Quotessence
Home / Authors / Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead

Alfred North Whitehead Quotes

Mathematician

Filter quotes by topic

AllScienceMathematicsHumansMathematicalMathIdeasDoeMenWorldFactsAdventureMayCivilizationHas BeensThinkingArtIfsPhilosophyCertainImportance

Famous Alfred North Whitehead Quotes

“The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanations of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, 'Seek simplicity and distrust it.”

PhilosophyFactsScienceSimpleTrustComplexExplanations
Book:The Concept of Nature: The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, 11/1919
Create image

“The new tinge to modern minds is a vehement and passionate interest in the relation of general principles to irreducible and stubborn facts. All the world over and at all times there have been practical men, absorbed in 'irreducible and stubborn facts'; all the world over and at all times there have been men of philosophic temperament, who have been absorbed in the weaving of general principles. It is this union of passionate interest in the detailed facts with equal devotion to abstract generalisation which forms the novelty of our present society.”

MenWorldMindHas BeensFactsFormInterestPrinciplesModernEqualRelationUnionsPassionatePracticalsDevotionAll TimeAbstractStubbornTemperamentNoveltyWeavingPhilosophicVehementGeneralisation
Author:Alfred North Whitehead
Create image

“In the history of the world the prize has not gone to those species which specialized in methods of violence, or even in defensive armor. In fact, nature began with producing animals encased in hard shells for defense against the ill of life. But smaller animals, without external armor, warm-blooded, sensitive, alert, have cleared those monsters off the face of the earth.”

WorldHardFactsEarthFacesAnimalGoneViolenceMethodSpeciesIllWarmDefenseMonstersSensitivePrizeShellsWorld HistoryArmor
Author:Alfred North Whitehead
Create image

“Religion is the vision of something which stands beyond, behind, and within, the passing flux of immediate things; something which is real, and yet waiting to be realised; something which is a remote possibility, and yet the greatest of present facts; something that gives meaning to all that passes, and yet eludes apprehension; something whose possession is the final good, and yet is beyond all reach; something which is the ultimate ideal, and the hopeless quest.”

GivingRealFactsWaitingBehindsVisionPossibilityIdealsUltimateFinalsPossessionPassingPassingsHopelessQuestsRealisedApprehensionFluxElude
Author:Alfred North Whitehead
Create image

“The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanation of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be ``Seek simplicity and distrust it.''”

ThinkingShouldFactsScienceFallGoalNaturalSimpleAimErrorsComplexesSimplicityPhilosopherExplanationQuestsDistrustMottoSimplestSimple And Complex
Book:The Concept of Nature: Tarner Lectures
Create image

“I regret that it has been necessary for me in this lecture to administer a large dose of four-dimensional geometry. I do not apologize, because I am really not responsible for the fact that nature in its most fundamental aspect is four-dimensional. Things are what they are.”

Has BeensFactsNatureFourRegretAspectResponsibleFundamentalsApologizingLecturesGeometryDoseI Regret
Book:The Concept of Nature: Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November, 1919
Create image

“In the study of ideas, it is necessary to remember that insistence on hard-headed clarity issues from sentimental feeling, as it were a mist, cloaking the perplexities of fact. Insistence on clarity at all costs is based on sheer superstition as to the mode in which human intelligence functions. Our reasonings grasp at straws for premises and float on gossamers for deductions.”

HumansIdeasHardFactsFeelingsRememberStudyIssuesCostFunctionMathematicsMathClarityMathematicalReasoningSuperstitionsSheerSentimentalFloatsMistPremisesStrawsInsistenceDeductionsHuman IntelligencePerplexity
Book:Adventures of Ideas
Create image