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
adventure self common-sense
The Universe is vast. Nothing is more curious than the self-satisfied dogmatism with which mankind at each period of its history cherishes the delusion of the finality of existing modes of knowledge. Skeptics and believers are alike. At this moment scientists and skeptics are the leading dogmatists. Advance in detail is admitted; fundamental novelty is barred. This dogmatic common sense is the death of philosophic adventure.
reality class world
In this modern world, the celibacy of the medieval learned class has been replaced by a celibacy of the intellect which is divorced from the concrete contemplation of the complete facts.
mean doe elements
To be an abstraction does not mean that an entity is nothing. It merely means that its existence is only a factor of a more concrete element of nature.
self oneness diversity
The oneness of the universe, and the oneness of each element of the universe, repeat themselves to the crack of doom in the creative advance from creature to creature, each creature including in itself the whole of history and exemplifying the self-identity of things and their mutual diversities.
ontology logic certainty
To see what is general in what is particular, and what is permanent in what is transitory, is the aim of scientific thought.
race religion would-be
I consider Christianity to be one of the great disasters of the human race... It would be impossible to imagine anything more un - Christianlike than theology.
reality growth essentials
Rightness of limitation is essential for growth of reality.
reality values
Value is coextensive with reality.
expression feelings desire
Life is complex in its expression, involving more than percipience, namely desire, emotion, will, and feeling.
majority morality given
What is morality in any given time or place? It is what the majority then and there happen to like and immorality is what they dislike.
art patterns recognition
Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience...
future civilization wrecks
It is the business of future to be dangerous.... The major advances in civilization are processes that all but wreck the societies in which they occur.
fall science simple
The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanation of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be ``Seek simplicity and distrust it.''
silly innovation development
The silly question is the first intimation of some totally new development.