the mind is daydreaming: playing out some sequence of events as mental images. But even this apparently easy way to order thought is beyond the range of many people... Daydreaming not only helps create emotional order by compensating in imagination for unpleasant reality — as when a person can reduce frustration and aggression against someone who has caused injury by visualizing a situation in which the aggressor is punished — but it also allows children and adults to rehearse imaginary situations so that the best strategy for confronting them may be adopted, alternative options considered, unanticipated consequences discovered — all results that help increase the complexity of consciousness. And, of course, when used with skill, daydreaming can be very enjoyable.”
  • Source: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in the book “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience“, chapter “The Flow of Thought”, page 120. Original content published by Harper Perennial Modern Classics in 1990. Kindle edition published by Harper Collins in 2008. ISBN: 978-0061876721.
Keywords: Simple_quotes Way_quotes Mind_quotes Daydreaming_quotes Play_quotes Event_quotes Mental_quotes Image_quotes Order_quotes Thought_quotes Beyond_quotes Range_quotes People_quotes Help_quotes Emotion_quotes Compensate_quotes Imagination_quotes Unpleasant_quotes Reality_quotes Reduce_quotes Person_quotes Frustration_quotes Aggression_quotes Cause_quotes Injury_quotes Visualize_quotes Situation_quotes Punish_quotes Allow_quotes Reherse_quotes Best_quotes Strategy_quotes Optimization_quotes Confront_quotes Adopt_quotes Alternative_quotes Unanticipated_quotes Consequence_quotes Discover_quotes Result_quotes Increase_quotes Complexity_quotes Consciousness_quotes Use_quotes Skill_quotes Enjoyable_quotes

DeMarco and Lister

Project Politics

"The cause of failure most frequently cited by our survey participants was 'politics.' But now observe that people tend to use this word rather sloppily. Included under 'politics' are such unrelated or loosely related things as communication problems, staffing problems, disenchantment with the boss or with the client, lack of motivation, and high turnover. People often use the word politics to describe any aspect of the work that is people-related, but the English language provides a much more precise term for these effects: They constitute the project’s sociology. The truly political problems are a tiny and pathological subset."
  • Source: Book:: Entitled: Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams. Edition: 3rd. Written by: Tom DeMarco; Tim Lister. Date published: 1987; 1999; 2013. Publisher: Addison-Wesley. Country: USA; GBR; CAN; DEU; FRA; ESP; ZAF; AUS; JPN; SGP; MEX. Language: en. ISBN: ISBN-13: 978-0-321-93411-6 (alk paper); 0-321-93411-3 (alk paper). Chapter: 1 (Somewhere Today, a Project Is Failing).
Keywords: Failure_quotes Survey_quotes Political_quotes Observation_quotes People_quotes Sloppy_quotes Imprecise_quotes Communication_quotes Staffing_quotes Human_Resources_quotes Management_quotes Boss_quotes Disenchantment_quotes Client_quotes Motivation_quotes Turnover_quotes Sociology_quotes Project_quotes Pathological_quotes Resource_quotes Cause_quotes Frequent_quotes Participant_quotes Aspect_quotes Work_quotes Language_quotes Precise_quotes Term_quotes Effect_quotes

People Related Problems

"Whatever you name these people-related problems, they’re more likely to cause you trouble on your next assignment than all the design, implementation, and methodology issues you’ll have to deal with. In fact, that idea is the underlying thesis of this whole book: The major problems of our work are not so much technological as sociological in nature."
  • Source: Book:: Entitled: Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams. Edition: 3rd. Written by: Tom DeMarco; Tim Lister. Date published: 1987; 1999; 2013. Publisher: Addison-Wesley. Country: USA; GBR; CAN; DEU; FRA; ESP; ZAF; AUS; JPN; SGP; MEX. Language: en. ISBN: ISBN-13: 978-0-321-93411-6 (alk paper); 0-321-93411-3 (alk paper). Chapter: 1 (Somewhere Today, a Project Is Failing).
Keywords: People_quotes Trouble_quotes Problem_quotes Assignment_quotes Design_quotes Implementation_quotes Methodology_quotes Thesis_quotes Work_quotes Technology_quotes Sociology_quotes Development_quotes Management_quotes Project_quotes Name_quotes Cause_quotes Nature_quotes

Bernardo_Kastrup

Irreducible Patterns

“If there are such irreducible macroscopic patterns, they — unlike cause and effect — may not entail relationships of strict necessity, but tendencies, affinities or dispositions instead... We cannot expect to pin down the corresponding events on the basis of empirical regularities and counterfactual dependences. Not only may these events not be consistently repeatable, the global patterns they reflect may be excluded from experiments by our very efforts to isolate the experimental setup and control its conditions. We cannot induce these acausal events at will. The best we can do is to pay attention to the world around us, in the hope of noticing one of them as it spontaneously unfolds... Next to causality, the physical world organizes itself along archetypal correspondences of meaning, which break down the barrier between world and psyche.”
  • Source: From “Decoding Jung's Metaphysics: The Archetypal Semantics of an Experiential Universe”. Written by Bernardo Kastrup. Published by IFF Books, Washington DC. Kindle Edition. Page 53. Chapter 4.
Keywords: Irreducible_quotes Reduction_quotes Macroscopic_quotes Pattern_quotes Cause_quotes Effect_quotes Causality_quotes Unlike_quotes Entail_quotes Relationship_quotes Strict_quotes Necessity_quotes Tendency_quotes Affinity_quotes Disposition_quotes Expect_quotes Pin_quotes Down_quotes Correspond_quotes Event_quotes Basis_quotes Empirical_quotes Regular_quotes Counterfactual_quotes Dependency_quotes Consistent_quotes Repeatable_quotes Global_quotes Reflect_quotes Exclude_quotes Experiment_quotes Setup_quotes Control_quotes Condition_quotes Induction_quotes Acausal_quotes Will_quotes Best_quotes Attention_quotes World_quotes Around_quotes Hope_quotes Notice_quotes Spontaneous_quotes Unfold_quotes Physical_quotes Organize_quotes Archetypal_quotes Correspondence_quotes Meaning_quotes Break_quotes Barrier_quotes Psyche_quotes

Pierre-Simon_Laplace

System of Nature

“The present state of the system of nature is evidently a consequence of what it was in the preceding moment, and if we conceive of an intelligence that at a given instant comprehends all the relations of the entities of this universe, it could state the respective position, motions, and general affects of all these entities at any time in the past or future. Physical astronomy, the branch of knowledge that does the greatest honor to the human mind, gives us an idea, albeit imperfect, of what such an intelligence would be. The simplicity of the law by which the celestial bodies move, and the relations of their masses and distances, permit analysis to follow their motions up to a certain point; and in order to determine the state of the system of these great bodies in past or future centuries, it suffices for the mathematician that their position and their velocity be given by observation for any moment in time. Man owes that advantage to the power of the instrument he employs, and to the small number of relations that it embraces in its calculations. But ignorance of the different causes involved in the production of events, as well as their complexity, taken together with the imperfection of analysis, prevents our reaching the same certainty about the vast majority of phenomena. Thus there are things that are uncertain for us, things more or less probable, and we seek to compensate for the impossibility of knowing them by determining their different degrees of likelihood. So it was that we owe to the weakness of the human mind one of the most delicate and ingenious of mathematical theories, the science of chance or probability.”
  • Source: Pierre-Simon Laplace, 'Recherches, 1º, sur l'Intégration des Équations Différentielles aux Différences Finies, et sur leur Usage dans la Théorie des Hasards' (1773, published 1776). In Oeuvres complètes de Laplace, 14 Vols. (1843-1912), Vol. 8, 144-5, trans. Charles Coulston Gillispie, Pierre-Simon Laplace 1749-1827: A Life in Exact Science (1997), 26.
Keywords: State_quotes Present_quotes System_quotes Nature_quotes Consequence_quotes Moment_quotes Precede_quotes Conceive_quotes Intelligence_quotes Instant_quotes Comprehension_quotes Relationship_quotes Universe_quotes Position_quotes Motion_quotes Causality_quotes Time_quotes Past_quotes Future_quotes Astronomy_quotes Knowledge_quotes Humanity_quotes Mind_quotes Idea_quotes Imperfect_quotes Law_quotes Celestial_quotes Body_quotes Mass_quotes Distance_quotes Analysis_quotes Determine_quotes Century_quotes Mathematics_quotes Velocity_quotes Observation_quotes Advantage_quotes Power_quotes Instrument_quotes Calculation_quotes Ignorance_quotes Cause_quotes Production_quotes Event_quotes Complexity_quotes Certainty_quotes Majority_quotes Phenomena_quotes Probability_quotes Impossibility_quotes Likelihood_quotes Weakness_quotes Theory_quotes Chance_quotes

Mozi

Know the Cause

“The wise man who has charge of governing the empire should know the cause of disorder before he can put it in order. Unless he knows its cause, he cannot regulate it.”
  • Source: Mozi, from the book ‘Mozi', an ancient collection of writings. Published in English in 1929 as ‘The Ethical and Political Works of Motse', translated by W. P. Mei. Retrieved 2024-03-20 from https://ctext.org/mozi.
Keywords: Wisdom_quotes Charge_quotes Govern_quotes Empire_quotes Know_quotes Cause_quotes Disorder_quotes Order_quotes Regulate_quotes

Pythagoras

Number Ruler

“Number is the ruler of forms and ideas, and the cause of gods and daemons.”
  • Source: Pythagoras. As quoted in Life of Pythagoras (c. 300) by Iamblichus of Chalcis, as translated by Thomas Taylor (1818).
  • Note: Since all of Pythagoras' original writings (if not all oral) are lost, only second-hand writings from his disciples saying what they claim Pythagoras said are available.
Keywords: Number_quotes Ruler_quotes Cause_quotes Computed_Reality_quotes God_quotes Daemon_quotes

Frank_H_T_Rhodes

Kettle Boiling

“It is not a question of choosing one and thereby rejecting the other; both are necessary in order to do justice to the totality... This is perhaps simply shown by Dr Douglas Spanner's example of the boiling kettle. Why, I may ask, is the kettle boiling? There are two kinds of answer that can be given. One is, it is boiling because energy is being supplied to it in the form of heat and the maximum vapour pressure of the water is now equal to the atmospheric pressure. The other kind of answer which may be given is that the kettle is boiling because I put it on to make a cup of tea. Now these are different answers, the first in terms of immediate causes and the second in terms of ultimate cause. But both are true, both are complementary and not competitive. One answer is appropriate within a particular frame of reference, the other within another frame of reference. There is a sense in which each is incomplete without the other.”
  • Source: Frank H. T. Rhodes in the essay “Christianity in a Mechanistic Universe”, included in the book “Christianity in a Mechanistic Universe and Other Essays” edited by Donald M. MacKay, published by Inter-Varsity Press, Chicago, Illinois, in 1965.
Keywords: Question_quotes Choose_quotes One_quotes Reject_quotes Both_quotes Other_quotes Necessary_quotes Order_quotes Justice_quotes Totality_quotes Perhaps_quotes Simply_quotes Show_quotes Spanner(topic)_quotes Example_quotes Boil_quotes Kettle_quotes Ask_quotes Why_quotes Kind_quotes Answer_quotes Give_quotes Energy_quotes Supply_quotes Form_quotes Heat_quotes Maximum_quotes Vapor_quotes Pressure_quotes Water_quotes Equal_quotes Atmosphere_quotes Make_quotes Cup_quotes Tea_quotes Different_quotes Term_quotes Immediate_quotes Cause_quotes Ultimate_quotes True_quotes Complementary_quotes Competitive_quotes Appropriate_quotes Particular_quotes Frame_quotes Reference_quotes Sense_quotes Each_quotes Incomplete_quotes Without_quotes

Herbert_Simon

Loss of Design Damage

“The damage to professional competence caused by the loss of design from professional curricula gradually gained recognition in engineering and medicine and to a lesser extent in business.”

Keywords: Damage_quotes Professional_quotes Competence_quotes Cause_quotes Loss_quotes Design_quotes Curriculum_quotes Gradual_quotes Gain_quotes Recognition_quotes Engineering_quotes Medical_quotes Business_quotes

Predictions and Design

“Since the consequences of design lie in the future, it would seem that forecasting is an unavoidable part of every design process. If that is true, it is cause for pessimism about design, for the record in forecasting even such 'simple' variables as population is dismal. If there is any way to design without forecasts, we should seize on it.”
Keywords: Consequence_quotes Design_quotes Future_quotes Forecast_quotes Unavoidable_quotes Part_quotes Process_quotes True_quotes Cause_quotes Pessimism_quotes Record_quotes Simplicity_quotes Variable_quotes Population_quotes Dismal_quotes Seize_quotes
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