03 August 2019

Fritjof Capra - Collected Quotes

"If physics leads us today to a world view which is essentially mystical, it returns, in a way, to its beginning, 2,500 years ago. […] Eastern thought and, more generally, mystical thought provide a consistent and relevant philosophical background to the theories of contemporary science; a conception of the world in which scientific discoveries can be in perfect harmony with spiritual aims and religious beliefs. The two basic themes of this conception are the unity and interrelation of all phenomena and the intrinsically dynamic nature of the universe. The further we penetrate into the submicroscopic world, the more we shall realize how the modern physicist, like the Eastern mystic, has come to see the world as a system of inseparable, interacting and ever-moving components with the observer being an integral part of this system." (Fritjof Capra, "The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism", 1975)

"The influence of modern physics goes beyond technology. It extends to the realm of thought and culture where it has led to a deep revision in man's conception of the universe and his relation to it." (Fritjof Capra, "The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism", 1975)

"Whenever the Eastern mystics express their knowledge in words - be it with the help of myths, symbols, poetic images or paradoxical statements-they are well aware of the limitations imposed by language and 'linear' thinking. Modern physics has come to take exactly the same attitude with regard to its verbal models and theories. They, too, are only approximate and necessarily inaccurate. They are the counterparts of the Eastern myths, symbols and poetic images, and it is at this level that I shall draw the parallels. The same idea about matter is conveyed, for example, to the Hindu by the cosmic dance of the god Shiva as to the physicist by certain aspects of quantum field theory. Both the dancing god and the physical theory are creations of the mind: models to describe their authors' intuition of reality."   (Fritjof Capra, "The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism", 1975)

"In a biological or social system each holon must assert its individuality in order to maintain the system's stratified order, but it must also submit to the demands of the whole in order to make the system viable. These two tendencies are opposite but complementary. In a healthy system - an individual, a society, or an ecosystem - there is a balance between integration and self-assertion. This balance is not static but consists of a dynamic interplay between the two complementary tendencies, which makes the whole system flexible and open to change." (Fritjof Capra, "The Turning Point: Science, Society, and the Turning Culture", 1982)

"In microscopic systems, consisting of only a few molecules, the second law is violated regularly, but in macroscopic systems, which consist of vast numbers of molecules, the probability that the total entropy of the system will increase becomes virtual certainty. Thus in any isolated system, made up of a large number of molecules, the entropy - or disorder -will keep increasing until, eventually, the system reaches a state of maximum entropy, also known as 'heat death'; in this state all activity has ceased, all material being evenly distributed and at the same temperature. According to classical physics, the universe as a whole is going toward such a state of maximum entropy; it is running down and will eventually grind to a halt." (Fritjof Capra, "The Turning Point: Science, Society, and the Turning Culture", 1982)

"Living systems are organized in such a way that they form multileveled structures, each level consisting of subsystems which are wholes in regard to their parts, and parts with respect to the larger wholes." (Fritjof Capra, "The Turning Point: Science, Society, and the Turning Culture", 1982)

"Systems theory looks at the world in terms of the interrelatedness and interdependence of all phenomena, and in this framework an integrated whole whose properties cannot be reduced to those of its parts is called a system. Living organisms, societies, and ecosystems are all systems." (Fritjof Capra, "The Turning Point: Science, Society, and the Turning Culture", 1982)

"The phenomena of the subatomic world are so complex that it is by no means certain whether a complete, self-consistent theory will ever be constructed, but one can envisage a series of partly successful models of smaller scope. Each of them would be intended to cover only a part of the observed phenomena and would contain some unexplained aspects, or parameters, but the parameters of one model might be explained by another. Thus more and more phenomena could gradually be covered with ever increasing accuracy by a mosaic of interlocking models whose net number of unexplained parameters keeps decreasing." (Fritjof Capra, "The Turning Point: Science, Society, and the Turning Culture", 1982)

"The phenomenon of self-organization is not limited to living matter but occurs also in certain chemical systems […] [Ilya] Prigogine has called these systems 'dissipative structures' to express the fact that they maintain and develop structure by breaking down other structures in the process of metabolism, thus creating entropy­ disorder - which is subsequently dissipated in the form of degraded waste products. Dissipative chemical structures display the dynamics of self-organization in its simplest form, exhibiting most of the phenomena characteristic of life self-renewal, adaptation, evolution, and even primitive forms of 'mental' processes." (Fritjof Capra, "The Turning Point: Science, Society, and the Turning Culture", 1982)

"The new paradigm may be called a holistic world view, seeing the world as an integrated whole rather than a dissociated collection of parts. It may also be called an ecological view, if the term 'ecological' is used in a much broader and deeper sense than usual. Deep ecological awareness recognizes the fundamental interdependence of all phenomena and the fact that, as individuals and societies we are all embedded in (and ultimately dependent on) the cyclical process of nature." (Fritjof Capra & Gunter A Pauli, "Steering Business Toward Sustainability", 1995)

“[…] self-organization is the spontaneous emergence of new structures and new forms of behavior in open systems far from equilibrium, characterized by internal feedback loops and described mathematically by nonlinear equations.” (Fritjof  Capra, “The web of life: a new scientific understanding of living  systems”, 1996)

"The more complex the network is, the more complex its pattern of interconnections, the more resilient it will be." (Fritjof Capra, "The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems", 1996)

"The more we study the major problems of our time, the more we come to realise that they cannot be understood in isolation. They are systemic problems, which means that they are interconnected and interdependent." (Fritjof Capra, "The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems", 1996)

"The shift of paradigms requires an expansion not only of our perceptions and ways of thinking, but also of our values. […] scientific facts emerge out of an entire constellation of human perceptions, values, and actions-in one word, out of a paradigm-from which they cannot be separated. […] Today the paradigm shift in science, at its deepest level, implies a shift from physics to the life sciences." (
Fritjof Capra, "The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems", 1996)

"Understanding ecological interdependence means understanding relationships. It requires the shifts of perception that are characteristic of systems thinking - from the parts to the whole, from objects to relationships, from contents to patterns. [...]  Nourishing the community means nourishing those relationships." (Fritjof Capra, "The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems", 1996)

"What is sustained in a sustainable community is not economic growth, development, market share, or competitive advantage, but the entire web of life on which our long-term survival depends. In other words, a sustainable community is designed in such a way that its ways of life, businesses, economy, physical structures, and technologies do not interfere with nature’s inherent ability to sustain life." (Fritjof Capra, "Ecoliteracy: The Challenge for Education in the Next Century", 1999)

"One of the key insights of the systems approach has been the realization that the network is a pattern that is common to all life. Wherever we see life, we see networks." (Fritjof Capra, "The Hidden Connections: A Science for Sustainable Living", 2002)

"The phenomenon of emergence takes place at critical points of instability that arise from fluctuations in the environment, amplified by feedback loops. Emergence results in the creation of novelty, and this novelty is often qualitatively different from the phenomenon out of which it emerged." (Fritjof Capra, "The Hidden Connections: A Science for Sustainable Living", 2002)

"All living systems are networks of smaller components, and the web of life as a whole is a multilayered structure of living systems nesting within other living systems - networks within networks." (Fritjof Capra, "The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision", 2014)

"All the variables we can observe in an ecosystem-population densities, availability of nutrients, weather patterns, and so forth-always fluctuate. This is how ecosystems maintain themselves in a flexible state, ready to adapt to changing conditions. The web of life is a flexible, ever-fluctuating network. The more variables are kept fluctuating, the more dynamic is the system; the greater is its flexibility; and the greater is its ability to adapt to changing conditions." (Fritjof Capra, "The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision", 2014)

"Deep ecology does not separate humans - or anything else-from the natural environment. It sees the world not as a collection of isolated objects, but as a network of phenomena that are fundamentally interconnected and interdependent. Deep ecology recognizes the intrinsic value of all living beings and views humans as just one particular strand in the web of life." (Fritjof Capra, "The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision", 2014)

"In linear systems, small changes produce small effects, and large effects are due either to large changes or to a sum of many small changes. In nonlinear systems, by contrast, small changes may have dramatic effects because they may be amplified repeatedly by self-reinforcing feedback. Such nonlinear feedback processes are the basis of the instabilities and the sudden emergence of new forms of order that are so characteristic of self-organization." (Fritjof Capra, "The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision", 2014)

"In many nonlinear systems, however, small changes of certain parameters may produce Dramatic changes in the basic characteristics of the phase portrait. Attractors may disappear, or change into one another, or new attractors may suddenly appear. Such systems are said to be structurally unstable, and the critical points of instability are called 'bifurcation points', because they are points in the system’s evolution where a fork suddenly appears and the system branches off in a new direction. Mathematically, bifurcation points mark sudden changes in the system’s phase portrait. Physically, they correspond to points of instability at which the system changes abruptly and new forms of order suddenly appear." (Fritjof Capra, "The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision", 2014)

"In other words, the web of life consists of networks within networks. At each scale, under closer scrutiny, the nodes of the network reveal themselves as smaller networks. We tend to arange these systems, all nesting within larger systems, in a hierarchical scheme by placing the larger systems above the smaller ones in pyramid fashion. But this is a human projection. In nature there is no 'above' or 'below', and there are no hierarchies. There are only networks nesting within other networks." (Fritjof Capra, "The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision", 2014)

"In the nonlinear world – which includes most of the real world, as we have discovered – simple deterministic equations may produce an unsuspected richness and variety of behavior. On the other hand, complex and seemingly chaotic behavior can give rise to ordered structures, to subtle and beautiful patterns. In fact, in chaos theory the term 'chaos' has acquired a new technical meaning. The behavior of chaotic systems only appears to be random but in reality shows a deeper level of patterned order." (Fritjof Capra, "The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision", 2014)

"Intersections of lines, for example, remain intersections, and the hole in a torus (doughnut) cannot be transformed away. Thus a doughnut may be transformed topologically into a coffee cup (the hole turning into a handle) but never into a pancake. Topology, then, is really a mathematics of relationships, of unchangeable, or 'invariant', patterns." (Fritjof Capra, "The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision", 2014)

"It is evident that chaotic behavior, in the new scientific sense of the term, is very different from random, erratic motion. With the help of strange attractors a distinction can be made between mere randomness, or 'noise', and chaos. Chaotic behavior is deterministic and patterned, and strange attractors allow us to transform the seemingly random data into distinct visible shapes." (Fritjof Capra, "The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision", 2014)

"The first and most obvious property of any network is its nonlinearity – it goes in all directions. Thus the relationships in a network pattern are nonlinear relationships. In particular, an influence, or message, may travel along a cyclical path, which may become a feedback loop. In living networks, the concept of feedback is intimately connected with the network pattern." (Fritjof Capra, "The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision", 2014)

"The impossibility of predicting which point in phase space the trajectory of the Lorenz attractor will pass through at a certain time, even though the system is governed by deterministic equations, is a common feature of all chaotic systems. However, this does not mean that chaos theory is not capable of any predictions. We can still make very accurate predictions, but they concern the qualitative features of the system’s behavior rather than the precise values of its variables at a particular time. The new mathematics thus represents the shift from quantity to quality that is characteristic of systems thinking in general. Whereas conventional mathematics deals with quantities and formulas, nonlinear dynamics deals with qualities and patterns." (Fritjof Capra, "The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision", 2014)

"The study of pattern is crucial to the understanding of living systems because systemic properties […] arise from a configuration of ordered relationships. Systemic properties are properties of a pattern. What is destroyed when a living organism is dissected is its pattern. The components are still there, but the configuration of relationships between them – the pattern – is destroyed, and thus the organism dies." (Fritjof Capra, "The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision", 2014)

"[…] the term 'information', as used in information theory, has nothing to do with meaning. It is a measure of the order, or nonrandomness, of a signal; and the main concern of information theory is the problem of how to get a message, coded as a signal, through a noisy channel." (Fritjof Capra, "The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision", 2014)

"This spontaneous emergence of order at critical points of instability, which is often referred to simply as 'emergence', is one of the hallmarks of life. It has been recognized as the dynamic origin of development, learning, and evolution. In other words, creativity-the generation of new forms-is a key property of all living systems." (Fritjof Capra, "The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision", 2014)

"To understand the phenomenon of self-organization, we first need to understand the importance of pattern. The idea of a pattern of organization – a configuration of relationships characteristic of a particular system – became the explicit focus of systems thinking in cybernetics and has been a crucial concept ever since. From the systems point of view, the understanding of life begins with the understanding of pattern." (Fritjof Capra, "The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision", 2014)

"Topology is a geometry in which all lengths, angles, and areas can be distorted at will. Thus a triangle can be continuously transformed into a rectangle, the rectangle into a square, the square into a circle, and so on. Similarly, a cube can be transformed into a cylinder, the cylinder into a cone, the cone into a sphere. Because of these continuous transformations, topology is known popularly as 'rubber sheet geometry'. All figures that can be transformed into each other by continuous bending, stretching, and twisting are called 'topologically equivalent'." (Fritjof Capra, "The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision", 2014)

"[…] topology is concerned precisely with those properties of geometric figures that do not change when the figures are transformed. Intersections of lines, for example, remain intersections, and the hole in a torus (doughnut) cannot be transformed away. Thus a doughnut may be transformed topologically into a coffee cup (the hole turning into a handle) but never into a pancake. Topology, then, is really a mathematics of relationships, of unchangeable, or 'invariant', patterns." (Fritjof Capra, "The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision", 2014)

"Whenever we encounter living systems – organisms, parts of organisms, or communities of organisms – we can observe that their components are arranged in network fashion. Whenever we look at life, we look at networks." (Fritjof Capra, "The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision", 2014)

No comments:

Post a Comment

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

On Theorizing

"Observation is so wide awake, and facts are being so rapidly added to the sum of human experience, that it appears as if the theorizer...