Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Alfred North Whitehead
Age: 86 †
Born: 1861
Born: February 15
Died: 1947
Died: December 30
Mathematician
Philosopher
Physicist
Theologian
Writer
Ramsgate
Kent
Would
Mathematics
Quarrel
Tradition
Worm
View
Quarrels
Views
Worms
Justice
Sensible
Induction
Science
Opposition
Adherents
Two
Mathematical
Deduction
Ends
Math
Deductions

More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

Image
Every epoch has its character determined by the way its population reacts to the material events which they encounter.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Fertilization of the soul is the reason for the necessity of art.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
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
Image
Religion is the reaction of human nature to its search for God.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Without doubt, if we are to go back to that ultimate, integral experience, unwarped by the sophistications of theory, that experience whose elucidation is the final aim of philosophy, the flux of things is one ultimate generalization around which we must weave our philosophical system.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
It is the business of the future to be dangerous.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
The tragedy of the world is that those who are imaginative have but slight experience, and those who are experienced have feeble imaginations.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
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.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
I have always noticed that deeply and truly religious persons are fond of a joke, and I am suspicious of those who aren't.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Without adventure civilization is in full decay.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
People make the mistake of talking about 'natural laws.' There are no natural laws. There are only temporary habits of nature.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
By relieving the brain of all unnecessary work, a good notation sets it free to concentrate on more advanced problems, and in effect increases the mental power of the race.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
The paradox is now fully established that the utmost abstractions are the true weapons with which to control our thought of concrete fact.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
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
Image
Religion is what a person does in his solitariness.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
I am also greatly indebted to Bergson, William James, and John Dewey. One of my preoccupations has been to rescue their type of thought from the charge of anti-intellectualism, which rightly or wrongly has been associated with it.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
War can protect it cannot create.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
How the past perishes is how the future becomes.
Alfred North Whitehead
Image
Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge.
Alfred North Whitehead