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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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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
World
Land
Extremely
Classifications
Fire
Model
Heterogeneous
Water
Chosen
Taxonomy
Science
Enormous
Classification
Earth
Models
Divide
Better
Air
Divides
Real
Labor
Complexity
Much
Depends
Capital
Aggregates

More quotes by Kenneth E. Boulding

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Even personal tastes are learned, in the matrix of a culture or a subculture in which we grow up, by very much the same kind of process by which we learn our common values. Purely personal tastes, indeed, can only survive in a culture which tolerates them, that is, which has a common value that private tastes of certain kinds should be allowed.
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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Mathematicians themselves set up standards of generality and elegance in their exposition which are a bar to understand.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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A world of unseen dictatorship is conceivable, still using the forms of democratic government.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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Communication can only take place among equals.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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If a totally new image is to come into being however, there must be sensitivity to internal messages, the image itself must be sensitive to change, must be unstable, and it must include a value image which places high value on trials, experiments, and the trying of new things.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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Economics has been incurably growth-oriented and addicted to everybody growing richer, even at the cost of exhaustion of resources and pollution of the environment.
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 consumer is] the supreme mover of economic order... for whom all goods are made and towards whom all economic activity is directed.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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The controversy as to whether socialism is possible has been settled by the fact that it exists, and it is a fundamental axiom of my philosophy, at any rate, that anything that exists, is possible.
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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All knowledge is gained through an orderly loss of information.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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Private property is a means, and neither its abolition nor its unrestricted right should be an end in itself.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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[The question for the behavioral disciplines is simply] what is better, and how do we get there?
Kenneth E. Boulding
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The organization of science into disciplines sets up a series of ghettos with remarkable distances of artificial social space between them.
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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Economists and technologists bring the bits, but it requires the social scientists and humanists to bring the wits.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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What exists, is possible.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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One advantage of exhibiting a hierarchy of systems in this way is that it gives us some idea of the present gaps in both theoretical and empirical knowledge. Adequate theoretical models extend up to about the fourth level, and not much beyond. Empirical knowledge is deficient at practically all levels.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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[There will be movement toward] behavioral economics... [which] involves study of those aspects of men's images, or cognitive and affective structures that are more relevant to economic decisions.
Kenneth E. Boulding