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Alfred North Whitehead Quotes
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Alfred North Whitehead was 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.

In his early career Whitehead wrote primarily on mathematics, logic, and physics. His most notable work in these fields is the three-volume Principia Mathematica , which he wrote with former student Bertrand Russell. Principia Mathematica is considered one of the twentieth century's most important works in mathematical logic, and placed 23rd in a list of the top 100 English-language nonfiction books of the twentieth century by Modern Library.Beginning in the late 1910s and early 1920s, Whitehead gradually turned his attention from mathematics to philosophy of science, and finally to metaphysics. He developed a comprehensive metaphysical system which radically departed from most of western philosophy. Whitehead argued that reality consists of processes rather than material objects, and that processes are best defined by their relations with other processes, thus rejecting the theory that reality is fundamentally constructed by bits of matter that exist independently of one another. Today Whitehead's philosophical works – particularly Process and Reality – are regarded as the foundational texts of process philosophy.

Whitehead's process philosophy argues that "there is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have consequences for the world around us." For this reason, one of the most promising applications of Whitehead's thought in recent years has been in the area of ecological civilization and environmental ethics pioneered by John B. Cobb. Wikipedia  

✵ 15. February 1861 – 30. December 1947
Alfred North Whitehead photo
Alfred North Whitehead: 112   quotes 36   likes

Alfred North Whitehead Quotes

“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.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Source: Attributed from posthumous publications, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954), Ch. 22, August 30, 1941.

Time

“A precise language awaits a completed metaphysics.”

Alfred North Whitehead

1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929)

“A man really writes for an audience of about ten persons. Of course if others like it, that is clear gain. But if those ten are satisfied, he is content.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Source: Attributed from posthumous publications, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954), p. 66

Personality

“The relevant poems are Milton's Paradise Lost, Pope's Essay on Man, Wordsworth's Excursion, Tennyson's In Memoriam.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Source: 1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925), Ch. 5: "The Romantic Reaction"

“Scientists, animated by the purpose of proving they are purposeless, constitute an interesting subject for study.”

Alfred North Whitehead

The Function of Reason (1929), Beacon Books, 1958, p. 16
1920s

Study , Animals

“The English never abolish anything. They put it in cold storage.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Source: Attributed from posthumous publications, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954), Ch. 36, January 19, 1945.

“Nothing is more impressive than the fact that as mathematics withdrew increasingly into the upper regions of ever greater extremes of abstract thought, it returned back to earth with a corresponding growth of importance for the analysis of concrete fact. …The paradox is now fully established that the utmost abstractions are the true weapons with which to control our thought of concrete fact.”

Alfred North Whitehead

1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925)

Mathematics

“With the sense of sight, the idea communicates the emotion, whereas, with sound, the emotion communicates the idea, which is more direct and therefore more powerful.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Source: Attributed from posthumous publications, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954), Ch. 29, June 10, 1943.

Communication , Idea , Sense

“Intolerance is the besetting sin of moral fervour.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Source: 1930s, Adventures of Ideas (1933), p. 63, Ch. 4 http://books.google.com/books?id=UZeJuLvNq80C&q="Intolerance+is+the+besetting+sin+of+moral+fervour"&pg=PA50#v=onepage

“We find here the final application of the doctrine of objective immortality. Throughout the perishing occasions in the life of each temporal Creature, the inward source of distaste or of refreshment, the judge arising out of the very nature of things, redeemer or goddess of mischief, is the transformation of Itself, everlasting in the Being of God. In this way, the insistent craving is justified — the insistent craving that zest for existence be refreshed by the ever-present, unfading importance of our immediate actions, which perish and yet live for evermore.”

Alfred North Whitehead

1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929)

Life , God , Way , Nature

“Life is complex in its expression, involving more than percipience, namely desire, emotion, will, and feeling.”

Alfred North Whitehead

1910s, The Principles of Natural Knowledge (1919)

Life , Feeling

“No member of a crew is praised for the rugged individuality of his rowing.”

Alfred North Whitehead

"Harvard: The Future," http://books.google.com/books?id=X3k5AQAAIAAJ&q=%22No+member+of+a+crew+is+praised+for+the+rugged+individuality+of+his+rowing%22&pg=PA266#v=onepage The Atlantic Monthly, September 1936 http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/theatlantic/doc/203819851.html?FMT=CITE&FMTS=CITE&type=current&date=Sep+1936&author=Alfred+North+Whitehead&pub=The+Atlantic+(1932-1971)&edition=&startpage=260-270&desc=Harvard:+The+future
1930s

For Team

“Without doubt, if we are to go back to that ultimate, integral experience, unwarped by the sophistications of theory, that experience whose elucidation is the final aim of philosophy, the flux of things is one ultimate generalization around which we must weave our philosophical system.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Pt. II, ch. 10, sec. 1.
1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929)

“He has been named respectively, Jehovah, Allah, Brahma, Father in Heaven, Order of Heaven, First Cause, Supreme Being, Chance. Each name corresponds to a system of thought derived from the experiences of those who have used it…. He has been conceived as the foundation of the metaphysical situation with its ultimate activity. If this conception be adhered to, there can be no alternative except to discern in Him the origin of all evil as well as of all good. He is then the supreme author of the play, and to him must therefore be ascribed its shortcomings as well as its success.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Source: 1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925), Ch. 11: "God"

Evil , Chance , Success

“Shakespeare wrote better poetry for not knowing too much; Milton, I think, knew too much finally for the good of his poetry.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Source: Attributed from posthumous publications, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954), Ch. 43, November 11, 1947.

Thinking

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

Alfred North Whitehead

1910s, The Principles of Natural Knowledge (1919)

Life

“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

Pt. I, ch. 1, sec. 6.
1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929)

Failure , Success

“The deliberate aim at Peace very easily passes into its bastard substitute, Anesthesia.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Source: 1930s, Adventures of Ideas (1933), p. 284.

Peace

“The chief danger to philosophy is narrowness in the selection of evidence.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Pt. V, ch. 1, sec. 1.
1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929)

“It is the business of the future to be dangerous; and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Source: 1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925), Ch. 13: Requisites for Social Progress.

Business , Science , Future

“That knowledge which adds greatness to character is knowledge so handled as to transform every phase of immediate experience.”

Alfred North Whitehead

1920s, The Aims of Education (1929)

Knowledge

“The greatest invention of the nineteenth century was the invention of the method of invention.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Source: 1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925), Ch. 6: "The Nineteenth Century"

“Education is the acquisition of the art of the utilisation of knowledge.”

Alfred North Whitehead

1920s, The Aims of Education (1929)

Education , Art , Knowledge

“Systems, scientific and philosophic, come and go. Each method of limited understanding is at length exhausted. In its prime each system is a triumphant success: in its decay it is an obstructive nuisance.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Source: 1930s, Adventures of Ideas (1933), p. 203.

Understanding , Success

“A race preserves its vigour so long as it harbours a real contrast between what has been and what may be, and so long as it is nerved by the vigour to adventure beyond the safeties of the past. Without adventure, civilization is in full decay.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Source: 1930s, Adventures of Ideas (1933), p. 360.

Past

“The science of pure mathematics, in its modern developments, may claim to be the most original creation of the human spirit.”

Alfred North Whitehead

1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925)

Mathematics , Science

“…The pursuit of mathematics is a divine madness of the human spirit…”

Alfred North Whitehead

Source: 1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925), Ch. 2: "Mathematics as an Element in the History of Thought"

Mathematics , Madness

“The worst that happened to men of science was that Galileo suffered an honorable detention and a mild reproof, before dying peacefully in his bed.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Source: 1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925), Ch. 1: "The Origins of Modern Science"

Men , Suffering , Science

“A general definition of civilization: a civilized society is exhibiting the five qualities of truth, beauty, adventure, art, peace.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Source: 1930s, Adventures of Ideas (1933), p. 353.

Truth , Peace , Beauty , Art

“Religion will not regain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does science. Its principles may be eternal, but the expression of those principles requires continual development.”

Alfred North Whitehead

1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925)

Religion , Science , Change

“The consequences of a plethora of half-digested theoretical knowledge are deplorable.”

Alfred North Whitehead

1920s, The Aims of Education (1929)

Knowledge

“By relieving the brain of all unnecessary work, a good notation sets it free to concentrate on more advanced problems, and in effect increases the mental power of the race.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Source: 1910s, An Introduction to Mathematics (1911), ch. 5.

Problem

“The chief error in philosophy is overstatement.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Pt. I, ch. 1, sec. 1.
1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929)

Error

“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

Source: Attributed from posthumous publications, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954), Ch. 28, June 3, 1943.

People , Truth , Idea , Effort

“The power of God is the worship He inspires…. The worship of God is not a rule of safety — it is an adventure of the spirit, a flight after the unattainable. The death of religion comes with the repression of the high hope of adventure.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Source: 1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925), Ch. 12: Religion and Science.

Death , God , Religion , Hope

“There is a quality of life which lies always beyond the mere fact of life; and when we include the quality in the fact, there is still omitted the quality of the quality.”

Alfred North Whitehead book Religion in the Making

Religion in the Making (February 1926), Lecture II: "Religion and Dogma".
1920s

Life

“In its solitariness the spirit asks, What, in the way of value, is the attainment of life? And it can find no such value till it has merged its individual claim with that of the objective universe. Religion is world-loyalty.”

Alfred North Whitehead book Religion in the Making

Religion in the Making (February 1926), Lecture II: "Religion and Dogma" http://www.mountainman.com.au/whiteh_2.htm.
1920s

Life , World , Religion , Way

“There remains the final reflection, how shallow, puny, and imperfect are efforts to sound the depths in the nature of things. In philosophical discussion, the merest hint of dogmatic certainty as to finality of statement is an exhibition of folly.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Preface, p. 16 (Corrected Edition)
1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929)

Nature , Effort

“What the learned world tends to offer is one second-hand scrap of information illustrating ideas derived from another second-hand scrap of information. The second-handedness of the learned world is the secret of its mediocrity.”

Alfred North Whitehead

1920s, The Aims of Education (1929)

Secret , World , Idea , Learning

“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.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Pt. III, ch. 1, sec. 7.
1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929)

History , Universe

“I have always noticed that deeply and truly religious persons are fond of a joke, and I am suspicious of those who aren’t.”

Alfred North Whitehead

As quoted in Church and Home, Vol. 1 (1964) by United Methodist Church, and Evangelical United Brethren Church, p. 21.
Attributed from posthumous publications

Personality

“Our minds are finite, and yet even in these circumstances of finitude we are surrounded by possibilities that are infinite, and the purpose of human life is to grasp as much as we can out of the infinitude.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Source: Attributed from posthumous publications, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954), Ch. 21, June 28, 1941.

Life

“Whether or no it be for the general good, life is robbery. It is at this point that with life morals become acute. The robber requires justification.”

Alfred North Whitehead

1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929)

Life

“We do not require elaborate training merely in order to refrain from embarking upon intricate trains of inference. Such abstinence is only too easy.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Symbolism: Its Meaning and Effect (1927).
1920s

Training

“There is nothing in the real world which is merely an inert fact. Every reality is there for feeling: it promotes feeling; and it is felt.”

Alfred North Whitehead book Process and Reality

Source: 1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929), Chapter IV, p. 310 https://books.google.com/books?id=uJDEx6rPu1QC&pg=PA310.

World , Reality , Feeling

“It is a safe rule to apply that, when a mathematical or philosophical author writes with a misty profundity, he is talking nonsense.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Source: 1910s, An Introduction to Mathematics (1911), ch. 15.

Mathematics