Frases de Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
Fecha de nacimiento: 15. Febrero 1861
Fecha de muerte: 30. Diciembre 1947
Alfred North Whitehead, OM, MRS fue un matemático y filósofo inglés. Es reconocido como la figura que define a la escuela filosófica conocida como la filosofía del proceso, [1] que hoy en día ha encontrado aplicación en una gran variedad de disciplinas, entre ellas la ecología, la teología, la educación, la física, la biología, la economía y la psicología, entre otras áreas.
En sus primeros años, Whitehead escribió principalmente sobre matemáticas, lógica y física. Sus trabajos más notables en esas áreas son los tres volúmenes de Principia Mathematica , que escribió junto con Bertrand Russell, un exestudiante suyo. Principia Mathematica es considerado uno de los trabajos más importantes sobre lógica matemática del siglo XX, y alcanzó el lugar 23 en una lista de los 100 mejores libros de no ficción en idioma inglés del siglo XX de la Biblioteca Moderna. [2]
Comenzando la década de 1910 y principios de 1920, Whitehead comenzó a enfocarse más en la filosofía de la ciencia y finalmente en la metafísica. Desarrolló un sistema metafísico que radicalmente salió de la filosofía occidental. Whitehead argumentó que la realidad consistía en procesos, más que en objetos materiales, y que los procesos son mejor definidos por sus relaciones con otros procesos, por lo que refutó la teoría de que la realidad está fundamentalmente construida por pedazos de materia que existen de manera independiente entre cada uno.[3] Actualmente, los trabajos filosóficos de Whitehead, en especial Proceso y realidad, son conocidos como los textos que fundaron la filosofía del proceso.[cita requerida]La filosofía del proceso de Whitehead argumenta que "existe una urgencia de ver al mundo como una red de procesos interrelacionados de los que somos partes integrales, por lo que todas nuestras decisiones y acciones tienen consecuencias para el mundo alrededor de nosotros". [3] Por esta razón, una de las aplicaciones más prometedoras de las ideas de Whitehead en los años más recientes ha sido en el área de la civilización ecológica y la ética del medio ambiente, iniciada por John B. Cobb, Jr.[4] Wikipedia
Frases Alfred North Whitehead
„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, libro Religion in the Making
Religion in the Making (February 1926), Lecture IV: "Truth and Criticism" http://www.mountainman.com.au/whiteh_4.htm.
1920s
„Some philosophers fail to distinguish propositions from judgments; … But in the real world it is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true.“
Fuente: 1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929), p. 259.
Variant: 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 its importance. But of course a true proposition is more apt to be interesting than a false one.
As extended upon in Adventures of Ideas (1933), Pt. 4, Ch. 16.
Contexto: Some philosophers fail to distinguish propositions from judgments; … 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.
„In all philosophic theory there is an ultimate which is actual in virtue of its accidents.“
Pt. I, ch. 1, sec. 2.
1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929)
Contexto: In all philosophic theory there is an ultimate which is actual in virtue of its accidents. It is only then capable of characterization through its accidental embodiments, and apart from these accidents is devoid of actuality. In the philosophy of organism this ultimate is termed creativity; and God] is its primordial, non-temporal accident. In [[monistic philosophies, Spinoza's or absolute idealism, this ultimate is God, who is also equivalently termed The Absolute. In such monistic schemes, the ultimate is illegitimately allowed a final, eminent reality, beyond that ascribed to any of its accidents. In this general position the philosophy of organism seems to approximate more to some strains of Indian, or Chinese, thought, than to western Asiatic, or European, thought. One side makes process ultimate; the other side makes fact ultimate.
„One side makes process ultimate; the other side makes fact ultimate.“
Pt. I, ch. 1, sec. 2.
1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929)
Contexto: In all philosophic theory there is an ultimate which is actual in virtue of its accidents. It is only then capable of characterization through its accidental embodiments, and apart from these accidents is devoid of actuality. In the philosophy of organism this ultimate is termed creativity; and God] is its primordial, non-temporal accident. In [[monistic philosophies, Spinoza's or absolute idealism, this ultimate is God, who is also equivalently termed The Absolute. In such monistic schemes, the ultimate is illegitimately allowed a final, eminent reality, beyond that ascribed to any of its accidents. In this general position the philosophy of organism seems to approximate more to some strains of Indian, or Chinese, thought, than to western Asiatic, or European, thought. One side makes process ultimate; the other side makes fact ultimate.
„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.“
Pt. I, ch. 1, sec. 6.
1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929)
Contexto: 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.
„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.“
Fuente: 1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925), Ch. 1: "The Origins of Modern Science"
Contexto: 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.
„The universities are schools of education, and schools of research.“
1920s, The Aims of Education (1929)
Contexto: The universities are schools of education, and schools of research. But the primary reason for their existence is not to be found either in the mere knowledge conveyed to the students or in the mere opportunities for research afforded to the members of the faculty. Both these functions could be performed at a cheaper rate, apart from these very expensive institutions. Books are cheap, and the system of apprenticeship is well understood. 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. Yet the chief impetus to the foundation of universities came after that date, and in more recent times has even increased. The justification for a university is that it preserves the connection between knowledge and the zest of life, by uniting the young and the old in the imaginative consideration of learning.
„It lies in the nature of things that the many enter into complex unity.“
Pt. I, ch. 2, sec. 2.
1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929)
Contexto: 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.
„In the inescapable flux, there is something that abides; in the overwhelming permanence, there is an element that escapes into flux.“
1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929)
Contexto: 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.
