I have no illusions about the prospects of the theory I am proposing: it will suffer the inevitable fate of being proven wrong in many, or most, details, by new advances in psychology and neurology. W...
I have coined the term 'bisociation' in order to make a distinction between the routine skills of thinking on a single 'plane', as it were, and the creative act, which, as I shall try to show, always...
He shivered. A picture appeared in his mind’s eye, a big photograph in a wooden frame: the delegates to the first congress of the Party. They sat at a long wooden table, some with their elbows propped...
For in a struggle one must have both legs firmly planted on theearth. The Party had taught one how to do it. The infinite was apolitically suspect quantity, the `I' a suspect quality. The Party did no...
But there exist other, different, methods of infolding-obliquity, compression, and the Seven Types of Ambiguity-a modest estimate of Empson's. The later Joyce, for instance, makes one realize why the...
At each step biochemical triggers and feedbacks determine which of the alternative developmental pathways among several possibles a group of cells will actually follow.
Υπάρχει ένας άγραφος και συγκινητικός νόμος που θέλει σ'όλες τις μεγάλες καταστροφές-πυρκαγιές, πλημμύρες, πολέμους-οι φτωχοί να σώζουν πριν απ'όλα το κρεββάτι τους.
We are indeed a blind race,' wrote a contemporary scientist, 'and the next generation, blind to its own blindness, will be amazed at ours.
There is a strangely consistent parallel between Copernicus' character, and the humble, devious manner in which the Copernican revolution entered through the back door of history, preceded by the apol...
The humorist thrives on deformity; the artist deforms the world to recreate it in his own image.
The creative act of the humorist consisted in bringing about a momentary fusion between two habitually incompatible matrices. Scientific discovery, as we shall presently see, can be described in very...
The Russells arrive at the same conclusion: There is certainly no evidence from mamamalian behaviour that social aggression is more prevalent or intense among carnivores than among herbivores. And as...
Philosophy is the gaseous state of thought, Science its liquid state, Religion its rigid state. In all three states doubts are expressed regarding the necessity, and even the possibility, of absolute...
Persuasion may play a part in a man's conversion; but only the part of bringing to its full and conscious climax a process which has been maturing in regions where no persuasion can penetrate. A faith...
Lastly, the vast number of existing animal species (about one million) and the small number of major classes (about fifty) and of major phyla or divisions (about ten), could be compared with the vast...
Emphasis and implication are complementary techniques. The first bullies the audience into acceptance; the second entices it into mental collaboration; the first forces the offer down the consumer's t...
Οι πολιτοφύλακες που με φύλαγαν, έμοιαζαν πολύ δυσαρεστημένοι απ'όλη αυτή την κατάσταση. όση ώρα βασάνιζαν στο διπλανό δωμάτιο, με παρακολουθούσαν μ'ενδιαφέρον για να δούνε πώς αντιδρούσα, ίσως ακόμη...
That man is a reality, mankind an abstraction; that men cannot be treated as units in operations of political arithmetic because they behave like the symbols for zero and the infinite, which dislocate...
Wherever we find orderly, stable systems in Nature, we find that they are hierarchically structured, for the simple reason that without such structuring of complex systems into sub-assemblies, there c...
We brought you truth, and in our mouth it sounded a lie. We brought you freedom, and it looks in our hands like a whip. We brought you the living life, and where our voice is heard the trees wither an...