Each generation criticizes the unconscious assumptions made by its parent. It may assent to them, but it brings them out in the open. Alfred North Whitehead More Quotes by Alfred North Whitehead More Quotes From Alfred North Whitehead All practical teachers know that education is a patient process of mastery of details, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day. Alfred North Whitehead masterydetailsteacher I will not go so far as to say that to construct a history of thought without profound study of the mathematical ideas of successive epochs is like omitting Hamlet from the play which is named after him. That would be claiming too much. But it is certainly analogous to cutting out the part of Ophelia. This simile is singularly exact. For Ophelia is quite essential to the play, she is very charming . . . and a little mad. Alfred North Whitehead cuttingmathsuccess The consequences of a plethora of half-digested theoretical knowledge are deplorable. Alfred North Whitehead theoreticalconsequencehalf An unflinching determination to take the whole evidence into account is the only method of preservation against the fluctuating extremes of fashionable opinion. Alfred North Whitehead preservationopiniondetermination Faith in the possibility of science, generated antecedently to the development of modern scientific theory, is an unconscious derivative from medieval theology. Alfred North Whitehead medievalderivativesdevelopment But harmony is limitation. Thus rightness of limitation is essential for growth of reality. Unlimited possibility and abstract creativity can procure nothing. Alfred North Whitehead creativitygrowthreality Through and through the world is infested with quantity: To talk sense is to talk quantities. It is no use saying the nation is large. . . . How large? It is no use saying the radium is scarce. . . . How scarce? You cannot evade quantity. You may fly to poetry and music, and quantity and number will face you in your rhythms and your octaves. Alfred North Whitehead musicusenumbers There is a tradition of opposition between adherents of induction and of deduction. In my view it would be just as sensible for the two ends of a worm to quarrel. Alfred North Whitehead viewsmathscience There are two principles inherent in the very nature of things, recurring in some particular embodiments whatever field we explore - the spirit of change, and the spirit of conservation. There can be nothing real without both. Mere change without conservation is a passage from nothing to nothing. . . . Mere conservation without change cannot conserve. For after all, there is a flux of circumstance, and the freshness of being evaporates under mere repetition. Alfred North Whitehead realchangetwo ...the self-satisfied dogmatism with which mankind at each period of its history cherishes the delusion of the finality of existing modes of knowledge. Alfred North Whitehead selfagedark 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. Alfred North Whitehead printinginformationmath Disputing the commonsense notion that all events require the prior existence of some underlying matter or substance. There is no antecedent static cabinet. Alfred North Whitehead eventssubstancematter 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. Alfred North Whitehead learningtechniquethinking An open mind is all very well in its way, but it ought not to be so open that there is no keeping anything in or out of it. Alfred North Whitehead wellsmindway When success turns a man's head he faces failure Alfred North Whitehead failurefacesmen The merely well-informed man is the most useless bore on God's earth. Alfred North Whitehead boredomuselessmen Now in creative thought common sense is a bad master. Its sole criterion for judgement is that the new ideas shall look like the old ones. In other words it can only work by suppressing originality. Alfred North Whitehead common-sensecreativityideas Art flourishes where there is a sense of adventure, a sense of nothing having been done before, of complete freedom to experiment. Alfred North Whitehead scrapbookingadventureart The way in which the persecution of Galileo has been remembered is a tribute to the quiet commencement of the most intimate change in outlook which the human race had yet encountered. Since a babe was born in a manger, it may be doubted whether so great a thing has happened with so little stir Alfred North Whitehead racemaylittles "One and one make two" assumes that the changes in the shift of circumstance are unimportant. But it is impossible for us to analyze this notion of unimportant change. Alfred North Whitehead changemathtwo
