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
zero math needs
The point about zero is that we do not need to use it in the operation of daily life. No one goes out to buy zero fish.
invention nineteenth-century method
The greatest invention of the nineteenth century was the invention of the method of invention.
expression feelings desire
Life is complex in its expression, involving more than percipience, namely desire, emotion, will, and feeling.
doctrine copernicus atoms
The physical doctrine of the atom has got into a state which is strongly suggestive of the epicycles of astronomy before Copernicus .
peace self personality
Peace is self-control at its widest-at the width where the "self" has been lost, and interest has been transferred to coordinations wider than personality.
knowledge-and-power impossible emotion
It is impossible to meditate on time and the mystery of nature without an overwhelming emotion at the limitations of human intelligence.
analogies casual identification
Identification of rhythm as the casual counterpart of life; wherever there is some life, only perceptible to us when the analogies are sufficiently close.
zest uniting connections
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.
vigor aim civilized-society
The vigor of civilized societies is preserved by the widespread sense that high aims are worth-while.
zero needs use
The point about zero is that we do not need to use it in the operations of daily life. No one goes out to buy zero fish. It is in a way the most civilised of all the cardinals, and its use is only forced on us by the needs of cultivated modes of thought.
imagination way facts
Imagination is not to be divorced from the facts. It is a way of illuminating the facts.
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.
achievement english-mathematician periods seldom
Periods of tranquility are seldom prolific of creative achievement. Mankind has to be stirred up.