Yquotes.com

 

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

 

Allan McLeod Cormack

» Allan McLeod Cormack - all quotes »

Similar quotes

 

Canada has no cultural unity, no linguistic unity, no religious unity, no economic unity, no geographic unity. All it has is unity.

 

Kenneth Boulding

 

… contempt for the degradation of specialization and pedantry. Specialization develops only part of a man; a man partially developed is deformed.

 

Richard Weaver

 

In this age of specialization men who thoroughly know one field are often incompetent to discuss another. The great problems of the relations between one and another aspect of human activity have for this reason been discussed less and less in public. When we look at the past great debates on these subjects we feel jealous of those times, for we should have liked the excitement of such argument. The old problems, such as the relation of science and religion, are still with us, and I believe present as difficult dilemmas as ever, but they are not often publicly discussed because of the limitations of specialization.

 

Richard Feynman

 

We are in an age that assumes the narrowing trends of specialization to be logical, natural, and desirable. Consequently, society expects all earnestly responsible communication to be crisply brief. . . . In the meantime, humanity has been deprived of comprehensive understanding. Specialization has bred feelings of isolation, futility, and confusion in individuals. It has also resulted in the individual's leaving responsibility for thinking and social action to others. Specialization breeds biases that ultimately aggregate as international and ideological discord, which, in turn, leads to war.

 

Buckminster Fuller

 

Of course, our failures are a consequence of many factors, but possibly one of the most important is the fact that society operates on the theory that specialization is the key to success, not realizing that specialization precludes comprehensive thinking.

 

Buckminster Fuller