An organizing principle is a core assumption from which everything else by proximity can derive a classification or a value. It is like a central reference point that allows all other objects to be located. Having an organizing principle might help one simplify and get a handle on a particularly complicated domain. On the other hand, it might create a deceptive prism that colors one's judgment.
Famous quotes containing the words organizing and/or principle:
“The lies fall like flaxen threads from the skies
All over America, and the fact that some of them are true of course
Doesn’t so much not matter as serve to justify
The whole mad organizing force under the billows of correct delight.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“In case I conk out, this is provisionally what I have to do: I must clarify obscurities; I must make clearer definite ideas or dissociations. I must find a verbal formula to combat the rise of brutality—the principle of order versus the split atom.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)