Focal Quotes
When I resided at Bath I had long been acquainted with the theory of optics and mechanics, and wanted only that experience so necessary in the practical part of these sciences. This I acquired by degrees at that place where in my leisure hours, by way of amusement, I made several two-foot, five-foot, seven-foot, ten-foot and twenty-foot Newtonian telescopes, beside others, of the Gregorian form, of eight, twelve, and eighteen inches, and two, three, five, and ten feet focal length. In this way I made not less than two hundred seven-foot, one hundred and fifty ten-foot, and about eighty twenty-foot mirrors, not to mention the Gregorian telescopes.
William Herschel
A prejudice may be an unreasoned judgment, he [Hibben] pointed out, but an unreasoned judgment is not necessarily an illogical judgment. ... First, there are those judgments whose verification has simply dropped out of memory. ... The second type of unreasoned judgments we hold is the opinions we adopt from others ... The third class of judgments in Professor Hibben's list comprises those which have subconscious origin. The material that furnishes their support does not reach the focal point of consciousness, but psychology insists upon its existence.
Richard Weaver
After doing the imaginary landscapes until say 1956, in '57 I came out with the first Burst painting... There was a different type of space than I had ever used and it was a further clarification of what I was trying to do. The thing that was interesting that it was a return to a focal point, but it was a focal point with the kind of space that existed in traditional painting. Because this was like a solitary image or two images that were just floating in the canvas space. They had to hold the space and they also had to create all the movement – that took place within the rectangle.
Adolph Gottlieb
Subjectively the possession of a role factor is felt as a 'mental set' which modifies all ordinary responses. The very same stimulus is perceived in a different way when one is in the role and when one is out of it... Technically, we handle this change of perception the same way in a role as in a mood-both of which can intrude on the ordinary personality - by this special factor, L, which can be called a modulator factor. A modulator factor comes into action only when the usual ordinary 'focal stimulus' comes into the orbit of a set of role cues which we may call the 'ambient' or surrounding stimulus.
Raymond Cattell
