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Mathematics, in its widest significance, is the development of all types of formal, necessary, deductive reasoning.

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
Type
Widest
Types
Formal
Reasoning
Significance
Mathematics
Necessary
Development
Deductive

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It is not paradox to say that in our most theoretical moods we may be nearest to our most practical applications.
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Thus the negative perception is the triumph of consciousness.
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If a dog jumps into your lap, it is because he is fond of you but if a cat does the same thing, it is because your lap is warmer.
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Nature, even in the act of satisfying anticipation, often provides a surprise.
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The only use of knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present.
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In this modern world, the celibacy of the medieval learned class has been replaced by a celibacy of the intellect which is divorced from the concrete contemplation of the complete facts.
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The fact of the religious vision, and its history of persistent expansion, is our one ground for optimism. Apart from it, human life is a flash of occasional enjoyments lighting up a mass of pain and misery, a bagatelle of transient experience.
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After you understand about the sun and the stars and the rotation of the earth, you may still miss the radiance of the sunset.
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The only justification in the use of force is to reduce the amount of force necessary to be used.
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Through and through the world is infested with quantity: To talk sense is to talk quantities. It is no use saying the nation is large. . . . How large? It is no use saying the radium is scarce. . . . How scarce? You cannot evade quantity. You may fly to poetry and music, and quantity and number will face you in your rhythms and your octaves.
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Our reasonings grasp at straws for premises and float on gossamers for deductions.
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The pursuit of mathematics is a divine madness of the human spirit.
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The antithesis between a technical and a liberal education is fallacious. There can be no adequate technical education which is not liberal, and no liberal education which is not technical.
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In order to acquire learning, we must first shake ourselves free of it.
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Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains.
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The chief danger to philosophy is narrowness in the selection of evidence.
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No period of history has ever been great or ever can be that does not act on some sort of high, idealistic motives, and idealism in our time has been shoved aside, and we are paying the penalty for it.
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With the sense of sight, the idea communicates the emotion, whereas, with sound, the emotion communicates the idea, which is more direct and therefore more powerful.
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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.
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Some philosophers fail to distinguish propositions from judgements ... But in the real world it is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. The importance of truth is that it adds to interest.
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