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Synthesis

process in philosophy of generating a third proposition from two starting propositions in apparent conflict

In general, the noun synthesis (from the ancient Greek σύνθεσις, σύν "with" and θέσις "placing") refers to a combination of two or more entities that together form something new; alternately, it refers to the creating of something by artificial means.

It is not only the two antagonists who are there, but he himself as well. ... His dream, though, is that ... he will jump out of the fighting line and be promoted, on account of his experience in fighting, to the position of umpire over his antagonists in their fight with each other. ~ Franz Kafka
Diagram of protein synthesis.
CONTENT : A - F , G - L , M - R , S - Z , See also , External links

Quotes

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Quotes are arranged alphabetically by author

A - F

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Building art is a synthesis of life in materialised form. We should try to bring in under the same hat not a splintered way of thinking, but all in harmony together. - Alvar Aalto.
  • Building art is a synthesis of life in materialised form. We should try to bring in under the same hat not a splintered way of thinking, but all in harmony together.
  • Either one or the other [analysis or synthesis] may be direct or indirect. The direct procedure is when the point of departure is known-direct synthesis in the elements of geometry. By combining at random simple truths with each other, more complicated ones are deduced from them. This is the method of discovery, the special method of inventions, contrary to popular opinion.
  • There is synthesis when, in combining therein judgments that are made known to us from simpler relations, one deduces judgments from them relative to more complicated relations. There is analysis when from a complicated truth one deduces more simple truths.
  • The synthesis of pure, calming food is breathing pure air, listening to good sounds, looking at good sights, and touching pure objects.
 
An example of such emergent phenomena is the origin of life from non-living chemical compounds in the oldest, lifeless oceans of the earth...Reinout Willem van Bemmelen.
  • An example of such emergent phenomena is the origin of life from non-living chemical compounds in the oldest, lifeless oceans of the earth. Here, aided by the radiation energy received from the sun, countless chemical materials were synthesized and accumulated in such a way that they constituted, as it were, a primeval “soup.” In this primeval soup, by infinite variations of lifeless growth and decay of substances during some billions of years, the way of life was ultimately reached, with its metabolism characterized by selective assimilation and dissimulation as end stations of a sluiced and canalized flow of free chemical energy.
  • The terms synthesis and analysis are used in mathematics in a more special sense than in logic. In ancient mathematics they had a different meaning from what they now have. The oldest definition of mathematical analysis as opposed to synthesis is that given in Euclid, XIII. 5, which in all probability was framed by Eudoxus: "Analysis is the obtaining of the thing sought by assuming it and so reasoning up to an admitted truth; synthesis is the obtaining of the thing sought by reasoning up to the inference and proof of it."
  • There is neither spirit nor matter in the world; the stuff of the universe is spirit-matter. No other substance but this could produce the human molecule. I know very well that this idea of spirit-matter is regarded as a hybrid monster, a verbal exorcism of a duality which remains unresolved in its terms. But I remain convinced that the objections made to it arise from the mere fact that few people can make up their minds to abandon an old point of view and take the risk of a new idea. … Biologists or philosophers cannot conceive a biosphere or noosphere because they are unwilling to abandon a certain narrow conception of individuality. Nevertheless, the step must be taken. For in fact, pure spirituality is as unconceivable as pure materiality. Just as, in a sense, there is no geometrical point, but as many structurally different points as there are methods of deriving them from different figures, so every spirit derives its reality and nature from a particular type of universal synthesis.
 
Love is the affinity which links and draws together the elements of the world... Love, in fact, is the agent of universal synthesis. - Teilhard de Chardin.
  • Love is the affinity which links and draws together the elements of the world... Love, in fact, is the agent of universal synthesis.
  • Mathematics as an expression of the human mind reflects the active will, the contemplative reason, and the desire for aesthetic perfection. Its basic elements are logic and intuition, analysis and construction, generality and individuality. Though different traditions may emphasize different aspects, it is only the interplay of these antithetic forces and the struggle for their synthesis that constitute the life, usefulness, and supreme value of mathematical science.
  • Every truth has relation to some other. And we should try to write the facts of our knowledge so as to see them in their several bearings. This we do when we frame them into a system. To do so legitimately, we must begin by analysis and end with synthesis.
    • William Fleming, reported in Austin Allibone ed. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. (1903), p. 676
 
Designer is defined as an emerging synthesis of artist, inventor, mechanic, objective economist and evolutionary strategist. - R. Buckminster Fuller.

G - L

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  • I have no fault to find with those who teach geometry. That science is the only one which has not produced sects; it is founded on analysis and on synthesis and on the calculus; it does not occupy itself with the probable truth; moreover it has the same method in every country.
  • Our movement took a grip on cowardly Marxism and from it extracted the meaning of socialism. It also took from the cowardly middle-class parties their nationalism. Throwing both into the cauldron of our way of life there emerged, as clear as a crystal, the synthesis -- German National Socialism. Nazism as cocktail of Marxism and bourgeois nationalism: a toxic brew indeed.
  • Analysis and synthesis, though commonly treated as two different methods, are, if properly understood, only the two necessary parts of the same method. Each is the relative and correlative of the other. Analysis, without a subsequent synthesis, is incomplete ; it is a mean cut of from its end. Synthesis, without a previous analysis, is baseless ; for synthesis receives from analysis the elements which it recomposes.
    • Sir W. Hamilton, Metaphysics, p. 69, ed. 1871, Boston; Partly reported in Austin Allibone ed. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. (1903), p. 34
  • A man ... has two antagonists: the first presses him from behind, from the origin. The second blocks the road ahead. He gives battle to both. To be sure, the first supports him in his fight with the second, for he wants to push him forward, and in the same way the second supports him in his fight with the first, since he drives him back. But it is only theoretically so. For it is not only the two antagonists who are there, but he himself as well, and who really knows his intentions? His dream, though, is that some time in an unguarded moment and this would require a night darker than any night has ever been yet he will jump out of the fighting line and be promoted, on account of his experience in fighting, to the position of umpire over his antagonists in their fight with each other.
    • Franz Kafka, Parable translated by Hanna Arendt, in Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought (1954), p. 7
  • To play chess on a truly high level requires a constant stream of exact, informed decisions, made in real time and under pressure from your opponent. What’s more, it requires a synthesis of some very different virtues, all of which are necessary to good decisions: calculation, creativity and a desire for results. If you ask a Grandmaster, an artist and a computer scientist what makes a good chess player, you’ll get a glimpse of these different strengths in action.
  • Man is a synthesis of psyche and body, but he is also a synthesis of the temporal and the eternal. In the former, the two factors are psyche and body, and spirit is the third, yet in such a way that one can speak of a synthesis only when the spirit is posited. The latter synthesis has only two factors, the temporal and the eternal. Where is the third factor? And if there is no third factor, there really is no synthesis, for a synthesis that is a contradiction cannot be completed as a synthesis without a third factor, because the fact that the synthesis is a contradiction asserts that it is not. What, then, is the temporal?

M - R

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  • There are many reasons for carrying out the laboratory synthesis of an organic compound. In the pharmaceutical industry, new molecules are designed and synthesized in the hope that some might be useful new drugs. In the chemical industry, syntheses are done to devise more economical routes to known compounds. In academic laboratories, the synthesis of extremely complex molecules is sometimes done just for the intellectual challenge involved in mastering so difficult a subject. The successful synthesis route is a highly creative work that is sometimes described by such subjective terms as elegant or beautiful.
    • John McMurry, Organic Chemistry 8th ed. (2012), Ch. 9. Alkynes: An Introduction to Organic Synthesis
  • By this way of Analysis we may proceed from Compounds to Ingredients, and from Motions to the Forces producing them; and in general, from Effects to their Causes, and from particular Causes to more general ones, till the Argument end in the most general. This is the Method of Analysis: and the Synthesis consists in assuming the Causes discover'd, and establish'd as Principles, and by them explaining the Phænomena proceeding from them, and proving the Explanations.
  • The world is a very strange place, and there are times when the metaphorical or narrative description characteristic of culture and the material representation so integral to science appear to touch, when everything comes together—when life and art reflect each other equally.
  • Chemical synthesis is one of the key technologies that form the basis of modern drug discovery and development. For the rapid preparation of new test compounds and the development of candidates with often highly complex chemical structures, it is essential to use state-of-theart chemical synthesis technologies.
    • Manfred T. Reetz, et al. "Preface" in Organocatalysis (2008) edited by M.T. Reetz, B. List, S. Jaroch, H. Weinmann

S - Z

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  • Analysis and synthesis ordinarily clarify matters for us about as much as taking a Swiss watch apart and dumping its wheels, springs, hands, threads, pivots, screws and gears into a layman's hands for reassembling, clarifies a watch to a layman.
  • Synthetic method is that which begins with the parts, and leads onward to the knowledge of the whole : it begins with the most simple principles and general truths, and proceeds by degrees to that which is drawn from them, or compounded of them ; and therefore it is called the method of composition.
    • Isaac Watts, reported in Austin Allibone ed. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. (1903), p. 691
  • The overall yield in a multistep step synthesis is the product of the yields for each separate step. In a linear synthetic scheme, the hypothetical TM is assembled in a stepwise manner. … Since the overall yield of the TM decreases as the number of individual steps increases, a convergent synthesis should be considered in which two or more fragments of the TM are prepared separately and then joined at the latest-possible stage of the synthesis. It should be noted, however, that the simple overall yield calculation is some- what misleading since it is computed on one starting material, whereas several are used and the number of reactions is the same! Nevertheless, the increased efficiency of a convergent synthesis compared to the linear approach is derived from the fact that the preparation of a certain amount of a product can be carried out on a smaller scale.
    • George S. Zweifel and Michael H. Nantz Modern Organic Synthesis (2006), Ch. 1. Synthetic Design

See also

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