Zitate von Alfred North Whitehead

„Die Hauptgefahr für die Philosophie ist Enge in der Auswahl des Anschauungsmaterials.“

—  Alfred North Whitehead, buch Prozess und Realität

Prozeß und Realität (Process and Reality), Teil V, Kapitel 1, Abschnitt 1
Original engl.: "The chief danger to philosophy is narrowness in the selection of evidence."

„Der Humor ist der Regenschirm der Weisen.“

—  Alfred North Whitehead

„Jedes physische Objekt, das seine Umgebung durch eigenen Einfluß zerstört, begeht Selbstmord.“

—  Alfred North Whitehead

Wissenschaft und moderne Welt

„Das Bild - und es ist nur ein Bild -, das Bild, anhand dessen man sich dieses tätige Wachstum der Natur Gottes am besten vorstellen kann, ist das einer zärtlichen Fürsorge dafür, daß nichts verloren geht.“

—  Alfred North Whitehead, buch Prozess und Realität

Prozeß und Realität - (Process and Reality), Teil V, Kapitel 4
Original engl.: "The image—and it is but an image—the image under which this operative growth of God's nature is best conceived, is that of a tender care that nothing be lost."

„Die sicherste allgemeine Charakterisierung der philosophischen Tradition Europas lautet, daß sie aus einer Reihe von Fußnoten zu Platon besteht.“

—  Alfred North Whitehead, buch Prozess und Realität

Prozeß und Realität (Process and Reality), Teil II, Kapitel 1, Abschnitt 1, S. 91
Oft zitiert als "Alle abendländische Philosophie ist als »Fußnote zu Platon« zu verstehen."
Original engl.: "The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato."

„Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance is the death of knowledge.“

—  Alfred North Whitehead

„The essence of education is that it be religious. Pray, what is religious education? A religious education is an education which inculcates duty and reverence.“

—  Alfred North Whitehead

1920s, The Aims of Education (1929)
Kontext: The essence of education is that it be religious. Pray, what is religious education? A religious education is an education which inculcates duty and reverence. Duty arises from our potential control over the course of events. Where attainable knowledge could have changed the issue, ignorance has the guilt of vice. And the foundation of reverence is this perception, that the present holds within itself the complete sum of existence, backwards and forwards, that whole amplitude of time, which is eternity.

„All the world over and at all times there have been practical men, absorbed in 'irreducible and stubborn facts'; all the world over and at all times there have been men of philosophic temperament, who have been absorbed in the weaving of general principles. It is this union of passionate interest in the detailed facts with equal devotion to abstract generalisation which forms the novelty of our present society.“

—  Alfred North Whitehead

Quelle: 1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925), Ch. 1: "The Origins of Modern Science"
Kontext: The new tinge to modern minds is a vehement and passionate interest in the relation of general principles to irreducible and stubborn facts. All the world over and at all times there have been practical men, absorbed in 'irreducible and stubborn facts'; all the world over and at all times there have been men of philosophic temperament, who have been absorbed in the weaving of general principles. It is this union of passionate interest in the detailed facts with equal devotion to abstract generalisation which forms the novelty of our present society.

„The mentality of mankind and the language of mankind created each other.“

—  Alfred North Whitehead

Modes of Thought (1938).
1930s
Kontext: The mentality of mankind and the language of mankind created each other. If we like to assume the rise of language as a given fact, then it is not going too far to say that the souls of men are the gift from language to mankind. The account of the sixth day should be written: He gave them speech, and they became souls.

„Philosophy, in one of its functions, is the critic of cosmologies. It is its function to harmonise, refashion, and justify divergent intuitions as to the nature of things.“

—  Alfred North Whitehead

Preface
1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925)
Kontext: Philosophy, in one of its functions, is the critic of cosmologies. It is its function to harmonise, refashion, and justify divergent intuitions as to the nature of things. It has to insist on the scrutiny of the ultimate ideas, and on the retention of the whole of the evidence in shaping our cosmological scheme. Its business is to render explicit, and — so far as may be — efficient, a process which otherwise is unconsciously performed without rational tests.

„It lies in the nature of things that the many enter into complex unity.“

—  Alfred North Whitehead

Pt. I, ch. 2, sec. 2.
1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929)
Kontext: Creativity is the universal of universals characterizing ultimate matter of fact. It is that ultimate principle by which the many, which are the universe disjunctively, become the one actual occasion, which is the universe conjunctively. It lies in the nature of things that the many enter into complex unity.

„Knowledge does not keep any better than fish.“

—  Alfred North Whitehead

1920s, The Aims of Education (1929)
Kontext: For successful education there must always be a certain freshness in the knowledge dealt with. It must be either new in itself or invested with some novelty of application to the new world of new times. Knowledge does not keep any better than fish. You may be dealing with knowledge of the old species, with some old truth; but somehow it must come to the students, as it were, just drawn out of the sea and with the freshness of its immediate importance.

„More and more it is becoming evident that what the West can most readily give to the East is its science and its scientific outlook.“

—  Alfred North Whitehead

Quelle: 1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925), Ch. 1: "The Origins of Modern Science"
Kontext: More and more it is becoming evident that what the West can most readily give to the East is its science and its scientific outlook. This is transferable from country to country, and from race to race, wherever there is a rational society.

„In the inescapable flux, there is something that abides; in the overwhelming permanence, there is an element that escapes into flux.“

—  Alfred North Whitehead

1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929)
Kontext: In the inescapable flux, there is something that abides; in the overwhelming permanence, there is an element that escapes into flux. Permanence can be snatched only out of flux; and the passing moment can find its adequate intensity only by its submission to permanence.

„Seek simplicity and distrust it.“

—  Alfred North Whitehead

The Concept of Nature (1919), Chapter VII, p.143 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18835/18835-h/18835-h.htm#CHAPTER_VII.
1910s
Kontext: The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanations 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."

„He gave them speech, and they became souls“

—  Alfred North Whitehead

Modes of Thought (1938).
1930s
Kontext: The mentality of mankind and the language of mankind created each other. If we like to assume the rise of language as a given fact, then it is not going too far to say that the souls of men are the gift from language to mankind. The account of the sixth day should be written: He gave them speech, and they became souls.

„The task of philosophy is to recover the totality obscured by the selection.“

—  Alfred North Whitehead

Pt. I, ch. 1, sec. 6.
1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929)
Kontext: Philosophy is the self-correction by consciousness of its own initial excess of subjectivity. Each actual occasion contributes to the circumstances of its origin additional formative elements deepening its own peculiar individuality. Consciousness is only the last and greatest of such elements by which the selective character of the individual obscures the external totality from which it originates and which it embodies. An actual individual, of such higher grade, has truck with the totality of things by reason of its sheer actuality; but it has attained its individual depth of being by a selective emphasis limited to its own purposes. The task of philosophy is to recover the totality obscured by the selection.

„Rightness of limitation is essential for growth of reality. Unlimited possibility and abstract creativity can procure nothing. The limitation, and the basis arising from what is already actual, are both of them necessary and interconnected.“

—  Alfred North Whitehead, buch Religion in the Making

Religion in the Making (February 1926), Lecture IV: "Truth and Criticism" http://www.mountainman.com.au/whiteh_4.htm.
1920s

„Philosophy is the self-correction by consciousness of its own initial excess of subjectivity.“

—  Alfred North Whitehead

Pt. I, ch. 1, sec. 6.
1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929)
Kontext: Philosophy is the self-correction by consciousness of its own initial excess of subjectivity. Each actual occasion contributes to the circumstances of its origin additional formative elements deepening its own peculiar individuality. Consciousness is only the last and greatest of such elements by which the selective character of the individual obscures the external totality from which it originates and which it embodies. An actual individual, of such higher grade, has truck with the totality of things by reason of its sheer actuality; but it has attained its individual depth of being by a selective emphasis limited to its own purposes. The task of philosophy is to recover the totality obscured by the selection.