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There is no more common error than to assume that, because prolonged and accurate mathematical calculations have been made, the application of the result to some fact of nature is absolutely certain.
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
Facts
Math
Nature
Assuming
Prolonged
Certain
Errors
Calculations
Made
Result
Accurate
Absolutely
Application
Results
Error
Common
Assume
Fact
Mathematical
More quotes by Alfred North Whitehead
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
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Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge.
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Education is the acquisition of the art of the utilisation of knowledge.
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The motive of success is not enough.
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You cannot be wise without some basis of knowledge, but you may easily acquire knowledge and remain bare of wisdom.
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As society is now constituted, a literal adherence to the moral precepts scattered throughout the Gospels would mean sudden death.
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[In many circumstances,] the most important thing about a proposition is not that it be true, but that it be interesting.
Alfred North Whitehead
The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment.
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Symbolism is no mere idle fancy or corrupt degeneration: it is inherent in the very texture of human life.
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Now in creative thought common sense is a bad master. Its sole criterion for judgement is that the new ideas shall look like the old ones. In other words it can only work by suppressing originality.
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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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Error is the price we pay for progress.
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The true method of discovery is like the flight of an aeroplane. It starts from the ground of particular observation it makes a flight in the thin air of imaginative generalization and it again lands for renewed observation rendered acute by rational interpretation.
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Problems are only opportunities in disquise.
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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.
Alfred North Whitehead
It is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. This statement is almost a tautology. For the energy of operation of a proposition in an occasion of experience is its interest and is its importance. But of course a true proposition is more apt to be interesting than a false one.
Alfred North Whitehead
Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them.
Alfred North Whitehead
Routine is the god of every social system it is the seventh heaven of business, the essential component in the success of every factory, the ideal of every statesman. The social machine should run like clockwork.
Alfred North Whitehead
The chief error in philosophy is overstatement.
Alfred North Whitehead
Seek simplicity, then distrust.
Alfred North Whitehead
