“Scientists do not collect data randomly and utterly comprehensively. The data they collect are only those that they consider *relevant* to some hypothesis or theory.”

“If researchers seek only the kinds of order with which Westerners are today familiar, they will miss, or reject as disorder, all other orders.”

“The economic base of a social formation, the infrastructure, includes the social relations of production the produce the material necessities of life. In doing so, it produces the superstructure, that is, ideology, belief, religion, and juridical controls.”

“To write it, it took three months; to conceive it three minutes; to collect the data in it all my life. ”

“People in both fields operate with beliefs and biases. To the extent you can eliminate both and replace them with data, you gain a clear advantage.”

“In fact to write (This Side of Paradise) took three months; to conceive it-- three minutes; to collect the data in it-- all my life.”

“the next darwin is more likely to be a data wonk than a naturalist wandering through an exotic landscape”