Alexander Bogdanov Quote

Symbols in general, and their main group,—words and concepts—in particular, perform a skeletal role for the socio-psychic content. … Consequently, the nature of ideologies is generally degressive, skeletal, with all the related features... So, beginning with the simplest example, the word not only secures the living content of experience, but also hampers the future development of experience by its conservatism. In science and philosophy, the customary but obsolete terminology is often a serious obstacle to progress, preventing the mastery of new material, and distorting the meaning of new facts which it cannot express fully and precisely. But this contradiction appears even more vividly in the development of more complicated complexes.

p. 195, as cited in: Arran Gare, "Aleksandr Bogdanov and systems theory." Democracy & Nature 6.3 (2000): 341-359. - Essays in tektology, 1980