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
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.
life degenerates decent
Religion increasingly is tending to degenerate into a decent formula wherewith to embellish a comfortable life.
airplane discovery land
The true method of discovery is like the flight of an aeroplane. It starts from the ground of particular observation; it makes a flight in the thin air of imaginative generalization; and it again lands for renewed observation rendered acute by rational interpretation.
adventure safety unattainable
The worship of God is not a rule of safety - it is an adventure of the spirit, a flight after the unattainable.
business danger fixed
The fixed person for the fixed duties who in older societies was such a godsend, in future will be a public danger.
truth heaven may
Heaven knows what seeming nonsense may not tomorrow be demonstrated truth.