Some complexity quotes

Posted by  Shawn Callahan —April 3, 2006
Filed in Collaboration

I’m always on the lookout for good quotes. I found these in the forward to Michael Lissack and Johan Roos’ book The Next Common Sense: Mastering complexity through coherence.

“What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our methods of questioning.” Walter Heisenberg

“Our theories determine what we measure.” Albert Einstein

“You don’t see something until you have the right metaphor to let you perceive it.” Thomas Kuhn

My next task is to find out where they came from. Any ideas?

About  Shawn Callahan

Shawn, author of Putting Stories to Work, is one of the world's leading business storytelling consultants. He helps executive teams find and tell the story of their strategy. When he is not working on strategy communication, Shawn is helping leaders find and tell business stories to engage, to influence and to inspire. Shawn works with Global 1000 companies including Shell, IBM, SAP, Bayer, Microsoft & Danone. Connect with Shawn on:

Comments

  1. ken says:

    Is it possible that the Kuhn quote might not actually be from him? It’s written as above in James Gleick’s book Chaos (p262), but Gleick follows the quote with with “Shaw said, echoing Thomas S.Kuhn”, attributing the popular version to Robert Shaw, as if Kuhn’s might be slightly different, but Shaw’s paraphrasing may be more strangely attractive 🙂

  2. ken says:

    Hmm, in a doubly delightful piece of synchronicity there’s a discussion in Gleick on p255 (paperback) of Shannon’s use of the word “information” (part of the DIK sandwhich) which “proved as good a word as any, but people had to remember that they were using a specialized value-free term without the usual connotations of facts, learning, wisdom, understanding, enlightenment”. Then while re-reading Capra this morning he cites the [Werner] Heisenberg in his Web of Life book (p40, paperback) with a footnote citing his earlier Tao of Physics.

  3. Sorry, I can’t comment on the quotes, but I found an interesting one today. Dee Hock, founder of the Visa organisation, commented – after reading about complexity theory – “the hubris of science is astonishing. It will come as quite a surprise to countless poets, philosophers, theologians, humanists and mystics who have thought deeply about such things for thousands of years that complexity, diversity, interconnectedness and self-organisation are either new or a science”.
    From his book ‘Birth of the chaordic age’

  4. Shawn Callahan says:

    Great quote Sharon. It is great we are seeing the ideas pioneered by the poets, philosophers, theologians, humanists and mystics finally leaping a chasm and being taken up by scientists, and even managers.

  5. yeah says:

    Werner Heisenberg. Not Walter Heisenberg.

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