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
regret four lectures
I regret that it has been necessary for me in this lecture to administer a large dose of four-dimensional geometry. I do not apologize, because I am really not responsible for the fact that nature in its most fundamental aspect is four-dimensional. Things are what they are.
beauty everyday world
The foundations of the world are to be found, not in the cognitive experience of conscious thought, but in the aesthetic experience of everyday life.
science aim particular
The aims of scientific thought are to see the general in the particular and the eternal in the transitory.
zest uniting connections
The justification for a university is that it preserves the connection between knowledge and the zest of life, by uniting the young and the old in the imaginative consideration of learning.
wise may bases
You cannot be wise without some basis of knowledge, but you may easily acquire knowledge and remain bare of wisdom.
stupidity battle defense
The defense of morals is the battle-cry which best rallies stupidity against change.
appreciation intellectual criticism
The factor in human life provocative of a noble discontent is the gradual emergence of a sense of criticism, founded upon appreciation of beauty, and of intellectual distinction, and of duty.
education adequate antithesis
The antithesis between a technical and a liberal education is fallacious. There can be no adequate technical education which is not liberal, and no liberal education which is not technical.
real thinking affair
It is natural to think that an abstract science cannot be of much importance in affairs of human life, because it has omitted from its consideration everything of real interest.
tragedy tvs youth
Youth is life as yet unblemished by much tragedy, but hardly by TV.
friendship want shields
Every organism requires an environment of friends, partly to shield it from violent changes, and partly to supply it with its wants.
extravagance certain harbour
Vigorous societies harbour a certain extravagance of objectives.
men order want
A man of science doesn't discover in order to know, he wants to know in order to discover.
successful sea world
For successful education there must always be a certain freshness in the knowledge dealt with. It must be either new in itself or invested with some novelty of application to the new world of new times. Knowledge does not keep any better than fish. You may be dealing with knowledge of the old species, with some old truth; but somehow it must come to the students, as it were, just drawn out of the sea and with the freshness of its immediate importance.