Epicycles Astronomy Quotes & Sayings

We go in with eyes wide open and recognize there will be a lot of hard work involved. But we anticipate having success. We feel like we have assembled a great group of people. If we were going to do it any other way, we would have made an announcement a long time ago. We were very diligent. — Troy Aikman

Both times he had won through, but he knew well enough that any man, in the right circumstances, could be dehumanized by panic. — Arthur C. Clarke

The physical doctrine of the atom has got into a state which is strongly suggestive of the epicycles of astronomy before Copernicus . — Alfred North Whitehead

no simple mechanism could do the job as well or better. It might simply be that nobody has yet found the simpler alternative. The Ptolemaic system (with the Earth in the center, orbited by the Sun, the Moon, planets, and stars) represented the state of the art in astronomy for over a thousand years, and its predictive accuracy was improved over the centuries by progressively complicating the model: adding epicycles upon epicycles to the postulated celestial motions. Then the entire system was overthrown by the heliocentric theory of Copernicus, which was simpler and - though only after further elaboration by Kepler - more predictively accurate.63 Artificial intelligence methods are now used in more areas than it would make sense to review here, but mentioning a sampling of them will give an idea of the breadth of applications. Aside from the game AIs — Nick Bostrom

Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep. - John Milton, Paradise Lost — Lisa Unger

It happens every once in awhile at the federal level when the solicitor general, on behalf of the U.S., will confess error or decline to defend a law. I don't know what is going through the [Obama] administration's thought process on 'don't ask, don't tell.' It would be appropriate for them to say 'the law has been deemed unconstitutional, we are not going to seek further review of that.' — Ted Olson

The company was quite hierarchical. I often think it was like a pyramid with Robert at the top and lots of us paying homage to him. I try to turn the pyramid upside down so that I'm at the bottom and bubbling away and encouraging people and energizing them so that they are all empowered so that they can do what they need to do, now that's the dream. — Janet Holmes A Court

We are spiritual beings - indestructible, immaterial and safe. — Donna Goddard

Life-writing calls for any number of dubious gifts: A touch of O.C.D., a lack of imagination, a large desk, neutrality of Swiss proportions, tactlessness, a high tolerance for archival dust. Most of all it calls for an act of displacement. 'To find your subject, you must in some sense lose yourself along the way,' is Richard Holmes's version. — Stacy Schiff