Alfred North Whitehead Quotes - Page 10

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• Our habitual experience is a complex of failure and success in the enterprise of interpretation. If we desire a record of uninterpreted experience, we must ask a stone to record its autobiography.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Desire, Records, Stones

  Alfred North Whitehead (2010). “Process and Reality”, p.15, Simon and Schuster

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• The point of mathematics is that in it we have always got rid of the particular instance, and even of any particular sorts of entities. So that for example, no mathematical truths apply merely to fish, or merely to stones, or merely to colours. So long as you are dealing with pure mathematics, you are in the realm of complete and absolute abstraction. . . . Mathematics is thought moving in the sphere of complete abstraction from any particular instance of what it is talking about.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Moving, Science, Talking

  1925 Science And the Modern World.

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• A race preserves its vigor so long as it harbors a real contrast between what has been and what may be; and so long as it is nerved by the vigor to adventure beyond the safeties of the past. Without adventure civilization is in full decay.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Real, Adventure, Past

  Alfred North Whitehead (1975). “Whitehead's American Essays in Social Philosophy”, Greenwood Publishing Group

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• Some philosophers fail to distinguish propositions from judgements; ... But in the real world it is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. The importance of truth is that it adds to interest.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Real, Interesting, Judgement

  Alfred North Whitehead (2010). “Process and Reality”, p.259, Simon and Schuster

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• Civilizations can only be understood by those who are civilized.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Civilization, Understood, Civilized

  Alfred North Whitehead (1966). “Adventure of ideas”

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• The theme of Cosmology, which is the basis of all religions, is the story of the dynamic effort of the World passing into everlasting unity, and of the static majesty of God's vision, accomplishing its purpose of completion by absorption of the World's multiplicity of effort.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Effort, Unity, Vision

  Alfred North Whitehead (1969). “Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology; Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of Edinburgh During the Session 1927-28”, New York : Macmillan

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• Identification of rhythm as the casual counterpart of life; wherever there is some life, only perceptible to us when the analogies are sufficiently close.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Analogies, Identification, Casual

  "An enquiry concerning the principles of natural knowledge". Book by Alfred North Whitehead, 1919.

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• The vigor of civilized societies is preserved by the widespread sense that high aims are worth-while.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Vigor, Aim, Civilized Society

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• I always feel that I have two duties to perform with a parting guest: one, to see that he doesn't forget anything that is his; the other, to see that he doesn't take anything that is mine.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Two, House Guests, Forget

  Alfred North Whitehead (1954). “Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead”

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• Algebra reverses the relative importance of the factors in ordinary language.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Math, Ordinary, Language

  Alfred North Whitehead (2014). “Science and Philosophy”, p.70, Open Road Media

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• Apart from blunt truth, our lives sink decadently amid the perfume of hints and suggestions.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Life, Truth, Math

  Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Adventures of Ideas”, p.250, Simon and Schuster

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• It must be admitted that there is a degree of instability which is inconsistent with civilization. But, on the whole, the great ages have been unstable ages.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Civilization, Age, Degrees

  ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD (1925). “SCIENCE AND THE MODERN WORLD”

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• The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanation of complex facts... Seek simplicity and distrust it.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Simplicity, Statistics, Facts

  Alfred North Whitehead (2013). “The Concept of Nature”, p.163, Courier Corporation

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• From the moment of birth we are immersed in action, and can only fitfully guide it by taking thought.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Ideas, Action, Birth

  Alfred North Whitehead (1997). “Science and the Modern World”, p.187, Simon and Schuster

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• Algebra reverses the relative importance of the factors in ordinary language. It is essentially a written language, and it endeavors to exemplify in its written structures the patterns which it is its purpose to convey. The pattern of the marks on paper is a particular instance of the pattern to be conveyed to thought. The algebraic method is our best approach to the expression of necessity, by reason of its reduction of accident to the ghostlike character of the real variable.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Real, Character, Math

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• Disputing the commonsense notion that all events require the prior existence of some underlying matter or substance. There is no antecedent static cabinet.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Events, Substance, Matter

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• The ideas of Freud were popularized by people who only imperfectly understood them, who were incapable of the great effort required to grasp them in their relationship to larger truths, and who therefore assigned to them a prominence out of all proportion to their true importance.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Ideas, People, Effort

  Dialogues (1954) (entry for 3 June 1943)

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• But in the prevalent discussion of classes, there are illegitimate transitions to the notions of a 'nexus' and of a 'proposition'. The appeal to a class to perform the services of a proper entity is exactly analogous to an appeal to an imaginary terrier to kill a real rat.
  Process and Reality

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Real, Class, Rats

  Alfred North Whitehead (2010). “Process and Reality”, p.228, Simon and Schuster

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• The great achievements of the past were the adventures of the past. Only the adventurous can understand the greatness of the past.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Adventure, Past, Greatness

  Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Adventures of Ideas”, p.279, Simon and Schuster

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• The result of teaching small parts of a large number of subjects is the passive reception of disconnected ideas, not illumed with any spark of vitality.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Teaching, Ideas, Numbers

  Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Aims of Education”, p.2, Simon and Schuster

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• Other nations of different habits are not enemies: they are godsends. Men require of their neighbours something sufficiently akin to be understood, something sufficiently different to provoke attention, and something great enough to command admiration. We must not expect, however, all the virtues.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Men, Enemy, Different

  Alfred North Whitehead (1997). “Science and the Modern World”, p.207, Simon and Schuster

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• Each generation criticizes the unconscious assumptions made by its parent. It may assent to them, but it brings them out in the open.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Parent, Criticism, Generations

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• There are two principles inherent in the very nature of things, recurring in some particular embodiments whatever field we explore - the spirit of change, and the spirit of conservation. There can be nothing real without both. Mere change without conservation is a passage from nothing to nothing. . . . Mere conservation without change cannot conserve. For after all, there is a flux of circumstance, and the freshness of being evaporates under mere repetition.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Change, Real, Two

  Alfred North Whitehead (1997). “Science and the Modern World”, p.201, Simon and Schuster

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• I have suffered a great deal from writers who have quoted this or that sentence of mine either out of its context or in juxtaposition to some incongruous matter which quite distorted my meaning, or destroyed it altogether.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Matter, Juxtaposition, Deals

  Alfred North Whitehead, Lucien Price (2001). “Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead”, p.225, David R. Godine Publisher

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• ...the self-satisfied dogmatism with which mankind at each period of its history cherishes the delusion of the finality of existing modes of knowledge.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Dark, Self, Age

  Alfred North Whitehead, Lucien Price (2001). “Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead”, p.5, David R. Godine Publisher

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