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
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.
analogies casual identification
Identification of rhythm as the casual counterpart of life; wherever there is some life, only perceptible to us when the analogies are sufficiently close.
animal defense armor
In the history of the world the prize has not gone to those species which specialized in methods of violence, or even in defensive armor. In fact, nature began with producing animals encased in hard shells for defense against the ill of life. But smaller animals, without external armor, warm-blooded, sensitive, alert, have cleared those monsters off the face of the earth.
doctrine copernicus atoms
The physical doctrine of the atom has got into a state which is strongly suggestive of the epicycles of astronomy before Copernicus .
doe fishes
Knowledge does not keep any better than fish.