“Philosophy, in one of its functions, is the critic of cosmologies. It is its function to harmonise, refashion, and justify divergent intuitions as to the nature of things.”

— Alfred North Whitehead

Preface
1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925)
Context: Philosophy, in one of its functions, is the critic of cosmologies. It is its function to harmonise, refashion, and justify divergent intuitions as to the nature of things. It has to insist on the scrutiny of the ultimate ideas, and on the retention of the whole of the evidence in shaping our cosmological scheme. Its business is to render explicit, and — so far as may be — efficient, a process which otherwise is unconsciously performed without rational tests.

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Alfred North Whitehead 112

English mathematician and philosopher 1861–1947

Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) American speculative fiction writer

Home is the Hangman (1975)

“Ch. III: Mind - Its Functions and Its Fantasies”

Baba Hari Dass (1923–2018) master yogi, author, builder, commentator of Indian spiritual tradition

Fire without Fuel - The Aphorisms of Baba Hari Dass, 1986

“Intuition is a comprehensive grip of the principle of universality, and when it is functioning there is, momentarily at least, a complete loss of the sense of separateness. At its highest point, it is known as that Universal Love which has no relation to sentiment or to the affectional reaction but is, predominantly, in the nature of an identification with all beings. Then is true compassion known; then does criticism become impossible; then, only, is the divine germ seen as latent in all forms.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: Glamour: A World Problem (1950), Certain Preliminary Clarifications

“I oppose modem capitalism because by its very nature it cannot and will not function for the common good. In fact, it is a detriment to civilization.”

Charles Coughlin (1891–1979) Catholic priest, radio commentator

As quoted in “Charles Coughlin, 30's ‘Radio Priest,’” Albin Krebsoct, New York Times, Oct. 28, 1979. https://www.nytimes.com/1979/10/28/archives/charles-coughlin-30s-radio-priest-dies-fiery-sermons-stirred-furor.html

“Skill is a function of chance. It’s an intuitive best-use of chance situations.”

Philip K. Dick book Solar Lottery

Source: Solar Lottery (1955), Chapter 5 (p. 60)

“Graphics owes its special significance to its double function as a storage mechanism and a research instrument.”

Jacques Bertin (1918–2010) French geographer and cartographer

Source: Semiology of graphics (1967/83), p. 2

“Idolatry is still a socially cohesive force - its original function.”

Julian Jaynes book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Book III, Chapter 1, p. 337
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)

“Technology has deprived the family of almost all its functions.”

Charles A. Reich book The Greening of America

Source: The Greening of America (1970), Chapter VII : "It's Just Like Living", p. 182

“One of the many importants ideas introduced by Minkowski into the study of convex bodies was that of gauge function. Roughly, the gauge function is the equation of a convex body. Minkowski showed that the gauge function could be defined in a purely geometric way and that it must have certain properties analogous to those possessed by the distance of a point from the origin. He also showed that conversely given any function possessing these properties, there exists a convex body with the given function as its gauge function.”

Carl Ludwig Siegel (1896–1981) German mathematician

[Lectures on the Geometry of Numbers, https://books.google.com/books?id=dyH4CAAAQBAJ&pg=PA6] (p. 6)

“The especial genius of Woman I believe to be electrical in movement, intuitive in function, spiritual in tendency.”

Margaret Fuller book Woman in the Nineteenth Century

Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845)

“Philosophy, in one of its functions, is the critic of cosmologies. It is its function to harmonise, refashion, and justify divergent intuitions as to the nature of things.”

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