“Philosophy begins in wonder. And at the end when philosophic thought has done its best the wonder remains.”

—  Alfred North Whitehead

Last update June 1, 2025. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Philosophy begins in wonder. And at the end when philosophic thought has done its best the wonder remains." by Alfred North Whitehead?
Alfred North Whitehead photo
Alfred North Whitehead112
English mathematician and philosopher 1861–1947

Related quotes

Socrates photo

“Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Theaetetus, 155d
Plato, Theaetetus

Plato photo

“Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.”

Plato book Theaetetus

155, The Dialogues of Plato, Volume 3, 1871, p. 377 http://books.google.com/books?id=4kQNAAAAIAAJ&amp;pg=PA377 <br class="br">Theaetetus

“It should now be clear that "wonder" and philosophizing are connected with each other in a more essential sense than may at first appear in the statement, "Philosophy begins in wonder." For wonder is not merely the beginning, in the sense of initium, the first stage or phase of philosophy. Rather, wonder is the beginning in the sense of the "principle" (principium), the abiding, ever-intrinsic origin of philosophizing. It is not true to say that the philosopher, insofar as he philosophizes, ever "emerges from his wonder"”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

if he does depart from his state of wonder, he has ceased to philosophize.
Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), The Philosophical Act, pp. 105–106

Samuel Taylor Coleridge photo

“In wonder all philosophy began, in wonder it ends. … But the first wonder is the offspring of ignorance, the last is the parent of adoration.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

Aids to Reflection (1873), Aphorism 107

“When we affirm that philosophy begins with wonder, we are affirming in effect that sentiment is prior to reason.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

Source: Ideas have Consequences (1948), p. 19.

Sören Kierkegaard photo

“Aristotle’s view that philosophy begins with wonder, not as in our day with doubt, is a positive point of departure for philosophy. Indeed, the world will no doubt learn that it does not do to begin with the negative, and the reason for success up to the present is that philosophers have never quite surrendered to the negative and thus have never earnestly done what they have said. They merely flirt with doubt.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Journals and Papers III 3284 (1841)
1840s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1840s

Michel De Montaigne photo

“Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy, research is the means of all learning, and ignorance is the end.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Attributed

Robert Sheckley photo

“Love is a wonderful game which begins in fun and ends in marriage.”

Robert Sheckley (1928–2005) American writer

Source: The 10th Victim (1965), Chapter 15 (p. 131)

Thomas Aquinas photo

“Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poetic fables. Poets and philosophers are alike in being big with wonder.”

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church

Aristotle photo

“For it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to philosophize; they wondered originally at the obvious difficulties, then advanced little by little and stated difficulties about the greater matters, e.g. about the phenomena of the moon and those of the sun and of the stars, and about the genesis of the universe. And a man who is puzzled and wonders thinks himself ignorant (whence even the lover of myth is in a sense a lover of Wisdom, for the myth is composed of wonders); therefore since they philosophized order to escape from ignorance, evidently they were pursuing science in order to know, and not for any utilitarian end.”

Aristotle book Metaphysics

Metaphysics by Aristotle &ndash; Book 1, ClassicalWisdom.com
The second sentence is in Metaphysics A 2, 928<sup>b</sup> 17&ndash;20, Aristotle: Metaphysics Beta: Symposium Aristotelicum, Michel Crubellier & Andre´ Laks, eds. (Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 4.
Metaphysics
Variant: [And] one who experiences a difficulty and who feels wonder thinks that he does not understand..., so that, if it is to escape ignorance that they have practised philosophy, then it is clearly for the sake of knowing, and not for any practical purpose, that they have pursued understanding.

Related topics