There is a strong tendency in explanatory prose to invoke quantities of tension, energy, and whatnot to explain the genesis of pattern. I believe that all such explanations are inappropriate or wrong.

Science, like art, religion, commerce, warfare, and even sleep, is based on presuppositions.

Numbers are the product of counting. Quantities are the product of measurement. This means that numbers can conceivably be accurate because there is a discontinuity between each integer and the next. Between two and three there is a jump. In the case of quantity, there is no such jump; and because jump is missing in the world of quantity, it is impossible for any quantity to be exact. You can have exactly three tomatoes. You can never have exactly three gallons of water. Always quantity is approximate.

But epistemology is always and inevitably personal. The point of the probe is always in the heart of the explorer: What is my answer to the question of the nature of knowing?

Logic cannot model causal systems, and paradox is generated when time is ignored [as in logic].

The rules of the universe that we think we know are buried deep in our processes of perception.

The map is not the territory (coined by Alfred Korzybski), and the name is not the thing named.