Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead OM FRSwas an English mathematician and philosopher. He is best known as the defining figure of the philosophical school known as process philosophy, which today has found application to a wide variety of disciplines, including ecology, theology, education, physics, biology, economics, and psychology, among other areas...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionMathematician
Date of Birth15 February 1861
Alfred North Whitehead quotes about
angel science games
Without deductive logic science would be entirely useless. It is merely a barren game to ascend from the particular to the general, unless afterwards we can reverse the process and descend from the general to the particular, ascending and descending like angels on Jacob's ladder.
type rescue preoccupation
I am also greatly indebted to Bergson, William James, and John Dewey. One of my preoccupations has been to rescue their type of thought from the charge of anti-intellectualism, which rightly or wrongly has been associated with it.
dream dreamer fulfilled
Great dreamers' dreams are never fulfilled, they are always transcended.
ideas perfection belief
In modern times the belief that the ultimate explanation of all things was to be found in Newtonian mechanics was an adumbration of the truth that all science, as it grows towards perfection, becomes mathematical in its ideas.
civilization civilized understood
Civilizations can only be understood by those who are civilized.
math intellectual world
Algebra is the intellectual instrument which has been created for rendering clear the quantitative aspects of the world.
style mind lasts
Style, in its finest sense, is the last acquirement of the educated mind; it is also the most useful. It pervades the whole being.
two different theory
To come very near to a true theory, and to grasp its precise application, are two different things, as the history of science teaches us. Everything of importance has been said before by someone who did not discover it.
fake branches mathematics
On the ostensible exactitude of certain branches of human knowledge, including mathematics. The exactness is a fake.
ideas action birth
From the moment of birth we are immersed in action, and can only fitfully guide it by taking thought.
strong adventure successful
The vitality of thought is in adventure. Idea's won't keep. Something must be done about them. When the idea is new, its custodians have fervour, live for it, and, if need be, die for it. Their inheritors receive the idea, perhaps now strong and successful, but without inheriting the fervour; so the idea settles down to a comfortable middle age, turns senile, and dies.
morning ocean adventure
It is impossible not to feel stirred at the thought of the emotions of man at certain historic moments of adventure and discovery - Columbus when he first saw the Western shore, Pizarro when he stared at the Pacific Ocean, Franklin when the electric spark came from the string of his kite, Galileo when he first turned his telescope to the heavens. Such moments are also granted to students in the abstract regions of thought, and high among them must be placed the morning when Descartes lay in bed and invented the method of co-ordinate geometry.
real adventure past
A race preserves its vigor so long as it harbors a real contrast between what has been and what may be; and so long as it is nerved by the vigor to adventure beyond the safeties of the past. Without adventure civilization is in full decay.
block simple vision
We must not expect simple answers to far-reaching questions. However far our gaze penetrates, there are always heights beyond which block our vision.