On Plurality (1950-)

"A social system consists in a plurality of individual actors interacting with each other in a situation which has at least a physical or environmental aspect, actors who are motivated in terms of a tendency to the 'optimization of gratification' and whose relation to their situations, including each other, is defined and mediated in terms of a system of culturally structured and shared symbols." (Talcott Parsons, "The Social System", 1951)

"A social system is a mode of organization of action elements relative to the persistence or ordered processes of change of the interactive patterns of a plurality of individual actors." (Talcott Parsons, "The Social System", 1951) 

"Relativity is inherently convergent, though convergent toward a plurality of centers of abstract truths. Degrees of accuracy are only degrees of refinement and magnitude in no way affects the fundamental reliability, which refers, as directional or angular sense, toward centralized truths. Truth is a relationship." (R Buckminster Fuller, "The Designers and the Politicians", 1962)

"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)

"Science is imagination in the service of the verifiable truth and that service is indeed communal. It cannot be rigidly planned. Rather, it requires freedom and courage and the plural contributions of many different kinds of people who must maintain their individuality while giving to the group." (Gerald M Edelman, [Nobel Prize] 1972)

"What is so remarkable in all these theories and doctrines is their implicit monism, the claim that behind the obvious multiplicity of the world’s appearances and, even more pertinently to our context, behind the obvious plurality of man’s faculties and abilities, there must exist a oneness - the old hen pan, 'the all is one' - either a single source or a single ruler." (Hannah Arendt, "The Life of the Mind", 1977)

"[...] the plurality that we perceive is only an appearance; it is not real." (Erwin Schrödinger, 'The Mystic Vision', 1984 )

"There are a variety of swarm topologies, but the only organization that holds a genuine plurality of shapes is the grand mesh. In fact, a plurality of truly divergent components can only remain coherent in a network. No other arrangement-chain, pyramid, tree, circle, hub-can contain true diversity working as a whole. This is why the network is nearly synonymous with democracy or the market." (Kevin Kelly, "Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World", 1995)

"It is part of the lore of science that the most parsimonious explanation of observed facts is to be preferred over convoluted and long-winded theories. Ptolemaic epicycles gave way to the Copernican system largely on this premise, and in general, scientific inquiry is governed by the oft-quoted dictum of the medieval cleric William of Occam that 'nunquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necesitate' , which may be paraphrased as 'choose the simplest explanation for the observed facts' ." (Edward Beltrami, "What is Random?: Chaos and Order in Mathematics and Life", 1999)

"Complementary to the principle of multidimensionality and parallel to it is the concept of plurality. Plurality of function, structure, and process, as we will see later on, is at the core of systems theory of development. It makes the high/high a possibility and choice a reality. Plurality simply maintains that systems can have multiple structures and multiple functions and be governed by multiple processes; it denies the classical view of a single structure with a single function in a single cause-and-effect relationship." (Jamshid Gharajedaghi, "Systems Thinking: Managing Chaos and Complexity A Platform for Designing Business Architecture" 3rd Ed., 2011)

"Singularity refers to theories in which a particular structure, function, or process is considered fixed and/or primary in all environments. Plurality refers to theories that consider structure, function, or process to be multiple and/or variable in the same or different environments." (Jamshid Gharajedaghi, "Systems Thinking: Managing Chaos and Complexity A Platform for Designing Business Architecture" 3rd Ed., 2011)