Sunday, August 5, 2007

The whole is simpler than the sum of its parts.
--Willard Gibbs
Less is more.
-Robert Browning
When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think about solving the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, then I now it is wrong.
-Buckminster Fuller
At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; neither from nor towards, at the still point, there the dance is.
--T.S. Elliot
Management is in a stable state. Transformation is required to move out of the current state, not mere patchwork on the present style of management.
--W. Edwards Deming
Knowledge creates understanding, but only practice creates belief.
For what can the teeming molecules that hustled themselves into self-reproducing metabolisms, the cells coordinating their behaviors to form multicelled organisms, the ecosystems, and even economic and political systems have in common? The wonderful possibility, to be held as a working hypothesis, bold but fragile, is that on many fronts, life evolves toward a regime that is poised between order and chaos. The evocative phrase that points to this working hypothesis is this: life exists at the edge of chaos . . . Networks in the regime near the edge of chaos--this comprise between order and surprise-appear best able to coordinate complex activities and best able to evolve as well.
--Stuart Kauffman