(source)
|
Alfred North Whitehead
(15 Feb 1861 - 30 Dec 1947)
English mathematician and philosopher who worked in logic, physics, and later in his life spent more time on the philosophy of science and metaphysics. He worked with Bertrand Russell on Principia Mathematica which shows that logic underlies all mathematics.
|
Alfred North Whitehead Quotes on Civilization (4 quotes)
>> Click for 135 Science Quotes by Alfred North Whitehead
>> Click for Alfred North Whitehead Quotes on | Application | Discovery | Education | Error | Fact | Idea | Imagination | Importance | Invention | Knowledge | Learning | Life | Literature | Logic | Mathematics | Mind | Particular | Philosophy | Progress | Science | Thought | Truth |
>> Click for 135 Science Quotes by Alfred North Whitehead
>> Click for Alfred North Whitehead Quotes on | Application | Discovery | Education | Error | Fact | Idea | Imagination | Importance | Invention | Knowledge | Learning | Life | Literature | Logic | Mathematics | Mind | Particular | Philosophy | Progress | Science | Thought | Truth |
It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle—they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.
— Alfred North Whitehead
In An Introduction to Mathematics (1911), 61.
The function of Latin literature is its expression of Rome. When to England and France your imagination can add Rome in the background, you have laid firm the foundations of culture. The understanding of Rome leads back to the Mediterranean civilisation of which Rome was the last phase, and it automatically exhibits the geography of Europe, and the functions of seas and rivers and mountains and plains. The merit of this study in the education of youth is its concreteness, its inspiration to action, and the uniform greatness of persons, in their characters and their staging. Their aims were great, their virtues were great, and their vices were great. They had the saving merit of sinning with cart ropes.
— Alfred North Whitehead
In 'The Place of Classics in Education', The Aims of Education: & Other Essays (1917), 106.
The history of Europe is the history of Rome curbing the Hebrew and the Greek, with their various impulses of religion, and of science, and of art, and of quest for material comfort, and of lust of domination, which are all at daggers drawn with each other. The vision of Rome is the vision of the unity of civilisation.
— Alfred North Whitehead
In 'The Place of Classics in Education', The Aims of Education and Other Essays (1929), 79.
Without adventure civilization is in full decay. ... The great fact [is] that in their day the great achievements of the past were the adventures of the past.
— Alfred North Whitehead
In Adventures of Ideas (1933), 36.
See also:
- 15 Feb - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Whitehead's birth.
- Science and the Modern World, by Alfred North Whitehead. - book suggestion.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
