On Literature: On Communities (From Fiction to Science-Fiction)

"In such a universe as this what significance could there be in our fortuitous, our frail, our evanescent community?" (Olaf Stapledon, "Star Maker", 1937)

"A man is morally responsible to his community. That’s a good idea. But his community is also morally responsible to him." (Philip K Dick, "The Man Who Japed", 1956)

"We spread among the community and we became a part of them, sharing in their consciousness and directing them in their total integration. [. . .] They had integrated their group personality on a level that we could perceive and understand. This is the natural evolution of men and truly their one salvation in the total hostile universe." (Thomas N. Scortia, "The Armageddon Tapes - Tape 1", 1974)

"Part of human life is the need to reassure ourselves about the future that we may never live to see, rather than fool ourselves, as many did in the last century, that there won’t be any future and they might as well lie down and die." (George Zebrowski, "Macrolife: A Mobile Utopia", 1979)"Science fiction is the branch of literature that deals with the effects of change on people in the real world as it can be projected into the past, the future, or to distant places. It often concerns itself with scientific or technological change, and it usually involves matters whose importance is greater than the individual or the community; often civilization or the race itself is in danger." (James Gunn, "Road to Science Fiction" Vol. 2, 1979) 

"Science fiction is the branch of literature that deals with the effects of change on people in the real world as it can be projected into the past, the future, or to distant places. It often concerns itself with scientific or technological change, and it usually involves matters whose importance is greater than the individual or the community; often civilization or the race itself is in danger." (James Gunn, "Road to Science Fiction" Vol. 2, 1979)

"I think that most of us, anyway, read these stories that we know are not 'true' because we're hungry for another kind of truth: the mythic truth about human nature in general, the particular truth about those life-communities that define our own identity, and the most specific truth of all: our own self-story. Fiction, because it is not about someone who lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about oneself." (Orson Scott Card, "Ender’s Game", [introduction] 1985)

"Species at this stage of their development tend to be territorial, Memory reminded Drill. Their political mentality is based around the concept of borders. The idea of a borderless community of species may be perceived as a threat." (Walter J Williams, "Dinosaurs", 1987)

"Universities are meant to pass the torch of civilization, not just download data into student skulls, and the values of the academic community are strongly at odds with those of all would-be information empires. Teachers at all levels, from kindergarten up, have proven to be shameless and persistent software and data pirates. Universities do not merely ‘'leak information' but vigorously broadcast free thought." (Bruce Sterling, "The Hacker Crackdown", 1992)

"Here's the secret that every successful software company is based on: You can domesticate programmers the way beekeepers tame bees. You can't exactly communicate with them, but you can get them to swarm in one place and when they're not looking, you can carry off the honey." (Orson Scott Card, "How Software Companies Die", Windows Sources: The Magazine for Windows Experts, 1995)

"Here is the truth. What human life is, what it’s for, what we do, is create communities." (Orson Scott Card, "Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus", 1996)

"Human evolution is driven by community needs […]. How is that possible, since genetic information is passed only by and to individuals?" (Orson Scott Card, "First Meetings in Ender's Universe", 2002)

"Most human communities demand anti-survival behavior from large numbers of their members." (Orson Scott Card, "First Meetings in Ender's Universe", 2002)

"That would be true […] and indeed is true in the main, except that there are only a few types of human communities that actually survive long enough to improve the chances of individual survival." (Orson Scott Card, "First Meetings in Ender's Universe", 2002)

"There are community traits that promote survival of the individual, and individual traits that promote the survival of the community." (Orson Scott Card, "First Meetings in Ender's Universe", 2002)

On Literature: On Writers (From Fiction to Science-Fiction)

"No one for a moment can pretend that printing is so great a discovery as writing, or algebra as a language." (Benjamin Disraeli, "Lothair", 1870)

"A writer must make up his mind to the possible rough treatment of the critics, who swarm like bacteria whenever there is any literary material on which they can feed." (Oliver W Holmes, "Over the Teacups", 1891)

"The great body of physical science, a great deal of the essential fact of financial science, and endless social and political problems are only accessible and only thinkable to those who have had a sound training in mathematical analysis, and the time may not be very remote when it will be understood that for complete initiation as an efficient citizen of one of the new great complex world-wide States that are now developing, it is as necessary to be able to compute, to think in averages and maxima and minima, as it is now to be able to read and write." (Herbert G Wells, "Mankind in the Making", 1903)

"The 'romance' of space - drivel written in the old days. When you’re not blasting, you float in a cramped hotbox, crawl through dirty mazes of greasy pipe and cable to tighten a lug, scratch your arms and bark your shins, get sick and choked up because no gravity helps your gullet get the food down." (Walter M Miller Jr., "Death of a Spaceman", 1954)

"Science fiction is no more written for scientists than ghost stories are written for ghosts." (Brian Aldiss, Penguin Science Fiction, 1961)

"The role of the writer today has totally changed - he is now merely one of a huge army of people filling the environment with fictions of every kind. To survive, he must become far more analytic, approaching his subject matter like a scientist or engineer. If he is to produce fiction at all, he must outimagine everyone else, scream louder, whisper more quietly. For the first time in the history of narrative fiction, it will require more than talent to become a writer." (James G Ballard, "Fictions of Every Kind", 1971)

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." (Robert A Heinlein, "Time Enough for Love", 1973)

"If a book were written all in numbers, it would be true. It would be just. Nothing said in words ever came out quite even. Things in words got twisted and ran together, instead of staying straight and fitting together. But underneath the words, at the center, like the center of the Square, it all came out even. Everything could change, yet nothing would be lost. If you saw the numbers you could see that, the balance, the pattern. You saw the foundations of the world. And they were solid." (Ursula K Le Guin, "The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia", 1974)

"Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not." (Isaac Asimov, "How Easy to See the Future", Natural History magazine, 1975)

"To write fiction, one needs a whole series of inspirations about people in an actual environment, and then a whole lot of work on the basis of those inspirations." (Aldous Huxley, "Moksha", 1977)

"Human brains back then had become such copious and irresponsible generators of suggestions as to what might be done with life, that they made acting for the benefit of future generations seem one of many arbitrary games which might be played by narrow enthusiasts - like poker or polo or the bond market, or the writing of science-fiction novels." (Kurt Vonnegut Jr, "Galapagos" 1985)

"A science fiction writer is - or should be - constrained by what is, or logically might be. That can mean simple fidelity to facts (which, in science, are always more important than theories - though Lord knows the two help shape each other, undermining the convenient, complacent separation of observer and observed). To me it also means heeding the authentic, the actual and concrete. Bad fiction uses the glossy generality; good writing needs the smattering of detail, the unrelenting busy mystery of the real." (Gregory Benford, "Afterword to Exposures", [in Alien Flesh] 1986)

"Science fiction offers its writers chances of embarrassment that no other form of fiction does." (Isaac Asimov, "Robot Dreams" [introduction] 1986)

"If poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, science-fiction writers are its court jesters." (Bruce Sterling, "Burning Chrome", [preface] 1986)

"Science fiction rarely is about scientists doing real science, in its slowness, its vagueness, the sort of tedious quality of getting out there and digging amongst rocks and then trying to convince people that what you're seeing justifies the conclusions you're making. The whole process of science is wildly under-represented in science fiction because it's not easy to write about. There are many facets of science that are almost exactly opposite of dramatic narrative. It's slow, tedious, inconclusive, it's hard to tell good guys from bad guys [...]" (Kim S Robinson, [interview] 1997)

"Do you know why teachers use me? Because I speak in tongues. I write metaphors. Every one of my stories is a metaphor you can remember. The great religions are all metaphor. We appreciate things like Daniel and the lion's den, and the Tower of Babel. People remember these metaphors because they are so vivid you can't get free of them and that's what kids like in school." (Ray Bradbury, The Paris Review, [interview] 2010)

"Science fiction these days is only half a step ahead of science. Astrophysicists and scientists are working in the same way as science fiction writers. They’re working things out in their imagination based on the slim scientific facts that they know. Hawking imagines a black hole and then discovers the mathematics that support his theory, and new possibilities come to light. That’s the imaginative flair that scientists have to have. For me as a sci-fi writer, spinning those ideas in your mind brings you to the point where you dream in science fiction. Suddenly you think of something in the middle of the night, and it’s so vivid you don’t need to write it down because you know you’ll remember it in the morning. That’s what these books, Zero G, reflect: a vivid imagination." (William Shatner, "William Shtner on Sci-Fi, Aging and the Environment", Saturday Evening Post, [interview] 2017)

"Of course all children's literature is not fantastic, so all fantastic books need not be children's books. It is still possible, even in an age so ferociously anti-romantic as our own, to write fantastic stories for adults: though you will usually need to have made a name in some more fashionable kind of literature before anyone will publish them." (Clive S Lewis)

On Numbers: On Units (-1199)

"Things are called continuous when the touching limits of each become one and the same and are contained in each other. Continuity is impossible if these extremities are two. […] Continuity belongs to things that naturally in virtue of their mutual contact form a unity. And in whatever way that which holds them together is one, so too will the whole be one." (Aristotle, "Physics", cca. 350 BC)

"A prime number is one" (which is) measured by a unit alone." (Euclid, "Elements" Book VII, cca. 300 BC)

"If as many numbers as we please beginning from a unit be set out continuously in double proportion, until the sum of all becomes a prime, and if the sum multiplied into the last make some number, the product will be perfect." (Euclid, "Elements", cca 300 BC)

"Numbers prime to one another are those which are measured by a unit alone as a common measure." (Euclid, "Elements" Book VII, cca 300 BC)

"There exists an elegant and sure method of generating these numbers, which does not leave out any perfect numbers and which does not include any that are not; and which is done in the following way. First set out in order the powers of two in a line, starting from unity, and proceeding as far as you wish: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096; and then they must be totalled each time there is a new term, and at each totaling examine the result, if you find that it is prime and non-composite, you must multiply it by the quantity of the last term that you added to the line, and the product will always be perfect. If, otherwise, it is composite and not prime, do not multiply it, but add on the next term, and again examine the result, and if it is composite leave it aside, without multiplying it, and add on the next term. If, on the other hand, it is prime, and non-composite, you must multiply it by the last term taken for its composition, and the number that results will be perfect, and so on as far as infinity." (Nicomachus of Gerasa,"Introductio Arithmetica", cca. 100 AD)

On Numbers: On Units (1200-1699)

"The existence of an actual infinite multitude is impossible. For any set of things one considers must be a specific set. And sets of things are specified by the number of things in them. Now no number is infinite, for number results from counting through a set of units. So no set of things can actually be inherently unlimited, nor can it happen to be unlimited." (St. Thomas Aquinas, "Summa Theologica", cca. 1266-1273)

"There can only be one wisdom. For if it were possible that there be several wisdoms, then these would have to be from one. Namely, unity is prior to all plurality." (Nicholas of Cusa, "De Pace Fidei" ["The Peace of Faith"], 1453)

"We know that there is an infinite, and we know not its nature. As we know it to be false that numbers are finite, it is therefore true that there is a numerical infinity. But we know not of what kind; it is untrue that it is even, untrue that it is odd; for the addition of a unit does not change its nature; yet it is a number, and every number is odd or even (this certainly holds of every finite number). Thus, we may quite well know that there is a God without knowing what He is." (Blaise Pascal, "Pensées", 1670)

"The Fractions which represent the Probabilities of happening and failing, being added together, their Sum will always be equal to Unity, since the Sum of their Numerators will be equal to their common Denominator : now it being a certainty that an Event will either happen or fail, it follows that Certainty, which may be conceived under the notion of an infinitely great degree of Probability, is fitly represented by Unity." (Abraham de Moivre, "The Doctrine of Chances", 1718)

"The probability of an Event is greater, or less, according to the number of Chances by which it may Happen, compar’d with the number of all the Chances, by which it may either Happen or Fail. […] Therefore, if the Probability of Happening and Failing are added together, the Sum will always be equal to Unit." (Abraham De Moivre,"The Doctrine of Chances", 1718)

"Statics is the science of the equilibrium of forces. In general, force or power is the cause, whatever it may be, which induces or tends to impart motion to the body to which it is applied. The force or power must be measured by the quantity of motion produced or to be produced. In the state of equilibrium, the force has no apparent action. It produces only a tendency for motion in the body it is applied to. But it must be measured by the effect it would produce if it were not impeded. By taking any force or its effect as unity, the relation of every other force is only a ratio, a mathematical quantity, which can be represented by some numbers or lines. It is in this fashion that forces must be treated in mechanics." (Joseph-Louis de Lagrange, "Mechanique Analytique", 1788)

"Yet this is attempted by algebraists, who talk of a number less than nothing, of multiplying a negative number into a negative number and thus producing a positive number, of a number being imaginary. Hence they talk of two roots to every equation of the second order, and the learner is to try which will succeed in a given equation: they talk of solving an equation which requires two impossible roots to make it solvable: they can find out some impossible numbers, which, being multiplied together, produce unity. This is all jargon, at which common sense recoils; but, from its having been once adopted, like many other figments, it finds the most strenuous supporters among those who love to take things upon trust, and hate the labour of a serious thought." (William Frend, "The Principles of Algebra", 1796)

On Numbers: On Units (1800-1899)

"That this subject [imaginary numbers] has hitherto been surrounded by mysterious obscurity, is to be attributed largely to an ill adapted notation. If we call +1, -1, and √-1 had been called direct, inverse and lateral units, instead of positive, negative, and imaginary"" (or impossible) units, such an obscurity would have been out of the question." (Carl F Gauss, "Theoria residuorum biquadraticum. Commentatio secunda", Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen 23 (4), 1831)

"I define as a unit any magnitude that can serve for the numerical derivation of a series of magnitudes, and in particular I call such a unit an original unit if it is not derivable from another unit. The unit of numbers, that is one, I call the absolute unit, all others relative." (Hermann G Grassmann, "Ausdehnungslehre", 1844)

"If they [mathematicians] find a quantity greater than any finite number of the assumed units, they call it infinitely great; if they find one so small that its every finite multiple is smaller than the unit, they call it infinitely small; nor do they recognise any other kind of infinitude than these two, together with the quantities derived from them as being infinite to a higher order of greatness or smallness, and thus based after all on the same idea." (Bernard Bolzano, "Paradoxien des Unedlichen" ["Paradoxes of the Infinite"], 1851)

"The general equations are next applied to the case of a magnetic disturbance propagated through a non-conductive field, and it is shown that the only disturbances which can be so propagated are those which are transverse to the direction of propagation, and that the velocity of propagation is the velocity v, found from experiments such as those of Weber, which expresses the number of electrostatic units of electricity which are contained in one electromagnetic unit. This velocity is so nearly that of light, that it seems we have strong reason to conclude that light itself (including radiant heat, and other radiations if any) is an electromagnetic disturbance in the form of waves propagated through the electromagnetic field according to electromagnetic laws." (James C Maxwell, "A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field", 1865)

"Definite portions of a manifoldness, distinguished by a mark or by a boundary, are called Quanta. Their comparison with regard to quantity is accomplished in the case of discrete magnitudes by counting, in the case of continuous magnitudes by measuring. Measure consists in the superposition of the magnitudes to be compared; it therefore requires a means of using one magnitude as the standard for another. In the absence of this, two magnitudes can only be compared when one is a part of the other; in which case also we can only determine the more or less and not the how much. The researches which can in this case be instituted about them form a general division of the science of magnitude in which magnitudes are regarded not as existing independently of position and not as expressible in terms of a unit, but as regions in a manifoldness." (Bernhard Riemann, "On the Hypotheses which lie at the Bases of Geometry", 1873)

"With every simple act of thinking, something permanent, substantial, enters our soul. This substantial somewhat appears to us as a unit but" (in so far as it is the expression of something extended in space and time) it seems to contain an inner manifoldness; I therefore name it ‘mind-mass’. All thinking is, accordingly, formation of new mind masses." (Bernhard Riemann,"Gesammelte Mathematische Werke", 1876)

"What is commonly called the geometrical representation of complex numbers has at least this advantage […] that in it 1 and i do not appear as wholly unconnected and different in kind: the segment taken to represent i stands in a regular relation to the segment which represents 1. […] A complex number, on this interpretation, shows how the segment taken as its representation is reached, starting from a given segment" (the unit segment), by means of operations of multiplication, division, and rotation." (Gottlob Frege, "Grundlagen der Arithmetik" ["Foundations of Arithmetic"], 1884)

"Any system in stable chemical equilibrium, subjected to the influence of an external cause tends to change either its temperature or its condensation"" (pressure, concentration, number of molecules in unit volume), either as a whole or in some of its parts, can only undergo such internal modifications as would, if produced alone, bring about a change of temperature or of condensation of opposite sign to that resulting from the external cause." (Henri L Le Chatelier, "A General Statement of the Laws of Chemical Equilibrium", Comptes rendus Vol. 99, 1884)

On Numbers: On Units (2000-)

"√-1 is take for granted today. No serious mathematician would deny that it is a number. Yet it took centuries for √-1 to be officially admitted to the pantheon of numbers. For almost three centuries, it was controversial; mathematicians didn't know what to make of it; many of them worked with it successfully without admitting its existence. […] Primarily for cognitive reasons. Mathematicians simply could not make it fit their idea of what a number was supposed to be. A number was supposed to be a magnitude. √-1 is not a magnitude comparable to the magnitudes of real numbers. No tree can be √-1 units high. You cannot owe someone √-1 dollars. Numbers were supposed to be linearly ordered. √-1 is not linearly ordered with respect to other numbers." (George Lakoff & Rafael E Nuñez, "Where Mathematics Come From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics into Being, 2000)

"By definition, a Kähler manifold is one with a complex structure (this means in particular that the coordinates changes are holomorphic for the complex coordinates) together with a Riemannian metric which has with this complex structure the best possible link, namely that multiplication of tangent vectors by unit complex numbers preserves the metric, but moreover the complex structure is invariant under parallel transport. This is equivalent to the condition that the holonomy group be included in the unitary group, hence equivalent also to ask for the existence of a 2-form of maximal rank and of zero covariant derivative."(Marcel Berger, "A Panoramic View of Riemannian Geometry", 2003)

"Descartes’ idea to use numbers to describe points in space involves the choice of a coordinate system or coordinate frame: an origin, together with axes and units of length along the axes. A recurring theme of all the different geometries [...] is the question of what a coordinate frame is, and what I can get out of it. While coordinates provide a convenient framework to discuss points, lines, and so on, it is a basic requirement that any meaningful statement in geometry is independent of the choice of coordinates. That is, coordinate frames are a humble technical aid in determining the truth, and are not allowed the dignity of having their own meaning." (Miles Reid & Balazs Szendröi, "Geometry and Topology", 2005)

"Lie groups describe finite symmetries or symmetries which smoothly depend on a finite number of real parameters. Lie algebras are the linearization of Lie groups at the unit element. The passage from Lie groups to Lie algebras simplifies considerably the approach. Lie algebras are frequently called infinitesimal symmetries." (Eberhard Zeidler, "Quantum Field Theory III: Gauge Theory", 2006)

"The correlation coefficient has two fabulously attractive characteristics. First, for math reasons that have been relegated to the appendix, it is a single number ranging from –1 to 1. A correlation of 1, often described as perfect correlation, means that every change in one variable is associated with an equivalent change in the other variable in the same direction. A correlation of –1, or perfect negative correlation, means that every change in one variable is associated with an equivalent change in the other variable in the opposite direction. The closer the correlation is to 1 or –1, the stronger the association. […] The second attractive feature of the correlation coefficient is that it has no units attached to it. […] The correlation coefficient does a seemingly miraculous thing: It collapses a complex mess of data measured in different units" (like our scatter plots of height and weight) into a single, elegant descriptive statistic." (Charles Wheelan, "Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data", 2012)

"At any rate, long before the curvature of space was first detected, Beltrami’s construction of the hyperbolic plane showed that more than one kind of geometry is possible. Beltrami assumed that Euclidean space exists, and constructed a non-Euclidean plane inside it, with nonstandard definitions of 'line' and 'distance' (namely, line segments in the unit disk and pseudodistance). This shows that the geometry of Bolyai and Lobachevsky is logically as valid as the geometry of Euclid: if there is a space in which 'lines' and 'distance' behave as Euclid thought they do, then there is also a surface in which 'lines' and 'distance' behave as Bolyai and Lobachevsky thought they might." (John Stillwell, "Yearning for the Impossible: The Surprising Truths of Mathematics" 2nd Ed., 2018)

"The higher the dimension, in other words, the higher the number of possible interactions, and the more disproportionally difficult it is to understand the macro from the micro, the general from the simple units. This disproportionate increase of computational demands is called the curse of dimensionality." (Nassim N Taleb, "Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life", 2018)

"Quaternions are not actual extensions of imaginary numbers, and they are not taking complex numbers into a multi-dimensional space on their own. Quaternion units are instances of some number-like object type, identified collectively, but they are not numbers (be it real or imaginary). In other words, they form a closed, internally consistent set of object instances; they can of course be plotted visually on a multi-dimensional space but this only is a visualization within their own definition." (Huseyin Ozel, "Redefining Imaginary and Complex Numbers, Defining Imaginary and Complex Objects", 2018)

"Consider for example the complex numbers x + iy, where you of course ask what is i = √ −1 when you first encounter this mathematical construction. But that uncomfortable feeling of what this strange imaginary unit really is fades away as you get more experienced and learn that C is a field of numbers that is extremely useful, to say the least. You no longer care what kind of object i is but are satisfied only to know that i^2 = −1, which is how you calculate with i." (Andreas Rosén,"Geometric Multivector Analysis: From Grassmann to Dirac", 2019)

On Numbers: On Units (1950-1999)

"A set is formed by the grouping together of single objects into a whole. A set is a plurality thought of as a unit. If these or similar statements were set down as definitions, then it could be objected with good reason that they define idem per idemi or even obscurum per obscurius. However, we can consider them as expository, as references to a primitive concept, familiar to us all, whose resolution into more fundamental concepts would perhaps be neither competent nor necessary." (Felix Hausdorff, "Set Theory", 1962)

"We may state as characteristic of modern science that this scheme of isolable units acting in one-way causality has proven to be insufficient. Hence the appearance, in all fields of science, of notions like wholeness, holistic, organismic, gestalt, etc., which all signify that, in the last resort, we must think in terms of systems of elements in mutual interaction […]." (Ludwig von Bertalanffy, "General System Theory", 1968)

"But the laws of addition and multiplication (the associative laws, for example) are not a human invention. They are unintended consequences of human invention, and they were discovered. And the existence of prime numbers - indivisible numbers that are the product only of themselves and unity - is also a discovery, no doubt quite a late one. The prime numbers were discovered in the series of natural numbers, not by everyone but by people who studied these numbers and their special peculiarities - by real mathematicians." (Karl R Popper, "Notes of a Realist on the Body-Mind Problem", [in "All Life is Problem Solving", 1999] 1972)

"Concepts are inventions of the human mind used to construct a model of the world. They package reality into discrete units for further processing, they support powerful mechanisms for doing logic, and they are indispensable for precise, extended chains of reasoning." (John Sown,"Conceptual Structures - Information Processing in Mind and Machine, 1984)

"In everyday language, the words 'pattern' and 'symmetry' are used almost interchangeably, to indicate a property possessed by a regular arrangement of more-or-less identical units […]" (Ian Stewart & Martin Golubitsky, "Fearful Symmetry: Is God a Geometer?", 1992)

On Numbers: On Units (1900-1949)

"Great numbers are not counted correctly to a unit, they are estimated; and we might perhaps point to this as a division between arithmetic and statistics, that whereas arithmetic attains exactness, statistics deals with estimates, sometimes very accurate, and very often sufficiently so for their purpose, but never mathematically exact." (Arthur L Bowley, "Elements of Statistics", 1901)

"Statistics may be defined as numerical statements of facts by means of which large aggregates are analyzed, the relations of individual units to their groups are ascertained, comparisons are made between groups, and continuous records are maintained for comparative purposes." (Melvin T Copeland, "Statistical Methods" [in: Harvard Business Studies, Vol. III, Ed. by Melvin T Copeland, 1917])

"The velocity of light is one of the most important of the fundamental constants of Nature. Its measurement by Foucault and Fizeau gave as the result a speed greater in air than in water, thus deciding in favor of the undulatory and against the corpuscular theory. Again, the comparison of the electrostatic and the electromagnetic units gives as an experimental result a value remarkably close to the velocity of light – a result which justified Maxwell in concluding that light is the propagation of an electromagnetic disturbance. Finally, the principle of relativity gives the velocity of light a still greater importance, since one of its fundamental postulates is the constancy of this velocity under all possible conditions." (A.A. Michelson, "Studies in Optics", 1927)

"The force acting on the pendulum is proportional to its active mass, its inertia is proportional to its passive mass, so that the period will depend on the ratio of the passive and the active mass. Consequently the fact that the period of all these different pendulums was the same, proves that this ratio is a constant, and can be made equal to unity by a suitable choice of units, i. e., the inertial and the gravitational mass are the same." (Willem de Sitter, "The Astronomical Aspect of the Theory of Relativity", 1933)

"Of course we have still to face the question why these analogies between different mechanisms - these similarities of relation-structure - should exist. To see common principles and simple rules running through such complexity is at first perplexing though intriguing. When, however, we find that the apparently complex objects around us are combinations of a few almost indestructible units, such as electrons, it becomes less perplexing." (Kenneth Craik, "The Nature of Explanation", 1943)

"This, however, is very speculative; the point of interest for our present enquiry is that physical reality is built up, apparently, from a few fundamental types of units whose properties determine many of the properties of the most complicated phenomena, and this seems to afford a sufficient explanation of the emergence of analogies between mechanisms and similarities of relation-structure among these combinations without the necessity of any theory of objective universals." (Kenneth Craik, "The Nature of Explanation", 1943)

"Men cannot be treated as units in operations of political arithmetic because they behave like the symbols for zero and the infinite, which dislocate all mathematical operations." (Arthur Koestler, "Crossman", 1949)

On Literature: On Future (From Fiction to Science-Fiction)

"If [...] you are restless and anxious about the future, study astronomy at once. Your troubles will be reduced amazingly. But your study will reduce them in a singular way, by reducing the importance of everything." (Thomas Hardy, "Two on a Tower", 1882)

"In that instant when I had seen the blazing star that was the Star Maker, I had glimpsed, in the very eye of that splendour, strange vistas of being; as though in the depths of the hypercosmical past and the hypercosmical future also, yet coexistent in eternity, lay cosmos beyond cosmos." (Olaf Stapledon, "Star Maker", 1937)

"Sitting there on the heather, on our planetary grain, I shrank from the abysses that opened up on every side, and in the future. The silent darkness, the featureless unknown, were more dread than all the terrors that imagination had mustered." (Olaf Stapledon, "Star Maker", 1937)

"Is it credible that our world should have two futures? I have seen them. Two entirely distinct futures lie before mankind, one dark, one bright; one the defeat of all man’s hopes, the betrayal of all his ideals, the other their hardwon triumph." (Olaf Stapledon, "Darkness and the Light", 1942)

"We live in reference to past experience and not to future events, however inevitable." (Herbert G Wells, "Mind at the End of Its Tether", 1946)

"And time itself? Time was a never-ending medium that stretched into the future and the past - except there was no future and no past, but an infinite number of brackets, extending either way, each bracket enclosing its single phase of the Universe." (Clifford D Simak,"Ring Around the Sun", 1954

"The biggest developments of the immediate future will take place, not on the Moon or Mars, but on Earth, and it is inner space, not outer, that needs to be explored. The only truly alien planet is Earth." (James G Ballard, "Which Way to Inner Space?", 1962)

"Thanks to technology, the reasons for many of the old social problems have passed, and along with them went many of the reasons for psychic distress. But between the black of yesterday and the white of tomorrow is the great gray of today, filled with nostalgia and fear of the future, which cannot be expressed on a purely material plane, is now being represented by a willful seeking after historical anxiety-modes [...] " (Roger Zelazny," He Who Shapes", 1965)

"What are the facts? Again and again and again - what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what ‘the stars foretell,’ avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable ‘verdict of history', - what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your only clue. Get the facts!" (Robert A Heinlein, "Time Enough for Love", 1973)

"If the passage of time is a feature of human consciousness, past and future are functions of the mind." (Ursula K Le Guin, "The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia" 1974)

"All fiction is metaphor. Science fiction is metaphor. What sets it apart from older forms of fiction seems to be its use of new metaphors, drawn from certain great dominants of our contemporary life - science, all the sciences, and technology, and the relativistic and the historical outlook, among them. Space travel is one of these metaphors; so is an alternative society, an alternative biology; the future is another." (Ursula K Le Guin, "The Left Hand of Darkness", [introduction] 1976)

"Her dance spoke of nothing more and nothing less than the tragedy of being alive, and being human. It spoke, most eloquently, of pain. It spoke, most knowingly, of despair. It spoke of the cruel humor of limitless ambition yoked to limited ability, of eternal hope invested in an ephemeral lifetime, of the driving need to try and create an inexorably predetermined future. It spoke of fear, and of hunger, and, most clearly, of the basic loneliness and alienation of the human animal. It described the universe through the eyes of man: a hostile environment, the embodiment of entropy, into which we are all thrown alone, forbidden by our nature to touch another mind save secondhand, by proxy. It spoke of the blind perversity which forces man to strive hugely for a peace which, once attained, becomes boredom. And it spoke of folly, of the terrible paradox by which man is simultaneously capable of reason and unreason, forever unable to cooperate even with himself." (Spider Robinson & Jeanne Robinson, "Stardance", 1977)

"Time is no longer a line along which history, past or future, lies neatly arranged, but a field of great mystery and complexity, in the contemplation of which the mind perceives an immense terror, and an indestructible hope." (Ursula K Le Guin, 1977)

"An infinity of universes swim in superspace, all passing through their own cycles of birth and death; some are novel, others repetitious; some produce macrolife, others do not; still others are lifeless. In time, macrolife will attempt to reach out from its cycles to other space-time bubbles, perhaps even to past cycles, which leave their echoes in superspace, and might be reached. In all these ambitions, only the ultimate pattern of development is unknown, drawing macrolife toward some future transformation still beyond its view. There are times when the oldest macrolife senses that vaster intelligences are peering in at it from some great beyond [...]" (George Zebrowski, "Macrolife: A Mobile Utopia", 1979)

"So together they left the office and walked into the uncertainty of the rest of their lives.

"Part of human life is the need to reassure ourselves about the future that we may never live to see, rather than fool ourselves, as many did in the last century, that there won’t be any future and they might as well lie down and die." (George Zebrowski, "Macrolife: A Mobile Utopia", 1979)"Science fiction is the branch of literature that deals with the effects of change on people in the real world as it can be projected into the past, the future, or to distant places. It often concerns itself with scientific or technological change, and it usually involves matters whose importance is greater than the individual or the community; often civilization or the race itself is in danger." (James Gunn, "Road to Science Fiction" Vol. 2, 1979) 

"Science fiction is the branch of literature that deals with the effects of change on people in the real world as it can be projected into the past, the future, or to distant places. It often concerns itself with scientific or technological change, and it usually involves matters whose importance is greater than the individual or the community; often civilization or the race itself is in danger." (James Gunn, "Road to Science Fiction" Vol. 2, 1979)

"I would sum up my fear about the future in one word: boring. And that’s my one fear: that everything has happened; nothing exciting or new or interesting is ever going to happen again [...] the future is just going to be a vast, conforming suburb of the soul." (James G Ballard, Re/Search 8–9, [interview with Andrea Juno and V. Vale], 1984)

"Human brains back then had become such copious and irresponsible generators of suggestions as to what might be done with life, that they made acting for the benefit of future generations seem one of many arbitrary games which might be played by narrow enthusiasts - like poker or polo or the bond market, or the writing of science-fiction novels." (Kurt Vonnegut Jr, "Galapagos" 1985)

"All reality is a game. Physics at its most fundamental, the very fabric of our universe, results directly from the interaction of certain fairly simple rules, and chance; the same description may be applied to the best, most elegant and both intellectually and aesthetically satisfying games. By being unknowable, by resulting from events which, at the sub-atomic level, cannot be fully predicted, the future remains malleable, and retains the possibility of change, the hope of coming to prevail; victory, to use an unfashionable word. In this, the future is a game; time is one of its rules." (Iain Banks, "The Player of Games", 1988)

"Every so often I come up with a different definition of what science fiction and fantasy do, and I'm always looking for one that describes what they both do, rather than separating them. Currently I'm saying that one of the things they do is look at the effects of large-scale social change on both populations and individuals. Fantasy tends to look to the past, and science fiction to the future, but what is common to many of the stories is change: huge societal upheaval." (Nalo Hopkinson, "Nalo Hopkinson: Multiplicity", LocusMag, 2007)

"Science fiction pretends to look into the future but it’s really looking at a reflection of what is already in front of us." (Ray Bradbury, The Paris Review, [interview] 2010) 

"Overfitting is like attending a concert of your favorite band. Depending on the acoustics of the concert venue you will hear both music and noise from the screams of the crowd to reverberations off walls and so on. Overfitting happens when your model perfectly fits both the music and the noise when the intent is to fit the structure (the music). It is generally a result of the predictor being too complex (recall Occams Razor) so that it fits the underlying structure as well as the noise. The consequence is a small or zero test set classification error. Alas, this super low error rate will fail to materialize on future unseen samples. One consequence of overfitting is poor generalization (prediction) on future data." (N D Lewis, "Deep Learning Made Easy with R: A Gentle Introduction for Data Science", 2016)

"Science fiction, outside of poetry, is the only literary field which has no limits, no parameters whatsoever. You can go not only into the future, but into that wonderful place called "other", which is simply another universe, another planet, another species." (Theodore Sturgeon)

Rick Delmonico - Collected Quotes

"A quantum of action in a field creates the dimensions it inhabits. Fields contain waves of potential."  (Rick Delmonico, "Fractals all the way down", 2018)

"At every level of the fractal hierarchy, variation enters the system in different ways, so there is no scale invariance. All of the information is stored in the relationships of and in each level in the computational geometry." (Rick Delmonico, "Fractals all the way down", 2018)

"How can unity and infinity share the same space? There is only one way, as a fractal." (Rick Delmonico, "Fractals all the way down", 2018)

"In a fractal nested hierarchy there are an infinite number of boundaries and boundary conditions, this is important because this is where emergence comes from and this is why there are no perfect symmetries."  (Rick Delmonico, "Fractals all the way down", 2018)

"The computational geometry of space/time is fractal. The entire system is interwoven as a fractal and as each series of iterations occur, there is a dithering of sorts because the difference in possibilities can be matastable in many locations in the computation. Each layer of the system computes in a frequency that is probably following the phi ratio. Measurement is always described as ratio and scale may be, in a sense, an illusion. Light appears to be scale invariant and the cutoff frequency may be another illusion. If this is true, everything is fields and particles are just a smaller version of a field." (Rick Delmonico, "Fractals all the way down", 2018)

"The fractal nesting of the relationship between space and time at different scales causes phase transitions as the influence of one force changes with respect to another. From this we get the astonishing variety of behaviors in the material world." (Rick Delmonico, "Fractals all the way down", 2018)

"The particle/wave duality has something to do with the nature of time. Time is intimately linked to information, you cannot separate them. Information moving in time always contains meaning. This meaning has a truth value. There is a dynamic nature to these truth values with application and material expressions. Experience relies on these expressions, it is the perception or division of the expression that creates the experience. How much we are able to understand varies from experience to experience. In the quantum world these expressions have a probability. A fractal probability distribution." (Rick Delmonico, "Fractals all the way down", 2018)

"The structure of reality is a computational geometry that is fractal in nature. Truth is the highest energy state of the system, we are branching out in a fractal pattern into uncertainty. What we value matters, meaning is generated in a nested hierarchy. The intellect will only get you so far, beyond this are things like desire. Desire is a higher level of processing, it is deeper and more nuanced. There is something beyond the emotional realm that I will call spirit, as an organizing principle, spirit has the ability to transcend space and time and generates value and meaning that have harmonious relationships that keep the system going. Without harmony and some principle of organization, time or process would end."  (Rick Delmonico, "Fractals all the way down", 2018)

"There is a fractal nesting of time-like loops in spacetime. Both space and time emerge from a quantum of action in a field. Space and time are united but different. The scale of the dimensions is inversely proportional, as well as the density. The only infinity is one of scale." (Rick Delmonico, "Fractals all the way down", 2018)

"Waves travel according to their dimensionality. The idea is to find agreement in two unrelated fields that point to the same thing, a duality. Waves can't be quantized, interactions among the associated dimensions can. Fractal geometry and levels of description. It is the interaction of forces across scale, with ratio being the only thing that is discrete." (Rick Delmonico, "Fractals all the way down", 2018)