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 energy
It is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. This statement is almost a tautology. For the energy of operation of a proposition in an occasion of experience is its interest and is its importance. But of course a true proposition is more apt to be interesting than a false one.
learning thinking machines
There is a technique, a knack, for thinking, just as there is for doing other things. You are not wholly at the mercy of your thoughts, any more than they are you. They are a machine you can learn to operate.
beauty art adventure
A general definition of civilization: a civilized society is exhibiting the fine qualities of truth, beauty, adventure, art, peace.
christian race religion
I consider Christian theology to be one of the greatest disasters of the human race.
ideas issues feelings
In the study of ideas, it is necessary to remember that insistence on hard-headed clarity issues from sentimental feeling, as it were a mist, cloaking the perplexities of fact. Insistence on clarity at all costs is based on sheer superstition as to the mode in which human intelligence functions. Our reasonings grasp at straws for premises and float on gossamers for deductions.
errors progress pay
Error is the price we pay for progress.
men soul speech
The mentality of mankind and the language of mankind created each other. If we like to assume the rise of language as a given fact, then it is not going too far to say that the souls of men are the gift from language to mankind. The account of the sixth day should be written: He gave them speech, and they became souls
teacher details mastery
All practical teachers know that education is a patient process of mastery of details, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day.
perception triumph negative
Thus the negative perception is the triumph of consciousness.
information printing century
So far as the mere imparting of information is concerned, no university has had any justification for existence since the popularization of printing in the fifteenth century.
substance matter cabinets
Disputing the commonsense notion that all events require the prior existence of some underlying matter or substance. There is no antecedent static cabinet.
emotional accessories purpose
Knowledge is always accompanied with accessories of emotion and purpose.
determination opinion preservation
An unflinching determination to take the whole evidence into account is the only method of preservation against the fluctuating extremes of fashionable opinion.
mirrors location world
In a certain sense, everything is everywhere at all times. For every location involves an aspect of itself in every other location. Thus every spatio-temporal standpoint mirrors the world