Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead OM FRSwas 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...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionMathematician
Date of Birth15 February 1861
Alfred North Whitehead quotes about
extravagance certain harbour
Vigorous societies harbour a certain extravagance of objectives.
cold storage abolish
The English never abolish anything. They put it in cold storage.
term
The term many presupposes the term one , and the term one presupposes the term many.
fishes
Knowledge keeps no better than fish.
premises straws floats
Our reasonings grasp at straws for premises and float on gossamers for deductions.
imagination way facts
Imagination is not to be divorced from the facts. It is a way of illuminating the facts.
learning race brain
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.
preference mathematician indifferent
Nature is probably quite indifferent to the aesthetic preferences of mathematicians.
parent criticism generations
Each generation criticizes the unconscious assumptions made by its parent. It may assent to them, but it brings them out in the open.
discovery weapons facts
The paradox is now fully established that the utmost abstractions are the true weapons with which to control our thought of concrete fact.
contemplation diagrams mathematical
No Roman ever died in contemplation over a geometrical diagram.
learning thinking machines
There is a technique, a knack, for thinking, just as there is for doing other things. You are not wholly at the mercy of your thoughts, any more than they are you. They are a machine you can learn to operate.
substance matter cabinets
Disputing the commonsense notion that all events require the prior existence of some underlying matter or substance. There is no antecedent static cabinet.
math ordinary language
Algebra reverses the relative importance of the factors in ordinary language.