Whitehead, Alfred North (1861 - 1947)
Mathematics as a science, commenced when first someone, probably a Greek, proved propositions about "any" things or about "some" things, without specifications of definite particular things.
Whitehead, Alfred North (1861 - 1947)
So far as the mere imparting of information is concerned, no university has had any justification for existence since the popularization of printing in the fifteenth century.
Whitehead, Alfred North (1861 - 1947)
No Roman ever died in contemplation over a geometrical diagram.
[A reference to the death of Archimedes.]
In H. Eves Mathematical Circles Squared, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1972.
Whitehead, Alfred North (1861 - 1947)
Life is an offensive, directed against the repetitious mechanism of the Universe.
Adventures of Ideas, 1933.
Whitehead, Alfred North (1861 - 1947)
There is no nature at an instant.
Whitehead, Alfred North (1861 - 1947)
Let us grant that the pursuit of mathematics is a divine madness of the human spirit, a refuge from the goading urgency of contingent happenings.
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC:Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Whitehead, Alfred North (1861 - 1947)
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.
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC:Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Whitehead, Alfred North (1861 - 1947)
It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.
An Introduction to Mathematics.
Whitehead, Alfred North (1861 - 1947)
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.
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC:Rome Press Inc., 1988.
Whitehead, Alfred North (1861 - 1947)
In modern times the belief that the ultimate explanation of all things was to be found in Newtonian mechanics was an adumbration of the truth that all science, as it grows towards perfection, becomes mathematical in its ideas.
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC:Rome Press Inc., 1988.
