Cohesion Quotes
        
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
                                        
                    
    
        We have entered a time of global transition marked by uniquely contradictory trends. Regional and continental associations of States are evolving ways to deepen cooperation and ease some of the contentious characteristics of sovereign and nationalistic rivalries. National boundaries are blurred by advanced communications and global commerce, and by the decisions of States to yield some sovereign prerogatives to larger, common political associations. At the same time, however, fierce new assertions of nationalism and sovereignty spring up, and the cohesion of States is threatened by brutal ethnic, religious, social, cultural or linguistic strife. Social peace is challenged on the one hand by new assertions of discrimination and exclusion and, on the other, by acts of terrorism seeking to undermine evolution and change through democratic means.
         
     
    Boutros Boutros-Ghali
                 
            
        
     
    
    
                                        ![We do not inhabit a perfected world where natural selection ruthlessly scrutinizes all organic structures and then molds them for optimal utility. Organisms inherit a body form and a style of embryonic development; these impose constraints upon future change and adaptation. In many cases, evolutionary pathways reflect inherited patterns more than current environmental demands. These inheritances constrain, but they also provide opportunity. A potentially minor genetic change [...] entails a host of complex, nonadaptive consequences. [...] What "play” would evolution have if each structure were built for a restricted purpose and could be used for nothing else? How could humans learn to write if our brain had not evolved for hunting, social cohesion, or whatever, and could not transcend the adaptive boundaries of its original purpose? (Stephen Jay Gould)](https://cdn.quotesdtb.com/img/quotes_images_webp/33/stephen-jay-gould-adaptation-287533.webp) 
                
            
        
     
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
                                        
                    
    
        Spinoza says that if a stone which has been projected through the air, had consciousness, it would believe that it was moving of its own free will. I add this only, that the stone would be right. The impulse given it is for the stone what the motive is for me, and what in the case of the stone appears as cohesion, gravitation, rigidity, is in its inner nature the same as that which I recognise in myself as will, and what the stone also, if knowledge were given to it, would recognise as will.
         
     
    Arthur Schopenhauer
                 
            
        
     
    
    
    
    
                                         
                
            
        
     
    
    
    
    
    
    
                                        
                    
    
        So, we've reached the state that George Will described. He said there's a certain kind of liberal that wants diversity in everything, except thought. And so, we do need certain kinds of diversity. But the key to remember is that, diversity by its very nature is divisive, and so, what's the function of your group? If your group needs cohesion, you don't want diversity. If your group needs good, clear thinking and you want people to challenge your prejudices, then you need it. So in the academic world, we need that kind of diversity, and we don't have it.
         
     
    Jonathan Haidt