Specialization Quotes
More Specialization Quotes
In our time of ever-increasing specialization, there is a tendency to concern ourselves with relatively narrow scientific problems. The broad foundations of our present-day scientific knowledge and its historical development tend to be forgotten too often. This is an unfortunate trend, not only because our horizon becomes rather limited and our perspective somewhat distorted, but also because there are many valuable lessons to be learned in looking back over the years during which the basic concepts and the fundamental laws of a particular scientific discipline were first formulated.
— in Einstein's Researches on the Nature of Light, Emil Wolf (2001). Selected works of Emil Wolf: with commentary. World Scientific. p. 536. ISBN 9810242042.
It is noteworthy that modern Platonists , almost without exception, are ignorant of mathematics, in spite of the immense importance that Plato attached to arithmetic and geometry, and the immense influence that they [these studies] had on his philosophy. This is an example of the evils of specialization: a man must not write on Plato unless he has spent so much of his youth on Greek as to have no time for the things that Plato thought important.
— Book One, Part II, Chapter XV, The Theory of Ideas, p. 132
The problem [ of specialization ] is essentially that of communications to an army in action. After a rapid advance communications become disorganized, and there is a temporary halting until they are again in working order.
john desmond bernal— p. 48 as cited in: C. K. Ogden (1995) Psyche. 10. 1929/30 p. 116
There is also hope that even in these days of increasing specialization there is a unity in the human experience.
— Banquet speech, The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1979
Much literary criticism comes from people for whom extreme specialization is a cover for either grave cerebral inadequacy or terminal laziness, the latter being a much cherished aspect of academic freedom.
john kenneth galbraith— "H.L. Mencken," The Washington Post (1980-09-14); reprinted in A View from the Stands (1986)
If it is to be effective as a tool of thought, a notation must allow convenient expression not only of notions arising directly from a problem, but also of those arising in subsequent analysis, generalization, and specialization.
kenneth e. iverson— §1.1
The process of specialization tends, almost inevitably, to narrow the sources from which the rules of any science are drawn; and English law is no exception from this rule.
edward jenks— Chapter XIII, Modern Authorities And The Legal Profession, p. 185
In the general tendency toward specialization, philosophy too has established itself as a specialized discipline, one purified of all specific content. In so doing, philosophy has denied its own constitutive concept: the intellectual freedom that does not obey the dictates of specialized knowledge.
theodor adorno— p. 6 (Wozu noch Philosophie? [Why still philosophy] (1963))
… contempt for the degradation of specialization and pedantry. specialization develops only part of a man; a man partially developed is deformed.
richard weaver— p. 56 (Ideas have Consequences (1948))
The former distrust of specialization has been supplanted by its opposite, a distrust of generalization. Not only has man become a specialist in practice, he is being taught that special facts represent the highest form of knowledge.
richard weaver— p. 59 (Ideas have Consequences (1948))
Professor Forrester told the National Academy of Engineering this fall, the "enterprise engineer," cast in the mold of the "professional engineer of folklore," is needed now more than ever before "to resynthesize the fragments caused by the specialization of other man".
— Technology Review (1967) Vol. 70, p. 135
The process of specialization tends, almost inevitably, to narrow the sources from which the rules of any science are drawn; and English law is no exception from this rule.
— Chapter XIII, Modern Authorities And The Legal Profession, p. 185
It is an ancient belief, going back to classical antiquity, that specialization of any kind is illiberal in a freeman. A man willing to bury himself in the details of some small endeavor has been considered lost to these larger considerations which must occupy the mind of the ruler.
richard weaver— Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences (Chicago: 1948), p. 56
The former distrust of specialization has been supplanted by its opposite, a distrust of generalization. Not only has man become a specialist in practice, he is being taught that special facts represent the highest form of knowledge.
richard weaver— Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences (Chicago: 1948), p. 59
International specialization and division of labor requires institutions and organizations to safeguard property rights across international boundaries so that capital markets as well as other kinds of exchange can take place with credible commitment on the part of the players.
— Douglass C. North (1990) Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance p. 121
A second, related assumption of modern progress-philosophy is that intellectual production functions in essentially the same way as economic production: the progress of both results from “teamwork,” from the practice of the division of labor or specialization within a group. And just as the essential precondition of the economic division of labor is exchange, so the precondition of intellectual specialization is the efficient exchange of knowledge through publication.
— Arthur Melzer (2007) “On the Pedagogical Motive for Esoteric Writing” The Journal of Politics, Volume 69, Issue 4, pp. 1015 - 1031
Too rigid specialization is almost as bad for a historian 's mind , and for his ultimate reputation , as too early an indulgence in broad generalization and synthesis .
— Samuel E. Morison in: Capitalizing on Language Learners' Individuality: From Premise to Practice, Multilingual Matters, 11 December 2013, p.198
specialization makes the welfare of the society vulnerable to the market and to political forces beyond national control.
robert gilpin— Chapter Five, The Politics Of International Trade, p. 189
specialization makes the welfare of the society vulnerable to the market and to political forces beyond national control.
— Chapter Five, The Politics Of International Trade, p. 189
specialization develops only part of a man; a man partially developed is deformed.
richard weaver— Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences (Chicago: 1948), p. 56
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. specialization is for insects.
— Robert A. Heinlein, in Time Enough for Love, 1973; cited in: QFinance, the ultimate resource London: Bloomsbury. 2009. p. 1760.
specialization in this world is rudimentary and self-sufficiency characterizes most individual households
— Douglass C. North (1990) Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance p. 119
Outside his own ever-narrowing field of specialization, a scientist is a layman. What members of an academy of science have in common is a certain form of semiparasitic living.
Erwin Chargaff— Perspectives in Biology and Medicine (1973)
It is an ancient belief, going back to classical antiquity, that specialization of any kind is illiberal in a freeman. A man willing to bury himself in the details of some small endeavor has been considered lost to these larger considerations which must occupy the mind of the ruler.
richard weaver— p. 56 (Ideas have Consequences (1948))
