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
interesting important circumstances
[In many circumstances,] the most important thing about a proposition is not that it be true, but that it be interesting.
philosophy philosophical doubt
Without doubt, if we are to go back to that ultimate, integral experience, unwarped by the sophistications of theory, that experience whose elucidation is the final aim of philosophy, the flux of things is one ultimate generalization around which we must weave our philosophical system.
creative novelty metaphysical
The ultimate metaphysical ground is the creative advance into novelty.
religious good-man solemnity
The preternatural solemnity of a good many of the professionally religious is to me a point against them.
hands ideas secret
What the learned world tends to offer is one second-hand scrap of information illustrating ideas derived from another second-hand scrap of information. The second-handedness of the learned world is the secret of its mediocrity.
men dying bed
The worst that happened to men of science was that Galileo suffered an honorable detention and a mild reproof, before dying peacefully in his bed.
mistake talking law
People make the mistake of talking about 'natural laws.' There are no natural laws. There are only temporary habits of nature.
art soul body
The human body is an instrument for the production of art in the life of the human soul.
religion human-nature reactions
Religion is the reaction of human nature to its search for God.
philosophy simple asks
Philosophy asks the simple question: What is it all about?
religious pain optimism
The fact of the religious vision, and its history of persistent expansion, is our one ground for optimism. Apart from it, human life is a flash of occasional enjoyments lighting up a mass of pain and misery, a bagatelle of transient experience.
zero needs use
The point about zero is that we do not need to use it in the operations of daily life. No one goes out to buy zero fish. It is in a way the most civilised of all the cardinals, and its use is only forced on us by the needs of cultivated modes of thought.
running heaven essentials
Routine is the god of every social system; it is the seventh heaven of business, the essential component in the success of every factory, the ideal of every statesman. The social machine should run like clockwork.
religion followers type
No religion can be considered in abstraction from its followers, or even from its various types of followers.