Alfred North Whitehead: Humanity

Alfred North Whitehead was English mathematician and philosopher. Explore interesting quotes on humanity.
Alfred North Whitehead: 224   quotes 36   likes

“In the study of ideas, it is necessary to remember that insistence on hard-headed clarity issues from sentimental feeling, as if 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.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Source: 1930s, Adventures of Ideas (1933), p. 91.
Context: In the study of ideas, it is necessary to remember that insistence on hard-headed clarity issues from sentimental feeling, as if 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 reasoning grasps at straws for premises and float on gossamer for deductions.

Feeling , Intelligence , Idea , Study

“The human body is an instrument for the production of art in the life of the human soul.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Source: 1930s, Adventures of Ideas (1933), p. 349.

Life , Art , Soul

“Nature gets credit which should in truth be reserved for ourselves: the rose for its scent, the nightingale for its song, and the sun for its radiance. The poets are entirely mistaken. They should address their lyrics to themselves and should turn them into odes of self-congratulation on the excellence of the human mind.”

Alfred North Whitehead

as cited in History, Humanity and Evolution (1989), p. 383.
1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925)

Truth , Nature , Sun

“The fact of the religious vision, and its history of persistent expansion, is our one ground for optimism. Apart from it, human life is a flash of occasional enjoyments lighting up a mass of pain and misery, a bagatelle of transient experience.”

Alfred North Whitehead

1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925)

Life , Pain , History , Optimism

“Every intellectual revolution which has ever stirred humanity into greatness has been a passionate protest against inert ideas. Then, alas, with pathetic ignorance of human psychology, it has proceeded by some educational scheme to bind humanity afresh with inert ideas of its own fashioning.”

Alfred North Whitehead

1920s, The Aims of Education (1929)

Education , Idea , Fashion , Passion

“Religion is the reaction of human nature to its search for God. The presentation of God under the aspect of power awakens every modern instinct of critical reaction. This is fatal; for religion collapses unless its main positions command immediacy of assent. In this respect the old phraseology is at variance with the psychology of modern civilisations. This change in psychology is largely due to science, and is one of the chief ways in which the advance of science has weakened the hold of the old religious forms of expression.”

Alfred North Whitehead

1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925)

God , Religion , Way , Search

“Every human being is the natural guardian of his own importance.”

Alfred North Whitehead

Source: 1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925), Ch. 9: "Science and Philosophy"

Nature

“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

“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