Friday, February 12, 2010

Quotable...

Ran across this one, from Stephen Jay Gould's Rock of Ages:

"I want to raise serious point about our usual approach to complex problems....Our minds tend to work by dichotomy--that is, by conceptualizing complex issues as "either/or" pairs, dictating a choice of one extreme or the other, with no middle ground (or golden mean) available for any alternative resolution. (I suspect that our apparently unavoidable tendency to dichotomize represents some powerful bagge from an evolutionary past, when limited consciousness could not transcend "on or off," "yes or no," "fight or flee," "move or rest"--and the neurology of simpler brains became wired in accordance with such exigencies)....."

And while it pleases me to have an answer as to why I passed out when I had to decide whether to put jelly, honey or bananas on my peanut butter sandwich, the other day, I say that Stephen left us way too soon....

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