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Whenever the essential nature of things is analysed by the intellect, it must seem absurd or paradoxical. This has always been recognized by the mystics, but has become a problem in science only very recently.

Fritjof Capra

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Fritjof Capra
Age: 85
Born: 1939
Born: February 1
Environmentalist
Physicist
Writer
Vienna
Austria
Always
Essentials
Paradoxical
Things
Seem
Recently
Science
Recognized
Nature
Absurd
Become
Intellect
Seems
Accounts
Problem
Essential
Analysed
Must
Whenever
Mystics

More quotes by Fritjof Capra

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The term paradigm, from the Greek paradeigma (pattern), was used by Kuhn to denote a conceptual framework shared by a community of scientists and providing them with model problems and solutions
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Modern physics has... revealed that every sub-atomic particle not only performs an energy dance, but also is an energy dance a pulsating process of creation and destruction.
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Subatomic particles do not exist but rather show 'tendencies to exist', and atomic events do not occur with certainty at definite times and in definite ways, but rather show 'tendencies to occur'.
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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... This time, however, it is not only based on intuition, but also on experiments of great precision and sophistication, and on a rigorous and consistent mathematical formalism.
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Our Western science, ever since the 17th century, has been obsessed with the notion of control, of man dominating nature. This obsession has led to disaster.
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Bells theorem dealt a shattering blow to Einsteins position by showing that the conception of reality as consisting of separate parts, joined by local connections, is incompatible with quantum theory... Bells theorem demonstrates that the universe is fundamentally interconnected, interdependent, and inseparable.
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In modern physics, the universe is experienced as a dynamic inseparable whole which always includes the observer in an essential way.
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The elements of life are dynamic patterns of mass and energy, events rather than objects.
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Before the 1940s the terms system and systems thinking had been used by several scientists, but it was Bertalanffy's concepts of an open system and a general systems theory that established systems thinking as a major scientific movement
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Genuine mental health would involve a balanced interplay of both modes of experience, a way of life in which one's identification with the ego is playful and tentative rather than absolute and mandatory, while the concern with material possessions is pragmatic rather than obsessive.
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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
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Mystics understand the roots of the Tao but not its branches scientists understand its branches but not its roots. Science does not need mysticism and mysticism does not need science but man needs both.
Fritjof Capra
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Organizations need to undergo fundamental changes, both in order to adapt to the new business environment and to become ecologically sustainable.
Fritjof Capra
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Subatomic particles have no meaning as isolated entities, but can only be understood as interconnections between the preparation of an experiment and the subsequent measurement.
Fritjof Capra
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With the subsequent strong support from cybernetics , the concepts of systems thinking and systems theory became integral parts of the established scientific language, and led to numerous new methodologies and applications -- systems engineering, systems analysis, systems dynamics, and so on.
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In Hinduism, Shiva the Cosmic Dancer, is perhaps the most perfect personification of the dynamic universe. Through his dance, Shiva sustains the manifold phenomena in the world, unifying all things by immersing them in his rhythm and making them participate in the dance - a magnificent image of the dynamic unity of the Universe.
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Both the physicist and the mystic want to communicate their knowledge, and when they do so with words their statements are paradoxical and full of logical contradictions.
Fritjof Capra
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Knowledge cannot be separated from a certain way of life which becomes its living manifestation. To acquire mystical knowledge means to undergo a transformation one could even say that the knowledge is the transformation.
Fritjof Capra
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A sustainable human community is designed in such a manner that its ways of life, technologies, and social institutions honor, support, and cooperate with nature's inherent ability to sustain life.
Fritjof Capra