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
nature anticipation surprise
Nature, even in the act of satisfying anticipation, often provides a surprise.
emotion life-is ninety
Ninety percent of our lives is governed by emotion.
half theoretical consequence
The consequences of a plethora of half-digested theoretical knowledge are deplorable.
preference mathematician indifferent
Nature is probably quite indifferent to the aesthetic preferences of mathematicians.
knowledge passion men
No man of science wants merely to know. He acquires knowledge to appease his passion for discovery. He does not discover in order to know, he knows in order to discover.
speech language human-nature
Speech is human nature itself, with none of the artificiality of written language.
past use-it-or-lose-it use-of-knowledge
The only use of knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present.
book thinking opposites
It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.
imagination way facts
Imagination is not to be divorced from the facts. It is a way of illuminating the facts.
cutting play ideas
I will not go so far as to say that to construct a history of thought without profound study of the mathematical ideas of successive epochs is like omitting Hamlet from the play which is named after him. That would be claiming too much. But it is certainly analogous to cutting out the part of Ophelia. This simile is singularly exact. For Ophelia is quite essential to the play, she is very charming . . . and a little mad.
math organization imagination
The whole of mathematics consists in the organization of a series of aids to the imagination in the process of reasoning.
success education opportunity
A clash of doctrine is not a disaster, it is an opportunity.
science forget lost
A science which hesitates to forget its founders is lost.
science half creation
Aristotle discovered all the half-truths which were necessary to the creation of science.