GI Synthesis, Connections, Patterns, and Classification
Geoscience
Type Quotes
The idea that in order for us to truly create and contribute to the world, we have to be able to connect countless dots, to cross-pollinate ideas from a wealth of disciplines, to combine and recombine these pieces and build new castles.
-Maria Popova
Synthesis is the process of combining objects or ideas into a complex whole. Analysis, the other side of the coin, is the division of a physical or abstract whole into its constituent parts to examine or determine their relationship or value. Making connections among the constituents often leads to new insights. Henry Ford may have been one of the first to make use of synthesis in business: "I invented nothing new. I simply assembled the discoveries of other men behind whom were centuries of work. Had I worked fifty or ten or even five years before, I would have failed. So it is with every new thing. Progress happens when all the factors that make for it are ready, and then it is inevitable. To teach that a comparatively few men are responsible for the greatest forward steps of mankind is the worst sort of nonsense."
-Stephen Jay Gould
The first step in wisdom is to know the things themselves; this notion consists in having a true idea of the objects; objects are distinguished and known by classifying them methodically and giving them appropriate names. Therefore, classification and name-giving will be the foundation of our science.
-Carolus Linnaeus
Scientists still do not appear to understand sufficiently that all earth sciences must contribute evidence toward unveiling the state of our planet in earlier times, and that the truth of the matter can only be reached by combing all this evidence. ... It is only by combing the information furnished by all the earth sciences that we can hope to determine 'truth' here, that is to say, to find the picture that sets out all the known facts in the best arrangement and that therefore has the highest degree of probability.
-Alfred Wegener
Go some distance away because the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance, and a lack of harmony of proportion is rapidly seen.
-Leonardo DaVinci
With their four-dimensional minds, and in their interdisciplinary ultra verbal way, geologists can wiggle out of almost anything.
-John McPhee
The Grand Canyon is the sublimest thing on earth. It is not alone by virtue of its magnitude, but by virtue of its whole--its ensemble.
-Clarence E. Dutton
No Geologist worth anything is permanently bound to a desk or laboratory, but the charming notion that true science can only be based on unbiased observation of nature in the raw is mythology. Creative work, in geology and anywhere else, is interaction and synthesis: half-baked ideas from a bar room, rocks in the field, chains of thought from lonely walks, numbers squeezed from rocks in a laboratory, numbers from a calculator riveted to a desk, fancy equipment usually malfunctioning on expensive ships, cheap equipment in the human cranium, arguments before a road cut.
-Stephen Jay Gould
When chemists have brought their knowledge out of their special laboratories into the laboratory of the world, where chemical combinations are and have been through all time going on in such vast proportions,-when physicists study the laws of moisture, of clouds and storms, in past periods as well as in the present,-when, in short, geologists and zoologists are chemists and physicists, and vice versa,-then we shall learn more of the changes the world has undergone than is possible now that they are separately studied.
-Louis Agassiz
Bare bones ideas are plentiful, but the trick is to identify the good ones. Ideas derive their importance and durability in relation to data, problems and other ideas. In other words, ideas must be tested against reality. Good ideas will have two effects. They will be useful in their original context and they will create surprising, intriguing connections among things that once seemed to exist in separate contexts.
-Jack Oliver
A dinosaur out of context is like a character without a story. Worse than that, the character suffers from amnesia.
-Jack Horner
The individual geologist will have two options. He can choose the necessary and important role of specialist, a contributor of knowledge to decision process, or he can pursue his traditional role of facilitator and integrator, but to do this he will have to be able to handle an additional order of magnitude of information and know how to use it.
J. F. Bookout
Bare bones ideas are plentiful, but the trick is to identify the good ones. Ideas derive their importance and durability in relation to data, problems and other ideas. In other words, ideas must be tested against reality. Good ideas will have two effects. They will be useful in their original context and they will create surprising, intriguing connections among things that once seemed to exist in separate contexts.
-Jack Oliver
It behooves one who teaches others to give exact names to everything.
-Georgius Agricola
The first step in wisdom is to know the things themselves; this notion consists in having a true idea of the objects; objects are distinguished and known by classifying them methodically and giving them appropriate names. Therefore, classification and name-giving will be the foundation of our science.
-Carolus Linnaeus
No Geologist worth anything is permanently bound to a desk or laboratory, but the charming notion that true science can only be based on unbiased observation of nature in the raw is mythology. Creative work, in geology and anywhere else, is interaction and synthesis: half-baked ideas from a bar room, rocks in the field, chains of thought from lonely walks, numbers squeezed from rocks in a laboratory, numbers from a calculator riveted to a desk, fancy equipment usually malfunctioning on expensive ships, cheap equipment in the human cranium, arguments before a road cut.
-Stephen Jay Gould
But unfortunately far too many are the gatherers of information, the artisans, the "geological clerks."
B. W. Beebe
Creativity comes from our brains. It involves making connections - connections between concepts and facts we have learned and remembered. Creativity occurs because we overcome obstacles - because we dare.
Ted Bear
Good artists copy, great artists steal.
-Pablo Picasso
Everything of importance has already been seen by someone who did not discover it.
-Alfred North Whitehead
In a recent survey, innovative people — from inventors to scientists, writers to programmers — were asked what techniques they used. Over 70% believed they got their best ideas by exploring areas they were not experts in
-Scott Berkun, The Myths of Innovation
