# Synthesis

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.
    CONTENT : A - F , G - L , M - R , S - Z , See also , External links

## Quotes

    Quotes are arranged alphabetically by author

### A - F

* 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, quoted in: Bruce Newlands The Art of Building, cicstart.org
* 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.
** André-Marie Ampère, in André-Marie Ampère: Enlightenment and Electrodynamics, Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 159
* 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.
** André-Marie Ampère in: André-Marie Ampère: Enlightenment and Electrodynamics, Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 158
* The synthesis of pure, calming food is breathing pure air, listening to good sounds, looking at good sights, and touching pure objects.
** Sri Sathya Sai Baba in: Steve Barnett Calm, Andrews McMeel Publishing, 1 April 2006, p. 92
* The world is not dialectical -- it is sworn to extremes, not to equilibrium, sworn to radical antagonism, not to reconciliation or synthesis. This is also the principle of evil.
** Jean Baudrillard in: Eldon Taylor What Does That Mean?: Exploring Mind, Meaning, and Mysteries, Hay House, Inc, 15 January 2010, p. 171
* 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.
** Reinout Willem van Bemmelen in: "The Scientific Character of Geology," The Journal of Geology, (July 1961), Vol 69, No. 4, p. 458
* 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."
** Florian Cajori, A History of Mathematics (1893). p. 30
* 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.
** Pierre Teilhard de Chardin A Sketch of a Personalistic Universe.
* 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 in: James Twyman The Proof, Hay House, Inc, 15 October 2009, p. 24
* Life is not found in atoms or molecules or genes as such, but in organization; not in symbiosis but in synthesis.
** Edwin Grant Conklin in: Evolution by Association : A History of Symbiosis: A History of Symbiosis, Oxford University Press, 22 August 1994
* 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.
** Richard Courant in: The Australian Mathematics Teacher, Volumes 39-40, Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers, 1983, p. 3
* The most dramatic moments in the development of physics are those in which great syntheses take place, where phenomena which previously had appeared to be different are suddenly discovered to be but different aspects of the same thing. The history of physics is the history of such syntheses, and the basis of the success of physical science is mainly that we are able to synthesize.
** Richard Feynman: (1963). 28–1. Electromagnetism in Chapter 28. Electromagnetic Radiation, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Volume I, Mainly Mechanics, Radiation, and Heat
* 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, in: Your Private Sky: Discourse, Springer Science & Business Media, 2001, p. 301

### G - L

* 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.
** Frederick the Great in: G.E. Martin The Foundations of Geometry and the Non-Euclidean Plane, Springer Science & Business Media, 1975, p. 19
* 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.
** Hermann Goering in: Ben Dupré 50 Big Ideas You Really Need to Know, Quercus, 3 September 2009, p. 250
* 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.
** Garry Kasparov in: Kasparov’s book sees chess as...Way to success, The Trinidad Guardian, 26 March 2008
* 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?
** Søren Kierkegaard. The Concept of Anxiety (1844) p. 85
* Science is spectral analysis. Art is light synthesis.
** Karl Kraus in:Quotes about Science and Scientists, Quotations Book, p. 18

### M - R

* 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
* The artist does not illustrate science; … [but] he frequently responds to the same interests that a scientist does, and expresses by a visual synthesis what the scientist converts into analytical formulae or experimental demonstrations.
** Lewis Mumford in: Oliver Martin Sayler Revolt in the Arts: A Survey of the Creation, Distribution and Appreciation of Art in America, Sn., 1930, p. 117
* 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.
** Isaac Newton, Opticks (1704) {pp. 380-381 in 4th edition (1730)} synthesis portion also reported in Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay (1876) Austin Allibone ed., p. 691
* 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.
** Jordan Peterson, Beyond Order (2021), pp. 165–166
* Enhance and intensify one's vision of that synthesis of truth and beauty which is the highest and deepest reality.
** J.C.Powys, in Robert Corfe Egalitarianism of the Free Society: And the End of Class Conflict, Arena books, 2008, p. 36
* 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

* Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.
** Carl Sandburg in: Paula Steichen Carl Sandburg Home, Government Printing Office, 1 June 1983
* We are approaching a new age of synthesis. Knowledge cannot be merely a degree or a skill... it demands a broader vision, capabilities in critical thinking and logical deduction without which we cannot have constructive progress.
** Li Ka-shing quoted In: Bradley J. Preber Financial Expert Witness Communication: A Practical Guide to Reporting and Testimony, John Wiley & Sons, 9 May 2014, p. 81
* 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.
** Unknown, in Accelerated Testing and Validation, Elsevier, 01-Jul-2004, p. 191
* 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
* Get the habit of analysis- analysis will in time enable synthesis to become your habit of mind.
** Frank Lloyd Wright in: Toward Center: The Art of Being for Musicians, Actors, Dancers, and Teachers, GIA Publications, 2010, p. 35
* 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

* Analysis
* Synergy
* System