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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.
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Alfred North Whitehead Quotes on Truth (14 quotes)
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>> Click for 135 Science Quotes by Alfred North Whitehead
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Apart from blunt truth, our lives sink decadently amid the perfume of hints and suggestions.
— Alfred North Whitehead
In Adventures of Ideas (1933), 321.
Aristotle discovered all the half-truths which were necessary to the creation of science.
— Alfred North Whitehead
From Dialogue XLII in Alfred North Whitehead and Lucien Price (ed.), Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954, 1977), 344.
In modern times the belief that the ultimate explanation of all things was to be found in Newtonian mechanics was an adumbration of the truth that all science, as it grows towards perfection, becomes mathematical in its ideas.
— Alfred North Whitehead
In An Introduction to Mathematics (1911), 13-14. [To suggest, disclose, or outline partially, produces an “adumbration”, which gives only the main facts and not the details. —Webmaster]
Inventive genius requires pleasurable mental activity as a condition for its vigorous exercise. “Necessity is the mother of invention” is a silly proverb. “Necessity is the mother of futile dodges” is much closer to the truth. The basis of growth of modern invention is science, and science is almost wholly the outgrowth of pleasurable intellectual curiosity.
— Alfred North Whitehead
In 'Technical Education and Its Relation to Science and Literature', The Aims of Education and Other Essays (1917), 69.
It is more important that a proposition be interesting than it be true. … But of course a true proposition is more apt to be interesting than a false one.
— Alfred North Whitehead
In Adventures of Ideas (1933, 1967), 244.
It is rigid dogma that destroys truth; and, please notice, my emphasis is not on the dogma, but on the rigidity. When men say of any question, “This is all there is to be known or said of the subject; investigation ends here,” that is death. It may be that the mischief comes not from the thinker but for the use made of his thinking by late-comers. Aristotle, for example, gave us our scientific technique … yet his logical propositions, his instruction in sound reasoning which was bequeathed to Europe, are valid only within the limited framework of formal logic, and, as used in Europe, they stultified the minds of whole generations of mediaeval Schoolmen. Aristotle invented science, but destroyed philosophy.
— Alfred North Whitehead
Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead, as recorded by Lucien Price (1954, 2001), 165.
Knowledge does not keep any better than fish. You may be dealing with knowledge of the old species, with some old truth; but somehow or other it must come to the students, as it were, just drawn out of the sea and with the freshness of its immediate importance.
— Alfred North Whitehead
In 'Universities and Their Function', The Aims of Education and Other Essays (1929), 98.
Panic of error is the death of progress; and love of truth is its safeguard.
— Alfred North Whitehead
From 'Importance', Lecture One in Modes of Thought (1938), 22.
Science repudiates philosophy. In other words, it has never cared to justify its truth or explain its meaning.
— Alfred North Whitehead
Lowell Lecture (Feb 1925), 'The Origins of Modern Science', collected in Science and the Modern World (1925), 17.
The point of mathematics is that in it we have always got rid of the particular instance, and even of any particular sorts of entities. So that for example, no mathematical truths apply merely to fish, or merely to stones, or merely to colours. … Mathematics is thought moving in the sphere of complete abstraction from any particular instance of what it is talking about.
— Alfred North Whitehead
In 'Mathematics', Science and the Modern World (1926, 2011), 27.
The point of mathematics is that in it we have always got rid of the particular instance, and even of any particular sorts of entities. So that for example, no mathematical truths apply merely to fish, or merely to stones, or merely to colours. So long as you are dealing with pure mathematics, you are in the realm of complete and absolute abstraction. … Mathematics is thought moving in the sphere of complete abstraction from any particular instance of what it is talking about.
— Alfred North Whitehead
In Science and the Modern World: Lowell Lectures, 1925 (1925), 31.
The results of science are never quite true. By a healthy independence of thought perhaps we sometimes avoid adding other people’s errors to our own.
— Alfred North Whitehead
In 'Space, Time and Relativity', The Aims of Education and Other Essays (1929), 149.
There are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths
that plays the devil.
— Alfred North Whitehead
In Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954), 16.
To come very near to a true theory, and to grasp its precise application, are two different things, as the history of science teaches us. Everything of importance has been said before by someone who did not discover it.
— Alfred North Whitehead
In The Organisation of Thought (1917), 127. Collected in The Interpretation of Science: Selected Essays (1961), 33.
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) -- 
