"Because of the variables and the complexity of their interaction, the data assembled by descriptive musicology yield relatively few observable regularities."
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"Universalism and Relativism in the Study of Ethnic music", Ethnomusicology 4, no. 2:49-54 (1960); reprinted in Reading in Ethnomusicology, p. 270-71.Leonard B. Meyer
» Leonard B. Meyer - all quotes »
We really haven't got any great amount of data on the subject, and without data how can we reach any definite conclusions? All we have — everything — favors the idea of what religionists call the "Hereafter." Science, if it ever learns the facts, probably will find another more definitely descriptive term.
Thomas Alva Edison
We are thus led to a somewhat vague distinction between what we may call "hard" data and "soft" data. This distinction is a matter of degree, and must not be pressed; but if not taken too seriously it may help to make the situation clear. I mean by "hard" data those which resist the solvent influence of critical reflection, and by " soft " data those which, under the operation of this process, become to our minds more or less doubtful.
Bertrand Russell
A second possible approach to general systems theory is through the arrangement of theoretical systems and constructs in a hierarchy of complexity, roughly corresponding to the complexity of the "individuals" of the various empirical fields... leading towards a "system of systems."... I suggest below a possible arrangement of "levels" of theoretical discourse.
Kenneth Boulding
Isolated material particles are abstractions, their properties being definable and observable only through their interaction with other systems.
Niels Bohr
"Human beings, viewed as behaving systems, are quite simple. The apparent complexity of our behavior over time is largely a reflection of the complexity of the environment in which we find ourselves."
Herbert Simon
Meyer, Leonard B.
Meyer, Stephenie
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