Precursor Quotes - page 2
The farsighted Willard G. Wyman, the commanding general of the Continental Army Command, had asked Stoner to design a rifle precisely to take advantage of the "payoff” of smaller bullets. The AR-15, the precursor of the M-16, used .22-caliber bullets instead of the .30-caliber that had long been standard for the Army. As early as 1928, an Army "Caliber Board” had conducted firing experiments in Aberdeen, Maryland, and had then recommended a move toward smaller ammunition...
James Fallows
We can say that in terms of town planning - before the letter - he was a precursor. If there is an area where its reputation is guaranteed to survive for a long time to come, this is it. Belgium found itself since the end of his reign at the forefront of architectural movements and we can still see today in the Brussels landscape, and almost everywhere in the country, the mark of the king-builder.
Leopold II of Belgium
I am utterly amazed, utterly enchanted! I have a precursor, and what a precursor! I hardly knew Spinoza: that I should have turned to him just now, was inspired by "instinct". Not only is his overtendency like mine - namely, to make all knowledge the most powerful affect - but in five main points of his doctrine I recognize myself; this most unusual and loneliest thinker is closest to me precisely in these matters: he denies the freedom of the will, teleology, the moral world-order, the unegoistic, and evil. Even though the divergencies are admittedly tremendous, they are due more to the difference in time, culture, and science. In summa: my lonesomeness, which, as on very high mountains, often made it hard for me to breathe and make my blood rush out, is now at least a twosomeness. Strange!
Baruch Spinoza
The metaphor of Indra's Net also suggests a creative intelligence which is omnipresent, permeating all life. All appearances of separateness are maya (illusory). The capacity of one jewel to reflect the light of every other within this infinite net is difficult for the linear mind to comprehend, but it serves as an apt precursor to an understanding of multidimensional theories which have emerged in physics and metaphysics.
Thus, long before modern science, Indra's Net provided an excellent metaphor for what is now recognized as the main quality of the hologram, which is that every area of the hologram contains information on the whole.
Rajiv Malhotra