Essentially Contested Concepts

Famous quotes containing the words essentially, contested and/or concepts:

    The classicist, and the naturalist who has much in common with him, refuse to see in the highest works of art anything but the exercise of judgement, sensibility, and skill. The romanticist cannot be satisfied with such a normal standard; for him art is essentially irrational—an experience beyond normality, sometimes destructive of normality, and at the very least evocative of that state of wonder which is the state of mind induced by the immediately inexplicable.
    Sir Herbert Read (1893–1968)

    That man is the noblest creature may also be inferred from the fact that no other creature has yet contested this claim.
    —G.C. (Georg Christoph)

    It is impossible to dissociate language from science or science from language, because every natural science always involves three things: the sequence of phenomena on which the science is based; the abstract concepts which call these phenomena to mind; and the words in which the concepts are expressed. To call forth a concept, a word is needed; to portray a phenomenon, a concept is needed. All three mirror one and the same reality.
    Antoine Lavoisier (1743–1794)