Thursday, January 20, 2011

The plagiarize series - Jan C. Willems - In Control, Almost from the Beginning Until the Day After Tomorrow


"The work involved in preparing publications comes for a large part at the expense of time to think. In science, more writing goes together with less reading. The sheer number of publications makes it also very difficult to get acquainted with, and evaluate a new idea.
I miss the emphasis on breadth and depth, on quality rather than quantity, on synthesis of ideas, on debate and scrutiny rather than passive attendance of presentations, and on reflection rather than activity.
Sure, euphoria bears creativity, and skepticism paralyzes. However, questioning and criticism is an essential part of science. I have seen too many high profile areas collapse under their own weight: cybernetics, world dynamics, general systems theory, catastrophe theory, and I wonder what the future has in store for cellular automata, fractals, neural networks, complexity theory, and sync."

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