On Ecology IV

"In the past several years, social work has increasingly focused on an ecological model. This model integrates both treatment and reform by conceptualizing and emphasizing the dysfunctional transactions between people and their physical and social environments. Human beings are viewed as developing and adapting through transactions with all elements of their environments. An ecological model gives attention to both internal and external factors. It does not view people as passive reactors to their environments but, rather, as being involved in dynamic and reciprocal interactions with them." (Charles Zastrow, "The practice of social work", 1995)

"A major clash between economics and ecology derives from the fact that nature is cyclical, whereas our industrial systems are linear. Our businesses take resources, transform them into products plus waste, and sell the products to consumers, who discard more waste […]" (Fritjof Capra, "The Web of Life", 1996)

"These, then, are some of the basic principles of ecology - interdependence, recycling, partnership, flexibility, diversity, and, as a consequence of all those, sustainability... the survival of humanity will depend on our ecological literacy, on our ability to understand these principles of ecology and live accordingly."(Fritjof Capra, "The Web of Life", 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", 1996)

"Ecology, as it is currently practiced, sometimes deals with human impacts on ecosystems, but the more common tendency is to stick to 'natural' systems."(Robert Costanza & Janis King, "The first decade of ecological economics", Ecological Economics 28 (1), 1999)

"Ecological rationality uses reason – rational reconstruction – to examine the behavior of individuals based on their experience and folk knowledge, who are ‘naïve’ in their ability to apply constructivist tools to the decisions they make; to understand the emergent order in human cultures; to discover the possible intelligence embodied in the rules, norms and institutions of our cultural and biological heritage that are created from human interactions but not by deliberate human design. People follow rules without being able to articulate them, but they can be discovered." (Vernon L Smith, "Constructivist and ecological rationality in economics",  2002)

"Organizations need to undergo fundamental changes, both in order to adapt to the new business environment and to become ecologically sustainable." (Fritjof Capra, "The Hidden Connections", 2002)

"It is science that brings us an understanding of the true complexity of natural systems. The insights from the science of ecology are teaching us how to work with the checks and balances of nature, and encouraging a new, rational, limited-input, environmentally sound means of vineyard management that offers a third way between the ideologically driven approach of Biodynamics and conventional chemical-based agricultural systems." (Jamie Goode," The Science of Wine: From Vine to Glass", 2005)

"Any new dominant communications medium leads to a new information ecology in society that inevitably changes the way ideas, feelings, wealth, power and influence are distributed and the way collective decisions are made." (Al Gore,"The Assault on Reason", 2007)

"This new model of development would be based clearly on the goal of sustainable human well-being. It would use measures of progress that clearly acknowledge this goal. It would acknowledge the importance of ecological sustainability, social fairness, and real economic efficiency. Ecological sustainability implies recognizing that natural and social capital are not infinitely substitutable for built and human capital, and that real biophysical limits exist to the expansion of the market economy." (Robert Costanza, "Toward a New Sustainable Economy", 2008)

Donald E Knuth - Collected Quotes

"It’s the idea that counts true; but we need a name for the idea, so we can apply it more easily next time." (Donald E Knuth, "Surreal Numbers", 1968)

"[…] random numbers should not be generated with a method chosen at random. Some theory should be used." (Donald E Knuth, "The Art of Computer Programming" Vol. II, 1968)

"The process of preparing programs for a digital computer is especially attractive, not only because it can economically and scientifically rewarding, but also because it can be an aesthetic experience much like composing poetry or music." (Donald E Knuth, "The Art of Computer Programming: Fundamental algorithms", 1968)

"The real problem is that programmers have spent far too much time worrying about efficiency in the wrong places and at the wrong times; premature optimization is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." (Donald E Knuth, "Computer Programming as an Art", 1968)

"These machines have no common sense; they have not yet learned to "think," and they do exactly as they are told, no more and no less. This fact is the hardest concept to grasp when one first tries to use a computer." (Donald E Knuth, "The Art of Computer Programming", 1968)

"We have seen that computer programming is an art, because it applies accumulated knowledge to the world, because it requires skill and ingenuity, and especially because it produces objects of beauty. A programmer who subconsciously views himself as an artist will enjoy what he does and will do it better. Therefore we can be glad that people who lecture at computer conferences speak of the state of the Art." (Donald E Knuth, "the Art of Computer Programming", 1968)

"Meta-design is much more difficult than design; it's easier to draw something than to explain how to draw it." (Donald E Knuth, "The METAFONTbook", 1986)

"Some people think that mathematics is a serious business that must always be cold and dry; but we think mathematics is fun, and we aren’t ashamed to admit the fact. Why should a strict boundary line be drawn between work and play? Concrete mathematics is full of appealing patterns; the manipulations are not always easy, but the answers can be astonishingly attractive." (Donald E Knuth et al, "Concrete Mathematics: A Foundation for Computer Science", 1989)

"The ultimate goal of mathematics is to eliminate all need for intelligent thought." (Donald E Knuth, "Concrete Mathematics: A Foundation for Computer Science", 1990)

"Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we do." (Donald E Knuth, [foreword to the book "A=B" by Marko Petkovsek et al] 1996)

"The whole thing that makes a mathematician's life worthwhile is that he gets the grudging admiration of three or four colleagues." (Donald E Knuth, [interview] 1996)

"Let us change our traditional attitude to the construction of programs: Instead of imagining that our main task is to instruct a computer what to do, let us concentrate rather on explaining to human beings what we want a computer to do." (Donald E Knuth, "Literate Programming", 1984)

"The difference between art and science is that science is what people understand well enough to explain to a computer. All else is art." (Donald E Knuth)

Mental Models XIV

"A human being, what is a human being? Everything and nothing. Through the power of thought it can mirror everything it experiences. Through memory and knowledge it becomes a microcosm, carrying the world within itself. A mirror of things, a mirror of facts. Each human being becomes a little universe within the universe!” (Guy de Maupassant, [in “The Journal of a Madman”] 1851)

“Every definite image in the mind is steeped and dyed in the free water that flows around it. With it goes the sense of its relations, near and remote, the dying echo of whence it came to us, the dawning sense of whither it is to lead. The significance, the value, of the image is all in this halo or penumbra that surrounds and escorts it, - or rather that is fused into one with it and has become bone of its bone and flesh of its flesh; leaving it, it is true, an image of the same thing it was before, but making it an image of that thing newly taken and freshly understood." (William James, “The Principles of Psychology”, 1890)

"Great thinkers have vast premonitory glimpses of schemes of relations between terms, which hardly even as verbal images enter the mind, so rapid is the whole process. We all of us have this permanent consciousness of whither our thought is going." (William James, “The Principles of Psychology”, 1890)

“It is a common and necessary feature of human intelligence that we can neither conceive of things nor define them conceptually without adding attributes to them that simply do not exist. This applies not only to every thought and imagination of ordinary life, even the sciences do not proceed otherwise. Only philosophy seeks and finds the difference between things that exist and things that we perceive, and also sees the necessity of this difference. […] What we add are therefore not incorrect conceptions but the conditions for such conceptions in general. We cannot simply remove them and replace them with better ones; either we must add them, or we must abstain from all conceptions of this kind.” (Heinrich Hertz, “Die Prinzipien der Mechanik in neuem Zusammenhange dargestellt”, 1894)

“The words of the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in any mechanism of thought. The physical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images which can be 'voluntarily' reproduced or combined. […]  But taken from a psychological viewpoint, this combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought - before there is any connection with logical construction in words or other kinds of signs which can be communicated to others. The above-mentioned elements are, in my case, of visual and some of muscular type. Conventional words or other signs have to be sought for laboriously only in a secondary stage, when the mentioned associative play is sufficiently established and can be reproduced at will.” (Albert Einstein, [letter to Hadamard, in (Jacques Hadamard, “The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field,1945)])

“Visual thinking calls, more broadly, for the ability to see visual shapes as images of the patterns of forces that underlie our existence - the functioning of minds, of bodies or machines, the structure of societies or ideas.” (Rudolf Arnheim, “Visual Thinking”, 1969)

“People have amazing facilities for sensing something without knowing where it comes from (intuition); for sensing that some phenomenon or situation or object is like something else (association); and for building and testing connections and comparisons, holding two things in mind at the same time (metaphor). These facilities are quite important for mathematics. Personally, I put a lot of effort into ‘listening’ to my intuitions and associations, and building them into metaphors and connections. This involves a kind of simultaneous quieting and focusing of my mind. Words, logic, and detailed pictures rattling around can inhibit intuitions and associations.” (William P Thurston, “On proof and progress in mathematics”, Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society Vol. 30 (2), 1994)

"[...] images are probably the main content of our thoughts, regardless of the sensory modality in which they are generated and regardless of whether they are about a thing or a process involving things; or about words or other symbols, in a given language, which correspond to a thing or process. Hidden behind those images, never or rarely knowable by us, there are indeed numerous processes that guide the generation and deployment of those images in space and time. Those processes utilize rules and strategies embodied in dispositional representations. They are essential for our thinking but are not a content of our thoughts.” (Antonio R Damasio, “Descartes' Error. Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain”, 1994)

“Intuition isn't direct perception of something external. It's the effect in the mind/brain of manipulating concrete objects - at a later stage, of making marks on paper, and still later, manipulating mental images. This experience leaves a trace, an effect, in your mind/brain.” (Reuben Hersh, “What Is Mathematics, Really?”, 1998)

“A person thinking in the nonverbal mode is actually thinking with the meaning of the language in the form of mental pictures of the concepts and ideas it contains. Nonverbal thought doesn't require literacy. An illiterate person can communicate without knowing what the symbols look like. ... Literacy, then, is established as the person learns how the symbols look and becomes able to recognize them as representing certain things or concepts.“ (Ronald D Davis & Eldon M Braun, “The Gift of Learning”, 2003)

Misquoted: Herbert G Wells on Mathematical Literacy

"Statistical thinking will one day be as necessary for efficient citizenship as the ability to read and write."

The above quote on statistical literacy is often attributed to Herbert G Wells though it belongs to the statistician Samuel S Wilks, who in a 1951 presidential address was paraphrasing Wells:

"Perhaps H. G. Wells was right when he said ‘statistical thinking will one day be as necessary for efficient citizenship as the ability to read and write’!" [4]

The original quote comes from “Mankind in the Making”, first published in 1903 (and not in 1911 as Wikipedia states):

"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." [1]

Even if Wells mentions averages, maxima and minima, tools of statistics, the text refers to mathematical analysis and not statistics. Wilk’s paraphrasing makes sense in nowadays contexts, and seems somehow natural, even if statistical literacy is more about understanding and (critically) evaluating statements that involve rates and percentages.

Another paraphrasing of the same quote and probably closer to the essence of statistical literacy can be found in George A Lundberg paper published in 1940, however without giving credit to Wells:

"The time is perhaps at hand when it will be recognized that for intelligent living in modern society it is as necessary to be able to think in averages, percentages, and deviations as it is to be able to read and write." [2]

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References:
[1] “Mankind in the Making”, by Herbert G Wells, 1903 [Source]
[2] “Statistics in Modern Social Thought”, by George A Lundberg [in “Contemporary Social Theory”, Ed. by H. E. Barnes, H. Becker & F. Becker, 1940] [Source]
[3] “The H. G. Wells Quote on Statistics: A Question of Accuracy”, by James W Tankard Jr., Historia Mathematics 6, 1979 [Source]
[4] “Undergraduate Statistical Education”, by  Samuel S Wilks, Journal of the American Statistical Association, Vol. 46, 1951 [Source]