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
men boredom earth
The merely well-informed man is the most useless bore on God's earth.
creativity ideas common-sense
Now in creative thought common sense is a bad master. Its sole criterion for judgement is that the new ideas shall look like the old ones. In other words it can only work by suppressing originality.
art adventure done
Art flourishes where there is a sense of adventure, a sense of nothing having been done before, of complete freedom to experiment...
order entering degenerates
Order is not sufficient. What is required, is something much more complex. It is order entering upon novelty; so that the massiveness of order does not degenerate into mere repetition; and so that the novelty is always reflected upon a background of system.
art law progress
The progress of Science consists in observing interconnections and in showing with a patient ingenuity that the events of this ever-shifting world are but examples of a few general relations, called laws. To see what is general in what is particular, and what is permanent in what is transitory, is the aim of scientific thought.
race may littles
The way in which the persecution of Galileo has been remembered is a tribute to the quiet commencement of the most intimate change in outlook which the human race had yet encountered. Since a babe was born in a manger, it may be doubted whether so great a thing has happened with so little stir
two impossible assumption
"One and one make two" assumes that the changes in the shift of circumstance are unimportant. But it is impossible for us to analyze this notion of unimportant change.
philosophy science justify
Science repudiates philosophy. In other words, it has never cared to justify its truth or explain its meaning.
philosophy numbers people
There will be some fundamental assumptions which adherents of all the variant systems within the epoch unconsciously presuppose. Such assumptions appear so obvious that people do not know what they are assuming because no other way of putting things has ever occurred to them. With these assumptions a certain limited number of types of philosophic systems are possible, and this group of systems constitutes the philosophy of the epoch.
simplicity distrust
Seek simplicity but distrust it.
simplicity philosopher motto
The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, seek simplicity and distrust it.
selfish acceptance boss
I would be a billionaire if I was looking to be a selfish boss. That's not me.
expression humanity literature
It is in literature that the concrete outlook of humanity receives its expression.
speaks-out deeds action
Speak out in acts; the time for words has passed, and only deeds will suffice.