“The justification for a university is that it preserves the connection between knowledge and the zest of life, by uniting the young and the old in the imaginative consideration of learning.”
1920s, The Aims of Education (1929)
Context: The universities are schools of education, and schools of research. But the primary reason for their existence is not to be found either in the mere knowledge conveyed to the students or in the mere opportunities for research afforded to the members of the faculty. Both these functions could be performed at a cheaper rate, apart from these very expensive institutions. Books are cheap, and the system of apprenticeship is well understood. So far as the mere imparting of information is concerned, no university has had any justification for existence since the popularization of printing in the fifteenth century. Yet the chief impetus to the foundation of universities came after that date, and in more recent times has even increased. The justification for a university is that it preserves the connection between knowledge and the zest of life, by uniting the young and the old in the imaginative consideration of learning.
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Alfred North Whitehead 112
English mathematician and philosopher 1861–1947Related quotes
The Function of the Little Magazine
The Liberal Imagination (1950)
“Old men are always young enough to learn.”
Variant translation: Learning is ever in the freshness of its youth, even for the old.
Source: Oresteia (458 BC), Agamemnon, line 584 ( line 583 of Richmond Lattimore's translation http://books.google.com/books?id=3duN7nP3OQYC&q=%22old+men+are+always+young+enough+to+learn%22&pg=PA40#v=onepage)
Letter to E. Ray Lankester (11 April 1892) Huxley Papers, Imperial College: 30.448
1890s
The Ethic of Freethought (Mar 6, 1883)
Interview with pianist Leon Fleisher http://www.examiner.com/article/interview-with-pianist-leon-fleisher by Elijah Ho (October 1, 2014)
“The zest of life lies in right doing, not in the garnered harvest.”
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 71
A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God (1908)
Context: Of the three Universes of Experience familiar to us all, the first comprises all mere Ideas, those airy nothings to which the mind of poet, pure mathematician, or another might give local habitation and a name within that mind. Their very airy-nothingness, the fact that their Being consists in mere capability of getting thought, not in anybody's Actually thinking them, saves their Reality. The second Universe is that of the Brute Actuality of things and facts. I am confident that their Being consists in reactions against Brute forces, notwithstanding objections redoubtable until they are closely and fairly examined. The third Universe comprises everything whose being consists in active power to establish connections between different objects, especially between objects in different Universes. Such is everything which is essentially a Sign — not the mere body of the Sign, which is not essentially such, but, so to speak, the Sign's Soul, which has its Being in its power of serving as intermediary between its Object and a Mind.
Source: Kritik der zynischen Vernunft [Critique of Cynical Reason] (1983), p. 535