Quote

Physicists only talk to physicists, economists to economists-worse still, nuclear physicists only talk to nuclear physicists and econometricians to econometricians. One wonders sometimes if science will not grind to a stop in an assemblage of walled-in hermits, each mumbling to himself words in a private language that only he can understand.

Kenneth E. Boulding

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Kenneth E. Boulding
Age: 83 †
Born: 1910
Born: January 18
Died: 1993
Died: March 18
Author
Economist
Philosopher
Poet
University Teacher
City of Liverpool
Kenneth Ewart Boulding
Understanding
Economist
Walled
Words
Accounts
Assemblage
Language
Nuclear
Hermits
Understand
Private
Physicists
Science
Worse
Economists
Stills
Stop
Grind
Still
Wonder
Wonders
Sometimes
Talk
Physicist
Mumbling

More quotes by Kenneth E. Boulding

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The perception of potential threats to survival may be much more important in determining behavior than the perceptions of potential profits, so that profit maximization is not really the driving force. It is fear of loss rather than hope of gain that limits our behavior.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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Nothing fails like success because we don't learn from it. We learn only from failure.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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If the society toward which we are developing is not to be a nightmare of exhaustion, we must use the interlude of the present era to develop a new technology which is based on a circular flow of materials such that the only sources of man's provisions will be his own waste products.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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Know this: though love is weak and hate is strong, Yet hate is short, and love is very long.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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[The integrative system] deals with such matters as respect, legitimacy, community, friendship, affection, love, and of course their opposites, across a broad scale of human relationships and interactions.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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The human condition can almost be summed up in the observation that, whereas all experiences are of the past, all decisions are about the future. It is the great task of human knowledge to bridge this gap and to find those patterns in the past which can be projected into the future as realistic images.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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The tourist business is a trap, it is a tained honey Man clearly should have stayed in bed, and not invented money.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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The most fundamental form of integrative power is the power of love.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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In any evolutionary process, even in the arts, the search for novelty becomes corrupting.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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Political conflict rests to a very large extent on a universal ignorance of consequences, as the people who are benefited by any particular act or policy are rarely those who struggled for it, and the people who are injured are rarely those who opposed it.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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[The loss-of-strength gradient is] the degree to which military and political power diminishes as we move a unit distance away from its home base.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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[In science any model depends on a pre-chosen taxonomy] a set of classifications into which we divide the enormous complexity of the real world... Land, labor, and capital are extremely heterogeneous aggregates, not much better than earth, air, fire, and water.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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[The historical] development in the international system may almost be defined as the process by which we pass from stable war to stable peace.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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All knowledge is gained through an orderly loss of information.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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The economy of the future might be called the spaceman economy, in which the earth has become a single spaceship, without unlimited reservoirs of anything.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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There are, of course, a number of epistemological questions, some of which lie more in the province of the philosopher than they do the economist or the social scientist. The one with which I am particularly concerned here is that of the role of knowledge in social systems, both as a product of the past and as a determinant of the future.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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Economic problems have no sharp edges. They shade off imperceptibly into politics, sociology, and ethics. Indeed, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that the ultimate answer to every economic problem lies in some other field.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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If we saw tomorrow's newspaper today, tomorrow would never happen.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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The trouble with taxonomic boxes is... that that they tend to be empty, however beautiful they are on the outside.
Kenneth E. Boulding