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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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Fritjof Capra
Age: 85
Born: 1939
Born: February 1
Environmentalist
Physicist
Writer
Vienna
Austria
Way
Becomes
Life
Knowledge
Living
Undergo
Means
Separated
Cannot
Mystical
Certain
Manifestation
Mean
Acquire
Even
Transformation

More quotes by Fritjof Capra

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The more complex the network is, the more complex its pattern of interconnections, the more resilient it will be.
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In the end, the aggressors always destroy themselves, making way for others who know how to cooperate and get along. Life is much less a competitive struggle for survival than a triumph of cooperation and creativity.
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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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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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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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Tektology was the first attempt in the history of science to arrive at a systematic formulation of the principles of organization operating in living and nonliving systems.
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Ecology and spirituality are fundamentally connected, because deep ecological awareness, ultimately, is spiritual awareness.
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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.
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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.
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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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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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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.
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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.
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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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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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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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Doing work which has to be done over and over again helps us recognize the natural cycles of growth and decay, of birth and death, and thus become aware of the dynamic order of the universe. Ordinary work, as the root meaning of the term indicates, is work that is in harmony with the order we perceive in the natural environment.
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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.
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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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