Ross collected his own aphorisms in a card index. By the time we scanned them, the original cards were rather mixed up. We have done our best to regroup them into the following categories:
In the following list, a blue box █ indicates that there is an index card for the aphorism, which in some cases contains a less refined version than the one from another source.
Hovering the mouse pointer over the box or clicking on it will disply the original index card. Aphorisms without a blue box were collected from other sources, for example, from his students, these are often refined variations of a version on the cards.
█ A Cyberneticist observes what
might have happened but did not.
█ A "system" is a set
of variables sufficiently isolated to stay [constant] long enough for us to
discuss it.
█ When we take the ordinates of a wave
function and use them to compute their exact values a moment later, we are:
(1) Demonstrating that the science of quantum physics use determinant
systems. (2) Treating the system as determinate.
█ The goals in
evolution are what the species has been forced to.
█ The goals of a species (such as
Homo) are what natural selection has driven it to.
Instincts of Homo
█ This species is peculiar in that members make an
ever-recurrent habit of attacking and exterminating weaker groups of their own
species.
On the evolution of Homo sapiens
█ For ninety nine hundredths of this time (before
any traces of town dwelling) he improved chiefly in his efficiency in
killing big game and other branches of his own species.
█ The specially human part of the brain has been
evolved for the chase and for tribal warfare. The final evolution allowed
armies of continental size to massacre on a continental scale.
█ Is my/your life achieving
the full potentialities of carbon ?
On long-term planning in the brain and Man's ability to plan
█ The brain is wholly opportunist, no less when it
proposes a long term plan.
On Prediction
█ What Homo knows at any moment, of the actual
future is absolutely nothing.
█ Every prediction is an operation on the past (Wiener)
On Essential Variables
█ Poor M. Jourdain! He now has to understand that he
has been behaving homeostatically all his life, when he thought he was
merely minding his business.
On adaptation
█ In this
universe, the life-time of a planet is only sufficient to allow its
evolved life-forms to explore the possibilities of additive adaptation.
On adaptation as a whole to a whole
█ All our adaptations are collections of nearly
independent bits; life is too short to allow us to explore the really
holistic.
On Progress in
adaptation
█ A brain can improve till it fits its
environment:
█ Life-processes (in species or brains) use only the
additive methods — for the combinatorial there has not been time enough.
On Neurophysiology
█ Natural selection has insisted that neuronic
details shall be irrelevant for whole behavior.
Natural selection insists that the nature of the
parts shall be irrelevant for the behavior.
█ No mammal will ever understand the mammalian brain
completely.
█ The man who talks today of probability
in the brain is usually trying to return to the days when everything in
the brain was so delightfully vague.
█ The
neurone is the one unit that, in psychology, is quite devoid of interest,
it is too small to be visible in the man's action, and too large to be
sufficient in memory.
The neurone is the one unit
that, in behaviour, is quite devoid of interest today; it is too small to
be noticeable in a man's action, and too gross to carry a trace of memory.
█ For two thousand years psychology was a simple
description of Man's highest faculties — most of which he does not posses.
On Creativity
█ The scientist does not believe in events without
causes, not even when they happen in the brain.
█ Introspection is the output of the verbalising
mechanism.
On Introspection
█ That homo
has a brain no more entitles him to assume he knows how he thinks than
possession of a liver entitles him to assume that he knows how he
metabolises.
█ A man no more knows how he thinks,
just because he has a brain in his skull, than he knows how he makes
blood, because he has marrow in his bones.
█ A
man can report what happens in his brain only so far as the events reach
the verbalising center.
█ Every dramatist knows the
inexorable logic of the emotions.
█ Disorder never
proceeds to order so milk can never separate into buttermilk and cream.
On the subjective
█ How to
lest whether you're dreaming — kick the fellow in front of you and see who
feels the pain.
█ To recognise a class is to throw away information.
On Sympathy
█ If my
sympathy with another's sufferings proves the reality of the other's
feelings then the pattern of light and shade that I call a "weeping
heroine" on the cinema screen is genuinely feeling.
On Altruism
█ "Help one
another" is the selfishness of the species.
█ "Logic" and "logical" are so degraded today that
they convey no useful information. They are still used chiefly because
they look well, either by the cynic or by the unthinking.
█ The general
purpose computer is freer than the trained brain.
█ Whether a computer can be "really" intelligent is
not a question for the philosophers: they know nothing about either
computers or intelligence.
█ Today's digital
computer is organized like an army of a million men that can only get two
into action at a time.
█ The digital computer of today is like a centipede
with a million legs, each of which can go forward in a microsecond; but as
it can move only one pair at a time the whole animal is easily outrun by
the tortoise.
█ Today's digital computer
has a group velocity that is about a millionth of its wave velocity
█ Organisation exists mostly in the eye of the
beholder.
█ It is an
open question which has the richer organization: a living cow or a working
silo.
█ Which showed the best power of survival
when attacked by the Spaniards: that bio-organisation called the Amazon
jungle: or that bio-organisation called the Aztecs?
█ Which out-fought the Spaniards — the Aztec civil
organisation, or that bio-organisation called the Amazon Jungle?
█ Which biological organization proved more
resistant to the Spaniards — the Aztecs of Mexico or the jungle of the
Amazon?
Can a system be self-organizing? No system
can permanently have the property that it changes properties.