Quote

Order is not sufficient. What is required, is something much more complex. It is order entering upon novelty so that the massiveness of order does not degenerate into mere repetition and so that the novelty is always reflected upon a background of system.

Alfred North Whitehead

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Alfred North Whitehead
Age: 86 †
Born: 1861
Born: February 15
Died: 1947
Died: December 30
Mathematician
Philosopher
Physicist
Theologian
Writer
Ramsgate
Kent
Always
Mere
Background
System
Required
Upon
Backgrounds
Degenerate
Science
Complexes
Degenerates
Order
Complex
Reflected
Doe
Sufficient
Novelty
Much
Chaos
Repetition
Something
Mathematics
Entering

More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

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Error is the price we pay for progress.
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Every epoch has its character determined by the way its population reacts to the material events which they encounter.
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Value is coextensive with reality.
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The paradox is now fully established that the utmost abstractions are the true weapons with which to control our thought of concrete fact.
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In formal logic, a contradiction is the signal of defeat, but in the evolution of real knowledge it marks the first step in progress toward a victory.
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Each generation criticizes the unconscious assumptions made by its parent. It may assent to them, but it brings them out in the open.
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Without adventure all civilization is full of decay. Adventure rarely reaches its predetermined end. Columbus never reached China.
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The defense of morals is the battle-cry which best rallies stupidity against change.
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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.''
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The learned tradition is not concerned with truth, but with the learned adjustment of learned statements of antecedent learned people.
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Our minds are finite, and yet even in these circumstances of finitude we are surrounded by possibilities that are infinite, and the purpose of life is to grasp as much as we can out of that infinitude.
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Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are cavalry charges in a battle - they are limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.
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The merely well-informed man is the most useless bore on God's earth.
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Art flourishes where there is a sense of adventure.
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Vigorous societies harbor a certain extravagance of objectives, so that men wander beyond the safe provision of personal gratifications.
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The misconception which has haunted philosophic literature throughout the centuries is the notion of 'independent existence.' There is no such mode of existence every entity is to be understood in terms of the way it is interwoven with the rest of the universe.
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The preternatural solemnity of a good many of the professionally religious is to me a point against them.
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It does not matter what men say in words, so long as their activities are controlled by settled instincts. The words may ultimately destroy the instincts but until this has occurred, words do not count.
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Knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows.
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The worst that happened to men of science was that Galileo suffered an honorable detention and a mild reproof, before dying peacefully in his bed.
Alfred North Whitehead